May 7, 2013
By Leila Cobo

The May 5 premiere of "La Voz Kids," the first Spanish-language version of the successful "The Voice" franchise to air in the United States, delivered the highest ratings ever for a reality show on the Telemundo network.

The two-hour show premiere Sunday night averaged 1.7 million total viewers, a 74% spike vs. season to date in the time period, according to Nielsen. The show has Paulina Rubio, Prince Royce and Roberto Tapia as its coaches,  making it the first music talent show on Spanish-language television in the U.S. with major music stars as judges or, in this case, "coaches." The positive ratings may indicate that past music reality competitions which didn’t fare as well in ratings maybe lacked the star power appeal that "La Voz Kids" has.

The "La Voz Kids" premiere also ranked No. 1 in Miami, regardless of language and No. 3 in New York, outperforming Univision, Fox and CW.

"La Voz Kids" follows the format of "The Voice," but featuring kids between 7 and 14 years old competing for a recording contract and a cash prize. The show is hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Telemundo on-air personality Jorge Bernal.

Source: Billboard Biz

May 7, 2013
By Brian Bennett

Many Latinos say they are less likely than before to report crimes because local police are increasingly involved in enforcing immigration laws, leading to a sharp increase in deportations, according to a new study.

About 44% of Latinos surveyed said they were less likely now to contact police if they were victims of a crime because they fear officers will inquire about their immigration status or the status of people they know. The figure jumps to 70% among Latinos who are in the country unlawfully.

“There is fear that is really widespread,” said Nik Theodore, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of the study.

The report, “Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement,” is based on a telephone survey of 2,004 Latinos in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Phoenix. The results are scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The survey was sponsored by the think tank PolicyLink of Oakland and conducted by Lake Research Partners, a polling firm in Washington, D.C., between Nov. 17 and Dec. 10.

“Over the last four years or so, the extent of deportations has seeped into the community’s consciousness,” Theodore said. “Trust has been undermined and that potentially has lasting implications.”

The Obama administration deported 409,849 people in fiscal year 2012, a 40% increase from 2007.
Officials have attributed the increase in part to a fingerprint sharing program in local jails that notifies federal immigration agents when people arrested are in the country unlawfully or overstayed their visas.

Some officials have warned that the fingerprint sharing program, called Secure Communities, has deterred some crime victims from coming forward to aid police.

“This report highlights how local law enforcement's greater role in immigration enforcement has created mistrust between the Latino community and local police, making all of our communities less safe from crime," said Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Polis will host a panel discussion about the report on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Colorado last week repealed a state law that had required police to report individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

“This confirms what police experts have been saying for decades,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, a Latino nonprofit civil rights organization based in Los Angeles. “We have to have policies that make it clear there will be a separation between local police and immigration enforcement.”

Source: Los Angeles Times

May 07, 2013
By Alexandra Gratereaux

With the finding of kidnapped victims Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight, it seems as though the spotlight has been placed on Ohio and the Latino community in Cleveland, where alleged captor Ariel Castro hid his victims right under everyone's noses.

According to 2010 U.S. Census data, the growth of the Latino population in Cleveland and the neighboring town of Lorain grew dramatically over the last ten years. In Cleveland alone the Hispanic community increased by 13.8 percent, in Lorain by 12.0 percent.

Such increases are partly the product of a few local nonprofit organizations whose mission is to attract Latinos to Ohio.

Global Cleveland, a nonprofit that focuses on increasing the population in Northeast Ohio, developed a campaign called “Bienvenidos” in October of last year, which recruits Puerto Ricans by holding job fairs in the island and showing its residents how much Ohio, particularly Cleveland and Lorain, have to offer.

“We have a very strong Puerto Rican community,” Elizabeth Hijar, a consultant at Global Initiative told Fox News Latino.

Hijar added that the recruitment initiatives have done so well that she has even seen a spike within the Dominican and Mexican communities.

“Some Dominicans who have moved to Puerto Rico then end up moving to Cleveland,” she said.
Hijar also said that many Puerto Ricans who thrive in Cleveland are not necessarily only from the island, but they are second and third generation boricuas looking to explore employment opportunities.

“Historically, Puerto Ricans came to Cleveland and Lorain after World War II,” said Hijar. “They came to work in areas like the auto factory.”

One of Hijar’s colleagues who also caters to the Latino population in Northeast Ohio is Victor Ruiz, Executive Director of Esperanza, a nonprofit social service agency that prides itself in promoting education among Hispanics.

