Movie has 2012 wrong, says Canadian archaeologist

Kenneth Turan reviews "2012," the latest disaster movie portraying the end of the world. The movie is directed by Roland Emmerich, who seems to be stuck on the same theme, after movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Independence Day."

"2012" is based on a premise apparently laid out in an ancient carved monument found in the Mayan region, which covers the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and parts of Central America. The region has been home to the indigenous Maya people since 900 BC.

But Canadian archaeologist Kathryn Reese-Taylor, who teaches at the University of Calgary, says in a statement that although the monument, called the Tortuguero Monument Six, refers to the date Dec. 21, 2012, it is not an end-of-the-world prophecy. She says the translation of the text essentially says that something will occur on Dec. 21, 2012 and that it will be similar to something that occurred on another date in the past.

"We don’t know what that past occurrence was or what the future occurrence will be. At no point do any of the Maya texts actually prophesize the end of the world," she said. Reese-Taylor says that the prophecy has never meant the end of the world among the Maya people and that it is North Americans who have created this interpretation.

“The idea of a Maya prophecy emerged in the 1970s when North American journalists and writers began to cherry-pick ideas from the Maya, Aztec and Hopi cultures and created what they now call the Maya prophecy.”

Looks like Hollywood's creative license is at work again.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Preserving El Salvador's historic memory: Organizer explains big L.A. event

As Reed Johnson reports, over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening at the Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown will try to salvage some of El Salvador's missing past. The project has the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory), and you can read the rest of the report here. Below you can see a Spanish-language interview with William Flores, who was one of the main organizers behind the event, in a video from DesdeAquiTV.com, which is an Internet TV channel based in LA.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Literacy brings immigrants closer to full participation in life

Native Spanish speakers break the code of the written word with help from an L.A. adult-education center, writes Hector Tobar.

In her one-bedroom apartment in the Pico-Union district, garment worker Julia Rodriguez lives surrounded by young readers.

Her oldest child, 10-year-old Santos, is giving Harry Potter a try. Nine-year-old Wendy devours girl-detective stories. Even her youngest, 6-year-old Marlyn, zips through early reader books.

"Tim spins," Marlyn reads from her book. "Tim spins his hat."

Julia listens to her daughter and beams. Until recently, the 34-year-old mother of three couldn't read the simplest sentence in any language. Having been illiterate most of her life, she feels deep, bittersweet emotions watching her children master reading.

Earlier this year, in the classrooms of the nonprofit Centro Latino for Literacy, Julia finally started learning to read and write herself.

Read the rest of Tobar's column here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Julia Rodriguez, 34, says her children, Santos, left, Marlyn and Wendy, inspired her to learn to read. "Before, there was no sun for me. Now I feel" more awake, Julia says. She recently bought her first book. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

More NBA en Español

The National Basketball Assn. announced today the launch of éne-bé-a, a marketing campaign that tailors the NBA experience to Latino fans. 

With Latinos accounting for 15% of the NBA’s U.S. fan base of 120 million, according to Simmons Market Research, the new campaign aims to engage these fans and reach new ones.

“It will allow us to further grow the game of basketball throughout the Hispanic market,” said Saskia Sorrosa, NBA senior director of U.S. Hispanic marketing.

It’s the league’s first comprehensive, multi-platform promotion catering to Latino fans and will include:

-- Television, radio and online advertising

-- TV spots featuring the Phoenix Suns' Leandro Barbosa and other pro players that will run on Latino networks such as Telemundo, Univision, Telefutura, Discovery en Espanol, CNN en Espanol and MTV3, among other channels

Film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez book prompts protest in Mexico [Updated]

If you look at the culture pages in Mexico’s newspapers these days, there is little question about what’s the talk of the town in literary circles — old men having sex with young girls, writes Andres Oppenheimer.

He's referring to a debate currently raging here in Mexico about whether a planned movie based on Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's book "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" would glorify the sexual exploitation of children.

As the Huffington Post reports, the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Oct. 5.

The complaint does not specifically name Garcia Marquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution."

Coalition Director Teresa Ulloa told the Associated Press that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote pedophilia and be accessible to a wider audience.

Read the full column from Oppenheimer here and go here for more from the Huffington Post.

[Updated at 11:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post said the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean had filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office today. It was filed Oct. 5.]

