Immigration
We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.
A young family, divided by the border, lives ‘Through the Wall’ (video)
Undocumented immigrants Abril, brought to the U.S. as a child, and her 2-year-old boy Julián live near San Diego. Julián’s father Uriel was stopped by police for a minor traffic ticket and deported to Tijuana. In order to see each other, Uriel, Abril and Julián must cross difficult terrain to reach the border to spend time together the only way they can — Through the Wall. [Video by Tim Nackashi.]
‘Meet an (orange is the new black) Immigrant’ (video)
Thought experiment? Guerrilla theater? A prank?
When Sergio Mieja (he’s @SMieja95 on the Twitter) got the idea for this video, he didn’t know exactly what the message was. He just wanted to see who supported Donald Trump.
“But as I was filming it,” he explains, “many of the people I met expressed their feeling and emotions towards this subject and it was then I knew what the purpose of this video was and realized it had a much more significant meaning. Please share this message with your friends and family.”
A professor visits migrants at the border near Nogales, Mexico
By the time the two young women walked into the shelter, the other migrants were mostly finished with their meals. They stood out as two women among dozens of recently deported men enjoying a meal before continuing on their way. I did what I had been doing all that January morning: I served them each a glass of hot chocolate and a plate of food.
We were volunteering at the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) in Nogales, Mexico, as part of the Center for Social Concerns’ Border Immersion Faculty Seminar. For several years, Notre Dame students have participated in this seminar, but this was the first time it was being offered to faculty and staff as well. As a professor of U.S. Latino literature who studies and teaches about the border, this was an opportunity for me to experience the border in a different way.
Mas…A professor visits migrants at the border near Nogales, Mexico
Sal and Isela’s song for a farmworker: ‘Sudor (Sweat)’ (video)
It’s hard work, but somebody’s got to do it. Califas balladeers Sal and Isela tell the story of a farmworker in Sudor (Sweat).
Mira los lyrics:
Mas…Sal and Isela’s song for a farmworker: ‘Sudor (Sweat)’ (video)
El Vez live at the Tiki Oasis: He’s going to ‘Aztlan’ (videos, toon)
The Tiki Oasis, San Diego, Califas 2014: El Vez is going to Aztlan — that’s where he wants to be. “The Mexican Elvis” (real name Robert Lopez) is from Chula Vista, Califas, so he’s already there. POCHO world headquarters — in East Los — tambien!
Here’s the studio version, from his album Gracias Land:
Mas…El Vez live at the Tiki Oasis: He’s going to ‘Aztlan’ (videos, toon)
Versifying in Texas: Rossy Evelin Lima is a poet on a mission (video)
Rossy Evelin Lima is an award-winning Mexican poet and linguist. She spoke at TEDxMcallen last year about her experience as an immigrant writer in the U.S. Her website is is here.
Wall Street Journal Video: So you want to build a border wall?
Seriously? You want to build a 2000-mile-long wall between the U.S. and Mexico? Follow along now as the Wall Street Journal explains exactly what that entails.
YungBlu has written a ‘Letter to Donald Trump’ (music video)
Dear Don: You’ve got mail — Inland Empire (Califas) rapper YungBlu’s Letter to Donald Trump. And if you’re having trouble getting the message, Donald, YungBlu is on Facebook, the web and the Twitter.
Mex Ex-Prez Vicente Fox: I have Trump-Induced Tourette’s Syndrome
(PNS reporting from MEXICO CITY) Former Mexican President Vicente Fox announced Monday that he has a rare disorder known as “Trump Induced Tourette’s Syndrome,” or TITS, in which every time he hears the name or sees an image of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, he involuntarily screams vulgarities and suffers mild convulsions.
“The condition was originally diagnosed by doctors as just visceral hatred for a bigoted, sexist, fascist, moron,” Fox said this morning at a Mexico City press conference. “But the more his popularity surged and the more I heard the name Trump, the more I cursed that mutha fu¢kn hate-mongering piece of baboon $h!t.”
Mas…Mex Ex-Prez Vicente Fox: I have Trump-Induced Tourette’s Syndrome
Donald Trump’s triumph of the will inspires campaign rally (video)
At a torch-lit evening campaign rally, GOP nominee wannabe Donald Trump shows the crowd how to handle those darn Mexicans – handle them LIKE A BOSS!
POCHO ÑEWS SERVICE PNS IS A WHOLLY-FICTITIOUS SUBSIDIARY OF POCHISMO INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION, WHO IS A PERSON ACCORDING TO THE SUPREME COURT. DON’T ASK US, WE JUST WORK HERE.
Que lastima! The GOP’s Latino candidates are anti-Latino
Growing up on the mean streets of East Los Angeles, I, like many of my childhood friends, feared the police more than the local gang, Big Hazard. Specifically, we dreaded Latino police officers, since they had a reputation of being more brutal than their white peers with us — poor Chicano kids from the projects.