Ruiz says the news that the kidnapped girls are alive and well inspired in him such “an overwhelming feeling of gratitude” to the community he serves.

He says that after speaking with a couple of parents in the area, many of them were moved with Monday’s breaking news.

“Parents were saying 'that could have been my children!'” he told FNL. “A lot of us were talking today and we saw that the family and friends [of the victims] never gave up hope,” he added.

“That is really inspiring us.”

Ruiz, 36, thinks that the news sends a message of awareness to the Latino community.

“I hope this encourages people to take care of each other,” he continued. “People don’t  take care of their neighbors like they used to. Look out for the children. Be more vigilant.”

Source: Fox News Latino

May 7, 2013
By Peter Valdez-Dapena

For any automaker selling cars in America, Latinos are the future. They're the fastest growing ethnic group and, already, they buy one of every four cars sold here.

But, for now, this market is dominated by the Japanese.

 Toyota holds the top spot with almost 18% of the Hispanic car market. Honda and Nissan rank second and third, according to data from the auto market research firm Polk. Meanwhile, the domestics are getting trounced. The top-ranked domestic brand, General Motors' Chevrolet, ranks fourth with about half the market share of Toyota.

Toyota credits a long history of marketing directly to Hispanic consumers for its success.

"I think the Hispanic consumer has been a longtime loyal consumer because we have been a longtime loyal listener," said Toyota Spokesman Luis Rosero. Toyota has long marketed to Hispanic Americans in both English and Spanish and has, for over 20 years, made a point of donating money to non-profit groups that work with Hispanics and African Americans, Rosero said.

The problem for Chevy, according to Rich Martinek who heads advertising for Chevrolet, has been less its ads than its cars.

Small cars, in particular, do well among Hispanic consumers. Asian automakers like Toyota, Honda and Nissan, have long been known for making good, inexpensive small cars. In fact, the two top-selling cars among Hispanics are the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic, according to Polk.

Up until recently, Chevrolet dealers had been selling cars that just couldn't compete, like Cobalts and Aveos, Martinek's said.

Those cars have now been replaced by the Chevrolet Cruze and Sonic. "These are really strong, competitive products," Martinek said of Chevy's new models.

Unlike the previous options, they have earned recommendations from Consumer Reports, which is generally regarded as the most influential magazine among car shoppers.

On another hopeful note, Hispanics actually like Chevrolet more than most Americans, Said Martinek. While about 29% of Americans overall think of Chevrolet cars as "excellent," more than 39% of Hispanics do, according to Chevrolet's own market research.

Still, Chevrolet's market share among Hispanics has not made much headway in recent years, according to Polk data.

Chevrolet says it's working hard to attract more Hispanic buyers.

But targeting a specific demographic can be a tightrope walk. While automakers strive to create culturally appropriate ads in English and Spanish for the Hispanic market, they have to make sure the ads still carry a consistent brand promise. Car buyers shouldn't see Chevrolet as standing for one thing in Spanish and another in English.

 "Your brand is your brand," said Chiqui Cartagena, vice president of corporate marketing for the Spanish language TV network Univision and author of the book Latino Boom II.

Still, the brand should be culturally relevant, she said. The Hispanic market is different in ways that go beyond language, said Cartagena. Passions and emotional touch points are different and marketing has to reflect that.

Hispanics view the car shopping process differently, said Cartagena. First of all, it's viewed as something enjoyable, not as a dreaded but unavoidable descent into a world of contentiousness and deceit.

Second, it's not seen as an experience to be enjoyed by one person alone, she said.

"These auto buying experiences are more of a family experience," agreed Marc Bland, head of diversity and inclusion at Polk.

When it comes time for the new car to be delivered to the customer, often a whole family, including multiple generations, will be on hand at the dealership to see the keys getting handed over, he said.

 Martinek is confident that Chevrolet will do better in the Hispanic market.

For one thing, the Chevrolet Silverado pickup, already the brand's top-selling product with Latinos, is about soon to be released in an all-new redesigned version.

"Between the small cars and the Silverado," he said, "we definitely have to grow."

Toyota isn't about to loosen its grip, though, said Rosero. This market has become too important to Toyota.

"It's had a measurable impact," he said, "and there's a bigger one down the road."

Source: CNN Money

May 6, 2013
Via Procter & Gamble Co.

