Thursday, April 2, 2009

EVENTS 090406/The Invisible Population/Main West Quad-Duke University

The Invisible Population
Main West Quad, Duke University
Monday, April 6, 2009
2pm-7pm

An art installation presented by Duke Students for Humane Borders in conjunction with Farmworker Awareness Week.

The Invisible Population display seeks to promote dialogue among the Duke Community on issues of undocumented labor in the United States. For hundreds of years the United States has depended on the work of migrant Latinos but it was not until the 1940’s through the Bracero Program that this relationship was fully recognized. Today, legal guestworkers as well as undocumented migrants serve as the chief source of unskilled labor in the United States. Our economy depends on cheap labor to keep prices low in manufacturing, hospitality, agricultural, construction, and meatpacking industries. Millions of Americans owe their daily comforts to the labor of the undocumented worker, often unknowingly.

It is time for United States citizens to recognize the significance of this seemingly invisible population.

For more information about National Farmworker Awareness Week, visit www.farmworkerawareness.org

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

EVENTS: 090217/Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer Sundance Award and Re-release of Shorts

EVENTS: 090217/Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer Sundance Award and Re-release of Shorts

To celebrate the launch of Alex Rivera’s first feature film, the Sundance award winning Sleep Dealer, SubCine is re-releasing all of Rivera's previous short works on DVD, for one low rate, with many bonus features, interviews, and commentaries.

B Ruby Rich in The Guardian writes:
"Rivera revives the promise of an American independent cinema that can intervene in our world, imagine the worst, hope for the best - and entertain like mad along the way."

The SubCine re-releases include:
The Sixth Section
The groundbreaking documentary that tells the story of how immigrants are organizing in America, in order to rescue their hometowns in Mexico.

Papapapá
The renowned experimental documentary which traces the history two Peruvian immigrants in America: the potato (la papa) and the filmmaker’s father (el papá).

Animaquiladora (Featuring Why Cybraceros?)
A collection of cutting-edge political satire shorts produced by Alex Rivera and Lalo Alcaraz (the cartoonist behind LA CUCARACHA). Why Cybraceros? is the short which would ultimately be expanded into Sleep Dealer.

Borders
A collection of shorts that looks at the consequences of a world in which products freely cross borders that people may not.

For a limited time, institutional buyers can purchase ALL FOUR of Rivera’s past work for one discounted price.
Reduced price for all four purchased together: $650 (a savings of almost 15%!).

We also hope you can check out Sleep Dealer, which will be in theaters across the country on April 17th. A.O. Scott of The New York Times writes:
"Perhaps the most overtly political film I saw was Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer,” which was also the most exuberantly entertaining, a dystopian fable of globalization disguised as a science-fiction adventure... Mr. Rivera — a brilliant young director — takes his audience into a future of “aqua-terrorism” and cyberlabor that I wish I could dismiss as implausible."

Please contact SubCine for more information on any of the cutting edge Latino film and video that we distribute, including Alex Rivera’s work.

