Cartoonists take on illegal immigration

"The now-infamous Capitol shout-out from South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was blogged, scribed, tubed and 'tooned to death, but precious little commentary actually dealt with illegal immigration, the spark that lit his short fuse. Steve Sack took a shot at needling irrational nationalists taking needless shots. John Branch signed off on a huge multibillion-dollar border checkpoint. And Matt Bors used borderline taste in his verbose abortion piece.(Guess that Bors dude is sick and un-American.)"

-- Joel Pett

Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His cartoons also appear in USA Today.

See more here.

Cartoon: Steve Sack / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Language as a bridge and an identity

At the Grupo Educa weekend language school, children from families with roots in Latin America and Spain are taught to keep the language of their forebears alive and well, writes Hector Tobar in his column.

I was invited to speak on Sunday to a group of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds, and to their odd, tiny "classmate" -- a stuffed bear.

Like me, the children were all English speakers, born in the U.S. But the stuffed bear spoke only Spanish, the children's teacher told me. So the kids and I chatted in español -- just so el oso wouldn't feel left out.

"Buenos días," I said to the children, and they all answered back "buenos días!" The bear kept quiet, however.

The "Spanish-speaking bear" is a little trick they use at the Grupo Educa weekend language school to get the kids to speak Spanish.

Read more here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.

Immigrant population in California declines

More than three decades of rapid growth in the country's foreign-born population came to a halt last year, census data show, as surging unemployment made the U.S. economy less attractive to outsiders, report The Times' Don Lee and Alana Semuels.

In California, which has a long history of attracting immigrants, the number of foreign-born residents actually declined, falling 1.6%.

"This is clearly a consequence of the economy, with the biggest impact on Mexican and low-skilled immigrants," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the census figures, which are to be officially released today. "It shows that these immigrants respond to the economy."

Nationwide, the number of foreign-born residents fell an estimated 99,000, or 0.3%, to 37.97 million.

Read more here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Obama takes heat from other side of immigrant healthcare debate

Trying to quell a conservative uproar over his healthcare agenda, President Obama has proposed barring illegal immigrants from a possible government-arranged health insurance marketplace -- even if the immigrants pay with their own money.

The move has surprised some of Obama's fellow Democrats and infuriated immigrant advocates, who on Tuesday attacked the position as political pandering and bad policy, reports Peter Wallsten from Washington.

Read on here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

With Culture Clash, nothing is sacred except satire

Los Angeles is home to an industry that makes dramas and exports them around the world. But there's something wrong about the way our diverse city looks and sounds in big Hollywood films, writes Hector Tobar.

With a few, notable exceptions, Latinos are usually in the background, doing yardwork or working as nannies, putting on the thick Spanish accents demanded by their scripts.

Black characters are often wacky police officers, gangsters or single moms. Asians are technicians or immigrants who look confused. And the white characters are usually well-off and self-involved, fated to learn about the essential goodness of all the other ethnic groups.

It's all so predictable and unsatisfying.

The real L.A. is a crazy cast of Shakespearean characters and tragicomic contradictions. Where can you find actors who bring that reality to life? In our small but vibrant community theater scene, of course.

Including, Tobar goes on to note, the Culture Clash comic trio, a veritable institution in Southern California.

Read more here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Richard Montoya, left, Ric Salinas, center, and Herbert Siguenza of  Culture Clash. "We're equal opportunity offenders," Salinas says. Credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times / January 5, 2007)

E-mails on illegal immigration are eye-opening

The e-mail that popped into my inbox started with an insult and included an attachment full of "facts," writes Hector Tobar.

After calling me a "crybaby" for writing a sympathetic story about Mexican immigrants, the sender insisted I read a series of statistics on the effects of illegal immigration on Los Angeles and California. Hospitals, law enforcement and other public services, he said, are being overwhelmed.

At first, because of the sender's tone, I ignored the attachment. Then it arrived again, this time forwarded by a friendly reader. He didn't believe the e-mail, he said, but wanted me to know that three friends had sent it to him. And 10 of its facts were said to have originated in this newspaper.

I started reading the chain letter, which carried the title "Just One State." It asked me to forward its message to at least two other people. "If this doesn't open your eyes," it declared, "nothing will."

I'm all in favor of having my eyes opened -- and then making sure my eyes don't deceive me. So I took the 10 "stats" and focused a little light on them. I waded deep into The Times' archive with the help of our librarian Scott Wilson, and made a few phone calls too.

What did I find? A stew made up for the most part of meaty exaggerations and spicy conjecture, mixed in with some giblets of truth. Two of the "stats" are the musings of a conservative op-ed writer. Another takes its information from a government "report" that is, in fact, a work of fiction.

