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EscapeLatino.com is a parent site for different Midwest city blogs including ¿Qué pasa Columbus?, ¿Qué pasa Cincinnati?, ¿Qué pasa Indianapolis?, ¿Qué pasa Louisville?, the blogs are maintained in both English and Spanish.

Latino News

Ohio groups say Senate failed on immigration bill: Ohio advocacy groups for immigrants were slamming the Senate for shelving the immigrant reform bill last week.

Festival offers taste of Latino culture: ….12th annual Festival Latino yesterday. The festival, which attracted about 300,000 people last year, kicked off its first day in full swing and brought not only Latino culture to Columbus but a whole lot of fun, too.

Latinos protest immigration crackdown: Tensions have run high in Lake County’s Mexican immigrant community since May 18, when ICE agents detained 24 people in a single sweep.
Since then, federal agents have returned several times with arrest warrants for specific people. But the agents typically question other Latinos they chance upon and detain those suspected of being here illegally.

Delay in Mexican center raises questions: City of Columbus begins to learn that German Trejo is the fraud we always knew he was.

Mexican immigrants deliver good news: nice, healthy babies: Despite low income, low education levels and insufficient health insurance, Mexican immigrant women were giving birth to healthy infants….The 31-year-old Pittsburgh native crafted her dissertation on the topic titled “Living the Latina Paradox’: An Ethnography of Pregnant and Postpartum Mexicans in Northeast Ohio.” In August, she will receive her doctorate in medical anthropology from Case Western Reserve University.

Wal-Mart to fund Latino soccer field: Adult and youth teams in the Latin League, hailing from Toledo, Fremont, Findlay, Bowling Green, Defiance, Monroe, Adrian, and Temperance will come to play on the fields.

“I am a poor woman, but when I die, many will come to my funeral.” I was told this by a woman in Mexico who has sold candies outside of an elementary school for the last 30 years. She is right, many will come to her funeral.  She has seen generations of children in that school.  Everyone knows her and she knows everyone.

I feel like friendships are one of the few things I can control in my life. Maybe I will die poor, maybe I will die of illness in the darkness of night, but I will die loved by many. That is what I want. I want to be remembered as someone who did good and was everywhere.

Sometimes, though, I want to surround myself with a very small group of friends and forget about the rest of the world. I want to eat good food with a few good people and enjoy that simple moment. When I die many may not come to my funeral because my friends seemed to be scattered among continents.

Here is a picture of my friend, Ulyses, that I miss. Both of us are absurdly intoxicated in this photo.

I was retelling a story yesterday. “I kicked him in the balls a couple years ago. He deserved it. I can’t recall why he deserved it, but trust me he did”. I was talking about Ulyses.  I’ve got such good friends I can kick ‘em in the balls and they still love me. I’ve got to work on being a better friend.

Thanks to my friend Zero for forwarding me a wonderfully awful music video. This chick may be more obsessive than I am, BUT she has only had a crush on him since the 2004 Democratic National Convention I had a crush on him way before the convention.

Enjoy!

I Got a Crush on Obama

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Oh lord have I missed blogging. And dear lord do I know that this current blog is ugly. I have no idea where my years and years of old blog entries have gone. And once I find them I am not sure I will know how to upload them. I no longer know how to maneuver around wordpress (thought I still did). I have no idea how to get my RSS feed to stay constant, how to get my comment gravatars up and running. To find my old descriptive blogroll or definitions of terms. Nor how to filter the spambots more efficiently.

In a way though it matters very little. I had forgotten about my blogtitlan (a term I believed coined by Cindylu). I had forgotten about the community I had developed. The people who I was worried about and worried about me. The people who got me to grow and self-analyze.

I was first brought to blogtitlan by el Padrino de blogtitlan, Julio Sueco of Yonder Lies It. He left a comment on my blog and it startled the shit out of me. It was back when I blogged for shits and giggles, never thinking people would question me, or get me to think about what I was saying. I’ve come to expect and look forward to people having a real discussion with me and causing me to stop and think. I was also shocked that Julio added me to his blog roll and commented about me right next to Ana Castillo. Damn! I was shocked. An academic Xicano reading my blog?! An academic Xicano who would put my blog right next to Ana Castillo’s blog?! She was someone I read about in class. She was someone who had authority to speak about being Latino, about Xicanoism, about Latino Studies. Why link to me?

