April 2014

Latinos: The Cosmic Race

Posted on April 25, 2014June 2, 2014 by Brenda P. Salinas in Latinos

Get the full story at Latino USA.

A Mexican philosopher named José Vasconcelos believed one day, a new race of people would be born out of the Americas. His 1925 essay was called “La Raza Cósmica”. Because Latin Americans are Mestizos – a mix of European, African and Asian ancestry, he believed they actually transcend all other races.

Author Marie Arana spoke about Vasconcelos at the Library of Congress.

“He believed that the experiment that was being conducted in Latin America, of mixing of races, was an important venture,” says Arana. Vasconcelos looked to the leaders of Latin American independence for inspiration, “In an instance of historical crisis they formulated the transcedental mission assigned to our region of the globe, the mission of fusing people ethnically and spiritually,” says Arana.

Vasconcelos believed one day La Raza Cósmica would erect a new civilization, Universópolis, where traditional ideas of race and nationality would be transcended in the name of humanity’s common destiny.

The National Council of La Raza takes its name from this idea.

Senator Barrack Obama commented on La Razá Cósmica in a speech to the NCLR in 2008. “That’s big, a term big enough to embrace the rich tapestry of cultures and colors and faith that make up the Hispanic community, “ says Obama in the 2008 speech, “big enough to embrace the notion that we are all a part of a greater community, that we have a stake in each other, that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, we rise and fall as one people.”

That was before his election, and before his administration deported 2 million people. But if you examine the demographics, the cosmic race seems to be emerging. President Obama himself is biracial, and according the the U.S. census, half of all Americans under 5 are Black, Latino or Asian.

It looks like La Raza Cósmica has indeed arrived.

(Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team via Getty Images)

Latinos In Space!

Posted on April 25, 2014June 2, 2014 by Brenda P. Salinas in Latinos, Women

Get the full story at Latino USA.

Ellen Ochoa was 34 years old when she served in her space mission aboard the shuttle discovery in 1993.

Dr. Ochoa went on three more missions and even played her flute in space.

She told NPR’s Michel Martin that she didn’t really think about herself as the first Latina astronaut until she started receiving thousands of letters from excited Latinos all across the country. “After I was selected I realized that there was a whole dimension that I hadn’t thought about,” says Ochoa, “that was the opportunity to talk about exploration and science and engineering and education to a whole group.”

NASA Astronaut Ellen Ochoa

In 2013, Dr. Ochoa became the first Hispanic and second female director of Nasa’s Johnson Space Center.

UP IN SPACE…

José Hernandez grew up working in the fields alongside his migrant farmworker parents. Then in 1972, he saw something that would change his life.

He told NPR that he remembers watching the moon landing on TV. “I remember I would sit there and I would go outside and look at the moon, come back in, watch Gene Cernan walking on the moon, go back out, and I was just amazed that we had humans up on the moon a quarter of a million miles away,” says Hernandez.

Hernandez applied to be an astronaut 12 times before getting chosen in 2009. “You go up there and you taste it once, and you want to go back, absolutely,” Hernandez told NPR, “there’s no doubt in my mind, day after I got back I wanted to go back, it’s almost addicting.”

Hernandez didn’t get to go back. That same year, President Obama delivered a budget to congress calling for the end of the shuttle program. Hernandez decided to leave NASA to spend time with his 5 children.

Mexican astronaut Jose Hernandez waves t

“When you train for a shuttle launch, 95 percent of the training is here at Johnson Space Center, so you come home every day,” he told NPR, “The international Space Station, it’s more like a two-and-a-half year training flow, and 80 percent of those two-and-a-half years you’re training abroad.”

Even though the shuttle program is suspended, astronauts continue to inspire us.

…AND ON THE GROUND

It’s not just the astronauts who paved the way for people of color. On the ground, Latinos built equipment, programmed computers and created software to make sure those shuttles took off. Candy Torres was one of those pioneers.

Candy1

A self-described “Technorican”, Torres has worked on satellites, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

Torres was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents in 1954. Growing up, she was inspired by the vision of the future depicted in Star Trek. “It was stunning to me to see this diversity out there and exploring and really working towards a better future,” says Torres, “this is a positive vision of the future, this is what we need to work towards. “

KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT

When she was 14, Torres joined the Civil Air Patrol and learned to fly a plane before she could drive a car. She studied astrophysics at Rutgers, worked on satellite research and developed software for the shuttle program.

“When you’re first starting out you really have to know what you want and it’s not necessarily other people that are going to keep you from doing what you’re going to do, it’s yourself,” says Torres.

Candy2

Torres now focuses on encouraging Latinos and Latinas to pursue careers in science and engineering. “You can do it, it’s exciting, its fun,” she Torres, “its understanding the universe and its being connected to the universe and making the world a better place.”

(Photos by NASA via Getty Images/ Courtesy of Candy Torres. )

Jorge Narvaez: Youtube Star Turned Activist

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Brenda P. Salinas in Latinos

Get the full story at Latino USA

One in four Latinos say they personally know someone who has been detained or deported by the federal government in the past year. For Jorge Narvaez, that someone is his mom, who is currently being detained in Arizona. Jorge became Youtube famous when he uploaded a video of him and his 6 year old daughter, Alexa, singing “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.”

Since then, they’ve been on the Ellen Degeneres Show, America’s Got Talent and have starred in a Hyundai commercial.

Jorge is using his social media platform to bring attention to his mom’s case, and to talk about the hundreds of thousands of mothers being held in immigration detention, most who have committed minor crimes or no crimes at all.

Photo courtesy of Jorge Narvaez

Happy White History Month!

Posted on April 7, 2014April 7, 2014 by Brenda P. Salinas in Humor, Latinos

Consider this my audition for the Daily Show.

For our April Fool’s edition, I wondered, “What if I wrote a piece about white people the way most mainstream outlets write about us? What if whiteness was something you had to overcome to succeed? What would that sound like?”

This is what I came up with:

“They’re 80 percent of congress, 86 percent of Fortune 500 CEOS, 94 percent of Oscar voters and 93 percent of Oscar winners. They invented lightbulbs, airplanes, fake butter and the internet. They founded institutions of higher learning all over the country. They ended slavery.

Despite all of these achievements, the Non-Hispanic white population is shrinking every year. But just who are white people? Latino USA producer Brenda Salinas went to Times Square to find out more about the history of these proud people.”

April Fool’s: Immigration Reform Really Happened!

Posted on April 7, 2014April 7, 2014 by Brenda P. Salinas in Humor, Latinos

Get the full story at Latino USA

Do you ever have dreams about work? Maria Hinojosa had a dream that immigration reform passed the House of Representatives. There were celebratory marches all over the country. People were jumping up and down, crying with their loved ones. The economy was booming and immigrants no longer lived in fear. But then she woke up.