Read the rest of this article here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

French filmmaker who made documentary on gangs is killed in El Salvador

Christian Poveda, a French filmmaker and photographer who recently made a documentary about the Mara gangs in El Salvador, was shot dead Wednesday in Tonacatepeque, a rural region north of the capital, police said. He had been shot in the head, reports the Associated Press.

His documentary, "La Vida Loca," which we covered here on La Plaza, showed the hopelessness of life for the thousands of gang members living in El Salvador.

Poveda was a strong critic of policies used by the governments of El Salvador and the U.S., which he saw as having strengthened the gang networks.He described the members of the violent gangs that he filmed as "victims of society."

He spent 16 months shooting the film in San Salvador, and said during an interview with La Plaza this year,  “I knew right from the start that I couldn't film just one character."

“Firstly, they get bored after a couple of months and don't want to be filmed anymore. Or two, they get put in jail, or they get killed.”

We'll be bringing you more on this story, but meanwhile you can watch Poveda talk about "La Vida Loca" in an interview in April.

** Updated: Read our full report on this story here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Hector Tobar learns some lessons in Tijuana

A vacation trip through Tijuana affords the opportunity to pass along some lessons about the fence that divides the U.S. and Mexico. But the teacher becomes the student, writes columnist Hector Tobar. 

I tried to give my kids a "teachable moment" when we drove through Tijuana this summer. But in the end, I was the one who got schooled.

I figured it's a dad's responsibility to pass on certain lessons about the way the world works. So I showed my boys, ages 10 and 12, the fence that divides the United States from Mexico.

Read the rest of Tobar's column here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: The fence that divides the United States and Mexico makes a potent statement. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Celebrating the first 'Mexican' astronaut: Out of this world!

This week’s planned launch of the space shuttle Discovery is getting special attention in Mexico. The seven-member crew includes astronaut Jose Hernandez, the California-born son of Mexican immigrants and suddenly a national hero here, as well.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon considers Hernandez a paisano -- the president and the astronaut’s parents come from the same Mexican state of Michoacan. Calderon telephoned Hernandez over the weekend and in a televised exchange wished him “an enormous congratulation, with all our admiration, all our affection and all our pride.”

Calderon invited Hernandez down to the presidential palace for a chat and a meal, once he’s returned from outer space. He thanked Hernandez for taking the name of Mexico to new heights.

Hernandez’s parents, Salvador and Julia, migrated to northern California in the 1950s in search of work. They eventually became U.S. citizens and raised four children, all of whom, young Jose included, helped toil in the fields, picking cucumbers and tomatoes. As a kid, Hernandez continued to visit his parents’ Michoacan homeland, where cousins and aunts and uncles were being interviewed this week by the Mexican press.

“Even when he was young he loved to study the stars,” cousin Alma Rosa Mendez recalled at home in La Piedad in Michoacan. “He’d say, ‘One day I will travel to the moon.’ And we’d say, ‘Yeah, sure.’ "

Mexico City’s main morning news/chat show featured lengthy reports today on Hernandez, 47, and his family’s humble Mexican origins. They included an interview with Hernandez from last year, where he told the host that he planned to take on his voyage to the International Space Station a small Mexican flag and a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He also showed what he said were freeze-dried tacos, ready to go into orbit.

You can watch parts (in Spanish) here and read more about foods for space travelers here.

--Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Filmmaker tracks child migrants' dangerous journeys

Reed Johnson reviews "Which Way Home," a documentary by Rebecca Cammisa that screens on HBO today and screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival this year.

"It was the anguish of a 9-year-old child that made Rebecca Cammisa vow to press on.

"When the filmmaker first met the Honduran boy named José at a detention center in southern Mexico, he was alone, scared and crying. He was one of an estimated tens of thousands of Latin American children who annually try to cross illegally into the United States, many by riding the tops of railroad freight cars, most in search of work or missing parents.

"For many, the journey ends badly, if not tragically. Menaced by predatory smugglers and corrupt police, the children (the majority from Mexico and Central America) must contend with dodgy weather, hunger and the constant danger of falling off the trains and being killed or losing limbs.

"Some travel hundreds of miles only to be intercepted by law enforcement agents and deported home. When Cammisa filmed José, he was an underage refugee adrift in an international legal limbo."

Read the rest of the review here, and here are more posts on immigration and film.

-- Deborah Bonello, in Mexico City

Video: "Which Way Home" raises questions about cross-border immigration policies. Credit: HBO