P&G Introduces Its Orgullosa Project to Offer Its Community the Opportunity to Give Back to Notable Hispanic Organizations

Today, Procter & Gamble’s Orgullosa program unveiled The Orgullosa Project - an initiative intended to highlight organizations that are positively impacting the Hispanic community across the country and inspire Latinas to give back via a donation on the Orgullosa Facebook page. Orgullosa will give its online community, mujeres con LA FALDA BIEN PUESTA™, the power to vote for the organization they feel is most deserving of the donation. The Orgullosa Project will feature The Puerto Rican Family Institute; Mujeres Latinas en Accion; MECA; La Liga Contra el Cancer; and the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation -- organizations across the country that have a long standing reputation of servicing Hispanic communities with dedicated resources.

In addition to partnering with these credible non-profit Hispanic organizations, Orgullosa has teamed up with influential Latina bloggers located in the various markets to help drive participation and votes for each of the organizations. The number of votes that each organization receives will determine their monetary donation amount. A total donation of $100,000 will be made among the five organizations. Voting ends June 30th.

“At P&G, we understand the importance of giving back...it's part of our DNA," said John Sandoval, Senior Multicultural Marketing Manager. "We’re honored to highlight U.S. Hispanic organizations that are making a difference in our communities across the country and give our Orgullosa community the chance to have a 'say' in where the money goes."

Orgullosa has also partnered with the United States Junior Chamber and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to host a series of free training sessions designed to educate Hispanics on volunteerism, addressing local civic issues, and how they can create a positive change in their communities. The first training session will be live-streamed via Orgullosa.com on May 14 at 6 p.m. EDT. Registration opens May 6th.

“We are grateful to P&G for its support and partnership with LULAC. Participating in programs such as The Orgullosa Project allows us to provide valuable training to Hispanics at no cost,” said LULAC National President Margaret Moran. "With this initiative we are excited to equip Latinos with the tools needed to get involved and make a difference."

For more information on Orgullosa and The Orgullosa Project visit http://apps.facebook.com/orgullosaproject/ and www.orgullosa.com.

About Orgullosa

Orgullosa is a P&G- owned program that celebrates Latinas and empowers them to feel confident about their personal appearance, style and homes by offering solutions that satisfy their beauty and household needs through a variety of trusted brands, including Olay®, Secret®, Venus®, Pantene®, CoverGirl®, Natural Instincts®, Crest®, Always®, Tide®, Downy®, Bounty®, Charmin®, Febreze®, Gain®, Pampers®, and Dawn®.

Source: Stockhouse

May 2, 2013
By Jacqueline Armijo

Fresh steaming tamales are sold out of small shacks, directly from vans, and by “tamale ladies” from their homes all along the “Tamale Trail” on the good old Mississippi Delta.

“There is a tradition among some African-Americans in Mississippi, Louisiana, little dots on a map going all the way up to Chicago. They make tamales and make up this trail,” said Dr. Roberto Avant-Mier Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), sitting in his office next to a poster of his book, Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identities and the Latin Rock Diaspora, which demonstrates how Latino music influenced early jazz music.

Avant-Mier recently discovered the Tamale Trail on a website http://www.tamaletrail.com/ where Amy Evans Streeter, oral historian at the University of Mississippi Southern Foodways Alliance, published the discussions of the Tamale Trail. She interviewed over a dozen U.S. southerners, including African-Americans, along the Mississippi delta and recorded stories about their tamale tradition.

He said it sparked his curiosity about how it came about that African-Americans in the South are making and selling tamales, a food typical of the Mexican and Latin American cuisine.

Dr. Maceo Crenshaw Dailey, Jr., the director of African-American studies at UTEP, invited Avant-Mier to speak during the lecture series for African American history month.

This encouraged him to fully enhance his research paper during the fall in preparation for a presentation February 11 to students, faculty and visitors. “I was like I should really develop that tamale paper… So I wrote constantly November through January trying to get it done,” he said, noting that he is considering writing and publishing an article based on his research.

“Why and how do African Americans have tamales? The reason they’re doing it at the University of Mississippi is because they’re doing a history of food of the South, but I was interested in how African Americans having tamales is even possible,” Avant-Mier said.

Dr. Manuel Ramirez, a professor of Mexican-American history, History of the U.S.-Mexico Border and Chicano Studies at UTEP, remembers trying to convince El Pasoans that tamales are prevalent in the African American South after returning from his Ph.D. studies at the University of Mississippi.

“I would tell people back here that there were tamales stands in the Delta, and they would not believe me. So I sent them pictures from the Internet. Then they thought it was actually Mexican people who had these stands and restaurants but it was African-Americans,” says Ramirez.