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Dole withdraws lawsuit against Swedish filmmaker

The Associated Press reports that Dole Food Co. is withdrawing a defamation lawsuit against a Swedish filmmaker after complaints in Sweden that it was trying to limit free speech.

Dole had sued filmmaker Fredrik Gertten for showing the documentary "Bananas!" despite a court ruling that the case on which the film was based had been part of a massive extortion plot against the company.

The documentary shows the alleged plight of Nicaraguan workers who say they were made sterile by a pesticide used at Dole banana plantations during the 1970s.

Dole's lawsuit sparked protests in Sweden, where critics said the food company was trying to interfere with freedom of speech.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Tougher rules on policing illegal immigrants

Luz Maria Diaz knew what happened to illegal immigrants at the Wake County jail. But her teenage daughters didn't.

So when the girls were arrested after fighting on their high school campus in September, they freely admitted that they were born in Mexico. Detention officers at the jail checked their immigration status and promptly handed them over to federal authorities.

Now Diana, 16, and her sister, Yolanda, 18, are battling to stay in the country.

"I never thought this could happen ... for a simple fight," their mother said. "I was in shock."

Read more of this report from Anna Gorman here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.

Photo: Luz Maria Diaz, 35, worries about what will happen to daughters Yolanda, 18, left, and Diana, 16, right. The two were arrested after a fight on their school campus, then processed for possible deportation under a program known as 287(g). The program has drawn criticism after reported civil-rights violations, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has called for an end to it. In July, the Obama administration announced that participating agencies must focus their efforts primarily on serious and violent criminals. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

Three lives and a literate city's shame

Julia Rodriguez, Juan Contreras and Mercedes Meza couldn't read or write. For years they got by with the help of friends and good memories for the sorts of sights that differentiated streets, reports Hector Tobar.

There is a neighborhood in L.A. where you can hear people converse in the language spoken by the Aztec emperors Montezuma and Cuauhtémoc.

Julia Rodriguez lives there -- in Pico-Union, just west of downtown. She spoke only Nahuatl when she arrived in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

In L.A., she quickly taught herself to speak Spanish. But when she was growing up in a small village in Mexico's Guerrero state, she never went to school. So she'd never been taught to read in any language.

"They never sent me," she told me. "That's how it is in the ranchos. People say, 'What's the use?' But the truth is, it really is important."

In Los Angeles, Julia found a job as a garment worker and eventually realized that bettering her future depended on learning to read and write. So did Juan Contreras, a cook at a downtown restaurant, who didn't go to school as a child because his peasant father "rented" him out as a farmhand starting when he was 10 years old.

Read on here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Latinos and education: Survey examines 'attainment gap'

The schooling of Latinos in the U.S. has long been characterized by high dropout rates and low college completion rates. The problems have lessened over time, "but a persistent educational attainment gap remains between Latinos and whites," according to the latest report from the Pew Hispanic Center:

Nearly nine-in-10 (89%) Latino young adults ages 16 to 25 say that a college education is important for success in life, yet only about half that number -- 48% -- say that they themselves plan to get a college degree, according to a new national survey of 2,012 Latinos ages 16 and older by the Pew Hispanic Center conducted from Aug. 5 to Sept. 16.

The biggest reason for the gap between the high value Latinos place on education and their more modest aspirations to finish college appears to come from financial pressure to support a family, the survey finds.

Read more here on the Pew Hispanic Center website.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Verification of immigrants' legal status scrutinized amid healthcare debate

Los Angeles County health worker Leonardo Rincon lifts the birth certificate up to the light and expertly scrutinizes it. Do faint watermarks show up? Yes. He rubs his thumb over the official seal to see if it is raised. It is. He checks the number of digits in the document number. Perfect.

Ruth Torres, he decides, has brought in valid U.S. birth certificates for her six children, a valid U.S. passport for her husband and a valid green card for herself, a legal immigrant from Mexico. The family will continue to receive public healthcare benefits, as least for the next year.

Since July 2008, when Los Angeles County began implementing tougher federal verification rules, Rincon and his colleagues have gone back to check the documents of more than 100,000 recipients of Medi-Cal, the public healthcare program for low-income residents, reports Teresa Watanabe.

Read more on verifications for immigrants here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City