The Mexican Body as Fuel

Conservative CNN commentator and radio host Glenn Beck read a mock ad created by subscribers to his website that announced the profitable use of Mexican bodies as fuel. What other group could be as expendable in the national imaginary? Would anyone put up with such banter if it dealt with, say, African Americans?

See Text[t] Mex's post about this.

David Ritcheson

David Ritcheson, the Mexican American teenager who hated being known as "that kid," jumped off a ship to his death yesterday.

Ritcheson was beaten unconscious, burned with cigarettes, doused with bleach, carved with a knife, and sodomized with a plastic pole. One of his assailants shouted "White Power!" as he beat Ritcheson during the course of some five hours. The boy had tried to kiss one of the attacker's sister. My heart goes out to his family.

Background

Court description: What Does Hate Look Like?

As the dailykos noted last year: Shades of 1955?

"Patent Pending" Poverty Travelers?

"Legal" Poverty Travelers?

From LLS International, that is, "Latin Labor Solutions." (No, I'm not kidding.):

"Our experience and knowledge – along with our exclusive Guest Worker Services system (patent pending) and solid relationships with the Mexican and U.S. consulates – allow us to smoothly and swiftly move workers into the country and get them to their employer. We represent literally thousands of workers who are waiting to assist you. Call us. Help is on the way."

H-2B Visa aspirants, Ojo.

Immigration Dention Center, Tapachula, Mexico

A reader recently noted that Mexico is not doing anything to stem immigration and that the "U.S. is the only country to treat these immigrants as human beings." Like many populist renditions of the immigration issue, lore takes over common sense, and basic public information becomes misinformation. For poverty travelers, the "border" really begins in Guatemala, and extends across the Rio Grande and into Arizona, Texas, or New Mexico. The Instituto Nacional de Migración in Tapachula, Mexico (below), is a detention center for poverty travelers. Comparisons can be freely made with other detention centers closer to home.

Below, Cuban detainees













Below, 8 year old detainee

(Im)migration Bill Advances

Washington Post: Senate Revisits Immigration Bill, Foes Vow to Kill Measure Within Days

Latina Rock

Jenn Alva, Phanie, and Nina Díaz from San Antonio are Girl In a Coma. If anyone remembers the amazing Debora Iyall's voice from Romeo Void you'll certainly find echos here in lead singer Nina Díaz's formidable range.

"Clumsy Sky"



For Amanda "pore-less" Lepore fans, "Road to Home" will redefine der unheimlich.



See Latina Lista Marisa Treviño's blurb.

Vincent Cianni and the Latino Body

(left, Vincent Cianni's "Nelson," Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 1998)

The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University will house Vincent Cianni's photographic archives beginning with his impressive photographic collection of Latino youth in NYC published in We Skate Hardcore: Photographs from Brooklyn's Southside (NYU Press, 2004), as well as his more recent documentary work. The artist and cultural provocateur Slava Mogutin has called Cianni "one of the greatest living documentary photographers" in the tradition of "Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Weegee, and Bruce Davidson." I trust that one day that the abundant and transnational border-crossing work of Los Hermanos Mayo will receive their due along with Evans and his generation of documentary photographers on this side of the border.