ARTICLE 090303/Crecerá el retorno/Jorge A. Bustamante

DESDE LA FRONTERA NORTE

Crecerá el retorno
Por Jorge A. Bustamante

Hace unos días, la licenciada Cecilia Romero Castillo, titular del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), hizo declaraciones en el sentido de que no estaba ocurriendo un retorno masivo de emigrantes mexicanos desde Estados Unidos, a pesar de la crisis económica en aquel país. En el mismo sentido se pronunció el Instituto PEW de Estados Unidos, aunque aclaró que no había datos más recientes para comparar cambios en los patrones de retorno, más allá de 2006 a 2007. Resulta que los datos de todo el año anterior, sólo se conocen hasta el año siguiente. Los de 2007 sólo se conocieron hasta muy recientemente. Por lo que ellos -ni yo- pudimos saber, cuando hablamos de nuestros respectivos hallazgos sobre el comportamiento de retorno de los emigrantes mexicanos, que poco tiempo después de sus declaraciones al respecto, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) tendría disponibles datos más recientes que permitieron comparar los datos de retorno correspondientes a 2007, con los de 2006 y así saber que sí hubo cambios de un año al siguiente. Los datos de la gráfica (cuya copia enviaré a quien la solicite a: jbustama@nd.edu) muestran que sí hubo un incremento, contrario a lo que declararon tanto la titular del INM, como el Instituto PEW, como el que esto escribe, en referencias anteriores sobre el mismo tema. Los tres nos basamos en datos de diferentes fuentes que indicaban patrones de retorno en los que no aparecían incrementos de un año al siguiente, al revisar los correspondientes a los años de 2003 a 2007 como se puede apreciar en la gráfica producida por el COLEF. Como se sabe, ésta es una institución de investigación de carácter público, cuyos hallazgos también lo son. El COLEF -con el apoyo de otras instituciones- viene haciendo investigación científica desde hace más de 20 años sobre el fenómeno de la migración de México y Centroamérica hacia Estados Unidos y de retorno al país de origen (sólo en el caso de México). El COLEF fue la primera institución que logró medir el volumen de los flujos de la inmigración indocumentada de México a Estados Unidos con base en técnicas de muestreo inventadas en el propio COLEF, con estricto apego a las reglas de carácter científico para obtener lo que en estadística se conoce como una "expansión de la muestra" a partir de selecciones hechas sistemáticamente al azar, de individuos en los flujos migratorios a través de varias ciudades fronterizas. Esto permite hacer generalizaciones ponderadas con bases científicas a partir de los hallazgos en la muestra. A los seleccionados por esas técnicas de muestreo se les ha venido encuestando desde hace varios lustros lo que ha producido el bagaje de información estadística y cualitativa sobre el aludido fenómeno migratorio, más voluminoso y actualizado que existe en México y en Estados Unidos. (Para información sobre las publicaciones del COLEF sobre este tema véase: Encuesta sobre migración en la Frontera Norte de México. Tijuana, Baja California, México. El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. 2007).

La gráfica, cuya copia ofrezco, muestra principalmente que: 1) de 2006 a 2007 hubo un incremento de 24.5 por ciento (de 521,526 migrantes en 2006 a 649,303 en 2007), en los retornos a México de la población de 15 años o más que nacieron en México y residen en Estados Unidos. 2) De éstos, 383,164 fueron hombres en 2006 y 436,246 en 2007 -un incremento del 13.85%- y; 138,362 fueron mujeres en 2006 y 213,057 en 2007 -un incremento del 53.99 %. 3) Esa misma gráfica muestra datos por género y, la suma de ambos, para los años anteriores de 2003, 2004 y 2005. En estos datos se aprecia que hubo decrementos en la migración de retorno de 2003 a 2004 y de 2005 a 2006, lo cual le daba la razón a la licenciada Cecilia Romero Castillo, al Instituto PEW de Estados Unidos y a mí, en mis anteriores referencias al retorno. Pero, la misma investigación del COLEF, continuada en los siguientes años, nos muestra que el patrón anterior de retornos ha cambiado recientemente. Este nuevo hallazgo invalida la interpretación de que la crisis económica de Estados Unidos no ha producido retornos masivos. Datos más recientes demuestran lo opuesto, como se aprecia en la gráfica ofrecida. Cabe destacar que todos los años -los últimos 10- ha habido retornos masivos -cientos de miles-, lo importante del hallazgo del COLEF es que esos retornos masivos están aumentando, lo cual podría tener implicaciones serias en este año de elecciones en el deterioro de la economía, al reducirse el monto de remesas, con el consiguiente aumento concomitante de la pobreza. Respecto de las diferencias por género, mi interpretación es que las mujeres son más sensibles a las presiones económicas derivadas de la crisis en Estados Unidos y por eso están regresando en mayor proporción que los hombres.

EVENTS: 090304/Antonio Viego/The Life of the Undead

"Wednesdays @ the Center | The Life of the Undead | Antonio Viego" on Wednesday, March 4 at 12:00pm.