Two springs ago I went to the NACCS annual convention. It was there I decided I could be a Xicana (something I still struggle with) and a Xicana authority….because really all Xicanos are an authority on their own experience. I may not write nor do I desire to write for academic journals on the development of the Xicano identity within blogtitlan and the digital racial divide but I can tell my story. I can tell me story and accept it as Xicano fact. And I can try and accept myself as a Xicana, even though sometimes I think “No, I am a USian”, “No, yo soy Mexicana”, “Chicanos are those people that don’t really have a culture”. In the end blogtitlan and my Latino Studies classes taught me that I shouldn’t just accept myself as a Chicana but as a moxie Xicana.

However, that said, I  leave you with this quote from Julio:

Off course it still irritates me to be xicano in the vicinity of my gringo cousins because though I speak english I am not a US citizen. Here in Sweden they a saying about Germans: there is a little Hitler in every German. I can say this about my gringo Xicano cousins: there is a little migra in every US born Xicano.

Maury Povich can host a show “who is the baby’s daddy” where they test multiple men all having unprotected sex to see if they are the daddy.  This airs  at 4pm in the afternoon when kids are getting home from school BUT God forbid they air condom advertisements at night. From the NY Times:

In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”

That is right Fox & CBS refused to air condom adds because condoms should only be used for health related uses. What pregnancy isn’t a health-related issue? This wreaks, stinks, of patriarchy bullshit.  Do we really believe Sexuality is for procreation, condoms should only be used for prevention of STDs, and that women and sex can be used to sell alcohol but not contraceptives?

Guess what I got this little bit of reality for you CBS & Fox; pregnancy is an STD and that is why I volunteer at an abortion clinic.

Watching the news and a solider made a statement, I am paraphrasing “I tried to explain to my son that I was leaving for Iraq.  He doesn’t completely understand but he knows I am off fighting the bad guys”.  The bad guys?  What are the bad guys?  I understand it is difficult to explain war or the military to a child.  I don’t know what it is like to leave your child to go fight in a war.  But I question if teaching our children that it is us verses those bad guys is really the right method.

If I were in the military or my partner was in the military I am not sure I would know how to explain it to my child.

I think about this quote often.  I’ve shared it here before but it is good enough to be shared multiple times.   I hope my sisters enjoy this!

“Once , watching a porn film, I saw a sight that terrified me. It was the film star’s panocha—a tidy, elliptical opening, pink and shiny like rabbit’s ear. To make matters worse, it was shaved.

I think what startled me most was the realization that my own sex has no resemblance to this woman’s. My sex, dark as an orchid, rubbery and blue purple as a pulpo, an octopus, does not look nice and tidy, but otherworldly.

When I see La Virgen de Guadalupe I want to lift her dress as I did my dolls’ and look to see if she comes with chones, and does her panocha look like mine, and does she have dark nipples too? Yes, I am certain she does.”

Sandra Cisneros

When Barack Obama comes on TV I always think, “when is he going to die?”. I worry that he is going to be killed. Some crazy person is going to kill him and then my generation will spend our time writing books about “What would’ve happened if Obama had been president?”.  Isn’t that what happens to black leaders?

My wonderful friend Anne sent me a link to Amigos de Obama which is of course a site encouraging Latinos to get excited about Obama. I would have been much more offended if I couldn’t stop from laughing. Get this you can download “Obama Reggaeton“. I never know what to think when I see sites targeted at Latino voters and it is in Spanish. I wonder what the dominate language is for Latino Voters? I know I really dislike the spanglish. For example check out the lyrics to Obama Reggaeton:

“Como Se Dice…Como Se llama? (OBAMA, OBAMA)”
Oye mi gente este es un hombre preperado…
La esperanza ha llegado.
Como Se Dice…Como Se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA! (Repeat four times)

Dicen que no contamos…
Invisibles porque no votamos…
Pero aqui estamos y todo esto va cambiar…
We did the marchas y ahora vamos a votar.
Listen to me gente, es tiempo para algo diferente..
What we need is un nuevo presidente…
Como Se Dice…Como Se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA! (Repeat two times)

Los Mexicanos como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Puerto Riqueños, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Los Peruanos, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!

En esta gran nacion ya no existe una buena educacion,
Dicen todo el dinero va a la imigracion
Es facil culpar el que no vota
El gigante Latino esta que brota
Despierta!
Vamos a eligir a quien de veras entienda…
Como Se Dice…Como Se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA! (Repeat four times)

Los Colombianos, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Dominicanos, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Los Cubanos, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Los Brasilieros, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!
Salvadoreños, como se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA! Latinos!!!
La esperanza ha llegado.
Como Se Dice…Como Se llama? (Repeat)