Ramirez’ experience corresponds with Avant-Mier’s previous research for a book about his fascination with the blues artist Robert Johnson because of his song called “Hot Tamales.”

As he did his research, Avant-Mier wondered, “Why is an African-American man from Mississippi, a blues guy that’s famous, why is he singing about hot tamales?”

He says his book argues that this provides proof of African-Americans’ interaction with Mexicans in the South.

“African Americans and Mexicans in the South were in proximity with each other and that’s why Johnson was probably singing about hot tamales,” Avant-Mier says.

In the paper he wrote for his presentation, “Hot Tamales and ‘They’re Red Hot’: Investigating Black-Mexican interactions in the U.S. South,” he mentions other blues and jazz artists as early as 1909 who sang about similar tamale themes.

A composer from Chicago named Herbert Ingraham wrote a song called, “The Hot Tamale Man,” and later other musicians in the 1920s, 40s, 50s and 60s also wrote songs about hot tamales. These songs provide proof that tamales were a popular cuisine in the U.S. South, according to Avant-Mier.

“We talk about American music history as black and white… in reality there’s a lot of Latin influence. Our culture is really a big mix of all those things,” he said.

Looking at tamales as part of Southern cuisine and blues music about tamales helped him put two and two together. He says intellectual curiosity and combining ideas from what he had researched and written about previously produced this conclusion.

He believes he’s uncovering evidence of contact between Blacks and Mexicans in the south during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“As a Mexican-American growing up in El Paso you don’t hear stories about Mexicans in Mississippi in the 1800s and here’s evidence of this. You can say tamales are sort of evidence of this, but so are the songs,” Avant-Mier said.

Nancy Aguirre, 28, a 2012 UTEP graduate with a Ph.D. in Borderlands History, is enthusiastic about Avant-Mier’s research. “As a cultural historian it’s exciting for me to learn about the work of other scholars who are studying the impact of media and culture on ethnic communities in the U.S,” Aguirre says.

Avant-Mier believes the departure of African-Americans from Southern plantations during the Great Migration that created opportunities for Mexican migrants to work in agriculture in the South, allowed Mexicans to disseminate their food and cultural practices throughout the region.

Dr. Manuel Ramirez, a professor of Chicano studies at UTEP who also studied Southern History, said he has a photograph of a Mexican-American family parked near a cotton field in Mississippi during the 1920s.

“This is an example of Mexicans in the Mississippi Delta,” Ramirez said.  “You can’t make out the license plate but it’s a license plate from Texas so I would imagine these individuals were from South Texas following the harvest trail up to Mississippi.” Ramirez said the reason for this is mainly due to the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North that left empty labor spots for other workers to fill.

Ramirez said the Mexican presence in the South is a rarely discussed aspect of Mexican-American history that should be investigated more.

“Most of the history of Mexican-Americans has focused on those living in the Southwestern part of the United States. With some exceptions, as far as Mexican-American history in the South, I think it is often neglected and is hardly researched,” he says.

Aguirre said historians are now doing more research on African and African American influences on Mexicans in both Mexico and the U.S. But, “studies such as this one add a new dimension to both the Mexican/Mexican American and African American experiences in the United States,” she says.

This part of history is intriguing because many are unaware of it. The idea of Mexicans in the South in the 1800s is unfamiliar to most. The idea of Blacks and Mexicans intermingling and perhaps connecting with and influencing each other through music and food is largely ignored.

“Sharing music, sharing culture, and sharing food. That’s a cool story so why don’t we hear about that? All we hear is sort of about the tensions and the problems but there’s evidence of cultural interaction going back 100 years,” said Avant-Mier.

He says that in both cultures there is occasionally tension due to dissimilarities, but the recent discoveries of evidence of Black and Mexican interaction in the South can help relieve this strain.

His research thus far has opened up other areas of inquiry.

“They borrowed a cultural tradition, I’m guessing. And then the question becomes what did we get from African-Americans?” Avant-Mier asks. “If they’re getting our tamales we were interacting which means we must’ve gotten something from them as well. And I don’t know what the answer is but that opens up questions.”

He said that although there is no research funding or collaborations on this issue, it is a significant piece of Mexican-American history that deserves study and additional research.

He believes this research could be turned into a book.

“I have been surprised about how much I keep finding out. Since I published my first book, I now think a lot about another one, or the next one. I’ve got two other book projects going on right now, so who knows, this might be another one,” he said.

Source: Borderzine