Event: Wednesdays @ the Center | The Life of the Undead | Antonio Viego
What: Lecture
Host: Franklin Humanities Institute
Start Time: Wednesday, March 4 at 12:00pm
End Time: Wednesday, March 4 at 1:00pm
Where: 240 Franklin Center

The John Hope Franklin Center and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute present in a "The Life of the Undead: Biopower, Latino Anxiety, and the Epidemiological Paradox" by Antonio Viego Associate Professor of Literature and Director of Latino/a Studies as part of their Wednesdays at the Center Series. The event will be held from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM, in Room 240, John Hope Franklin Center. This talk is based on a chapter from Viego's second book project, The Wages of Latino Mental and Physcial Health: Living and Dying on One's Own Time. The book studies the dense interconnections between capitalism, biopower, psychoanalysis, psychology, and theories of Latino/a health and disease in the context of the ubiquitous claim heard nowadays regarding the inevitable Latinization of the United States.The series is free and open to the public and a light lunch will be served. This event is presented with the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South.

LA EXHIBITION: 090116/IMAGES/Reception/Photos by Ricardo Velazquez

LA EXHIBITION: 090116/IMAGES/Reception/Photos by Ricardo Velazquez

Thansk to Ricardo for these pics!




Friends and guests at reception



Lasch & Velazquez



Lasch & Driscoll




Lasch & LATINO/A AMERICA Wall-Map

EVENTS: 090303/Transfronterizo Talk by Ana Celia Zentella

Ana Celia Zentella: Tuesday March 3, 2009 at UNC Chapel Hill

Tuesday March 3, 2009 Ana Celia Zentella, anthro-political linguist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, will give a presentation, free and open to everyone, entitled "Transfronterizo Talk: Policentric Identities and Conflicting Constructions of Bilingualism along the Tijuana-San Diego Border." The talk will start at 6 PM in the University Room of Hyde Hall, Institute for the Arts & Humanities, UNC – Chapel Hill campus. A Q & A and a book-signing will follow the presentation.

Hyde Hall: http://www.planroom.unc.edu/gis/Mapbody/index.asp?path=detail.asp/q/page=978840/a/bldg=055

Biography:

Ana Celia Zentella, Professor Emerita in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, identifies herself as an anthro-political linguist. She is a central figure in the study of US Latino varieties of Spanish and English, language socialization, bilingualism, “Spanglish,” and “English-only” laws. Her ethnography Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York (Blackwell, 1997) won the 1998 Book Award of the British Association of Applied Linguistics and the 1999 Book Prize of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (US). Her edited collection Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities (Teachers College Press, 2005) has been acclaimed by leading scholars and is widely used as a text in the United States and Europe. She is currently editing Multilingual San Diego: Portraits in Language Loss and Revitalization.

In 1997, Prof. Zentella was inducted into the Hunter College Hall of Fame, and in the same year she was honored by the Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger for her “leading role in building appreciation for language diversity and respect for language rights.” Her latest research with “transfronterizos,” students who live and study in Tijuana and San Diego, breaks new anthro-political linguistic ground by documenting bilingual practices and ideologies that challenge “immigrant alien” discourses.

EVENTS: 090223/Immigration Talk by UNC Professor Altha Cravey

EVENTS: 090223/Immigration Talk by UNC Professor Altha Cravey

Immigration Talk by UNC Professor Altha Cravey
A Town was torn apart: How Punitive should the US Immigration Policy be?
Monday February 23, 8 - 9 pm
Marketplace Upper East Side, Duke University

In May 2008, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted its
biggest raid in Postville, Iowa. Approximately 400 out of 2000 people in the
town were arrested while many others fled. The town was torn apart.

Professor Altha Cravey of UNC's Geography department will lead a discussion
on the current US Immigration policy following a video presentation on
Postville. She is both professionally and personally involved in immigration
issues in North Carolina and in Mexico.

For those who are deeply interested in this issue, there is also this long
article written by a federally certified interpreter who worked for the courts
as they "processed" those arrested in May, 2008. It is both shocking and sad.
Now that we have a new administration in the White House, it is a good time to
start reflecting on policies that we have always taken for granted.