By verbally and physically harassing us, the Latino officers reinforced their 100 percent loyalty to their white peers and police department. Similarly, just like in my old barrio, in the Republican presidential-nomination battle, we can clearly see how the two Latino candidates, Sens. Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ted Cruz (Texas), go the extra mile to demonstrate their loyalty to their white peers and mostly white electorate with their anti-Latino immigrant agenda.
Mas…Que lastima! The GOP’s Latino candidates are anti-Latino
Latino USA: Trump is good for business – the piñata business (audio)
“Jennifer De Benito could have had any piñata she wanted for her 14th birthday party. She chose a piñata of Donald Trump. The three-foot-tall piñatas depict Trump in a business suit with his infamous blonde hair and they’re flying off the shelves on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border,” writes Samantha Clark.
“It all started last summer when Trump said Mexico was “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
“Jesús Márquez makes piñatas in Watsonville, a small farming town on the central coast of California. Márquez is from Mexico and says that although Trump’s comments are racist, they have been good for business.”
Maria Hinojosa of NPR’s Latino USA reports:
Mas…Latino USA: Trump is good for business – the piñata business (audio)
From Dreams to Trash: ‘El Sueño Americano’ (photos)
These photographs document the personal effects of migrants apprehended in the desert by U.S. Border Patrol agents which were subsequently seized and surrendered during processing at a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol facility in southern Arizona.
Pocho Ocho top lessons of the Iowa GOP caucuses (NSFW video)
What can we learn from the Senator Ted Cruz (R-Canadia) victory Monday in the Iowa GOP caucuses? It’s time to support CANADIANS FOR PRESIDENT! [NSFW video, one F-bomb.]
And what else? How about the Pocho Ocho Top Lessons We Learned from the Iowa GOP Caucuses:
8. He who smelt it, dealt it.
7. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry caucus.
6. I know you are, but what am I?
Mas…Pocho Ocho top lessons of the Iowa GOP caucuses (NSFW video)
Juanes and John Legend sing Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ (video)
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs.
As part of John Legend’s #FREEAMERICA “Listening and Learning tour,” Grammy Award-winning artists Legend and Juanes visited Eloy Detention Center, Tent City, and Puente Arizona Community Center earlier this month – with pop-up performances for both detainees and their separated families. Here they are with Bob Marley’s anthemic Redemption Song.
White Wing Theme: ‘Let’s take back America – to 1955’ (video)
In a sketch from November, 1997, when this was still a joke, MadTV’s country music diva Darlene McBride (played by Nicole Sullivan) announced a concert tour to Take Back America (to 1955).
Vanessa Del Fierro is a coyote on a ‘Mexican Train’ (music video)
San Antonio sensation Vanessa Del Fierro is the alt.mariachi chingona behind Las Coronelas, whose mega-viral David Bowie cover almost blew up POCHO’s servers this week.
Vanessa also stars as an immigrant-smuggling coyote in a new video for her original composition Mexican Train. It’s a love song; too bad she’s in love with the wrong vato. Extra firme oldies points for the doo-wop backup girls, the triplets feel, and the tubular bells:
Mas…Vanessa Del Fierro is a coyote on a ‘Mexican Train’ (music video)
Marilynn Montaño is embedded in her migrant father’s rough hands
Orange County poet and activist Marilynn Montaño’s poem His Machucada Hands is a “testament to the ways that being undocumented has taken a physical toll on her father’s body. The title, she said, came from noticing his hands on the steering wheel every morning as he drove her to middle and high school,” according to the PBS News Hour.
Mas…Marilynn Montaño is embedded in her migrant father’s rough hands
A funny thing happened on the way to ‘Bordertown’
Hola. I’m Lalo Alcaraz. You might know me.
I have been a Chicano political cartoonist forever. I know, I know, it’s God’s work, you’re welcome. Now, all of a sudden I’m a primetime TV writer and producer. Huh? Yes, the last two years in my life have been a super WTF. With ten percent LOL. #facepalm
Like it or not, I am now part of a historic pop culture moment: the first season of the first animated primetime TV show featuring a large cast of Mexican and Mexican-American characters: Bordertown.
Pocho Ocho top ways El Chapo could escape again
Mexico has recaptured fugitive drug cartel jefe El Chapo Guzman –– who notoriously tunneled out of a high security prison last summer –- but the criminal mastermind isn’t done yet.
Sources tell our correspondents that Guzman’s narcotrafficante associates are already working on plans to bust the gangster out of his next cellblock; we’ve compiled this list of the Pocho Ocho Top Ways El Chapo Could Escape Again:
8. Trained bats
7. Incredible shrinking ray
6. Those gigantor worms from Tremors