latiNOhoosier

Henry Ford’s miniature America in the jungle attracted a slew of workers. Local laborers were offered a wage of thirty-seven cents a day to work on the fields of Fordlândia, which was about double the normal rate for that line of work. But Ford’s effort to transplant America– what he called “the healthy lifestyle”– was not limited to American buildings, but also included mandatory “American” lifestyle and values. The plantation’s cafeterias were self-serve, which was not the local custom, and they provided only American fare such as hamburgers. Workers had to live in American-style houses, and they were each assigned a number which they had to wear on a badge– the cost of which was deducted from their first paycheck. Brazilian laborers were also required to attend squeaky-clean American festivities on weekends, such as poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs.

The hiring as head coach of Curt Onalfo, a former D.C. player, assistant coach, and director of youth development, was hailed at a Tuesday press conference as confirmation of the club’s Hispanic persona as well as its ambition. Onalfo speaks fluent Spanish, played professionally in Mexico, and as a cancer survivor has conquered tough opposition on a very personal level.

Three years spent as an assistant coach with the U.S. national team and former D.C. coach Bruce Arena certainly doesn’t hurt.

It is a freezing night in Indiana. A light drizzle is turning to ice as a crowd of 1,000 people shiver and huddle under umbrellas in a shopping mall car park outside the small Midwestern town of Noblesville. But no one is complaining.

“I came to hear the truth get told,” says Roy Hendrickson, a moustached 66-year-old retiree from the town of Lebanon, about 30 miles away. “I want to see her go rogue!”

Poverty rates are high here, college graduates few. Drug use is rampant, several said, and many residents live in ramshackle trailer homes strewn about the hills that surround the checkerboard streets of the town. In these depressed times, there is little to cheer but the high school basketball team.

Surely by now you know that the greatest crisis facing this country isn’t the economy or war, but the perilous states of the Michigan and Notre Dame football teams. It’s gotten obnoxious, the overwrought attention these once-storied, now-torpid programs still command, and no one’s stepping up and offering the smoothest, wisest solution to their troubles:

Merger! The Notre Michigan Irish Wolverines.

Please don’t laugh. We’re as serious as Bill Belichick on fourth-and-two (or as Yale was on fourth-and-22 Saturday in what will forever be known as the Harvard-”Fail” game).

About 200 Washington University seniors were attending Mother’s Night Club Original bar on Saturday night as part of their class trip to Chicago, sponsored by the Senior Class Council. According to Senior Class President Fernando Cutz, the six black students were told they would not be allowed in because of their failure to comply with the bar’s “baggy jeans” policy. A few white students who had already been admitted then came out to demonstrate that their jeans were more “baggy,” but the black students were still denied admission.

Hoosiers have a history of soccer dominance. The Indiana University men’s soccer team is one of the most successful in NCAA history, having won six NCAA National Championships - including three back-to-back wins.

Indiana Youth Soccer proudly calls 60,000 young players its own - with 8,000 coaches, 3,800 referees and thousands of volunteers.

DaMarcus Beasley, a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, has played as a midfielder for the Chicago Fire as well as multiple international teams and the USMNT. He most recently appeared with the Rangers in the Scottish Cup.

Indianapolis also is home to FC Indiana of the NPSL. [Sign the petition today]

With the 2010 election season already under way, gun-rights groups are ramping up the pressure on lawmakers to side with them on every vote. By telling senators that a vote for Sotomayor was a vote against gun rights, the National Rifle Association and other leading Second Amendment advocates forced a handful of conflicted legislators to choose between their long-standing support for gun rights and their urge to confirm the first Hispanic justice in U.S. Supreme Court history.

It is a decision that could have serious political ramifications next year in states as different as Texas and New York.

Among the Republican senators with significant Hispanic constituencies who chose to oppose Sotomayor were Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn of Texas, John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada. Hutchison and McCain face 2010 GOP primaries against 100 percent pro-gun opponents.

He has stayed with the Amish in Pennsylvania, Arabs in Michigan, African-Americans in New Jersey, Latinos in Iowa, cowboys in South Dakota, Jews in Connecticut and “red necks” in Indiana.

Growing up in Elkhart, Ind., Cesar Escovar never doubted that he’d eventually go to college. A first-generation American whose family came to the United States from the Dominican Republic, Escovar was the son of two doctors who instilled in him a clear understanding of the importance of higher education.

His perspective seemed unique among the Latino high school students in his acquaintance, however; Escovar noticed that while some of his peers applied for college, many didn’t even consider it as an option.

IU student launches new chapter of PATHE to increase college enrollment among Latinos: IU News Room: Indiana University

Even after Juana Watson came to Indiana from Mexico, became a professor and achieved the American dream, she dared to dream once more — that her new and old homelands might work together for the mutual benefit of their citizens.

Last week, more than 30 years after Watson arrived in Indiana from the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, the two states cemented a long-developing relationship that she helped create.

In his second season with the Lugnuts, having experienced a taste of American life, Chavez was able to help his four countrymen and teammates.

“He said, ‘It was easier, because I had English to share,’ ” said Carol Walker, Chavez’s host for the summer.

Some of them are already rich from their signing bonuses. Some are fast-rising prospects who could make millions very soon. Some are simply playing every day with the hope of following other Venezuelans’ paths to the major leagues.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Close to 20,000 Hispanics live in Fort Wayne; many are closely watching Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.

In the league’s early years, when teams were struggling to include fan bases, the draft included territorial picks. Before the start of the draft, a team could forfeit its first-round pick and instead select a player from its immediate area, presumably with a strong local following.

At the Record Bar, Making Movies frontman Enrique Javier Chi shares a complaint with the audience. “My waitress last night was totally racist — ‘Are you black or Spanish?’ ” he says, aping her.

CARACAS, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez today threatened the United States with an embargo on the export of shortstops until Venezuelan native David Concepcion, a five-time Gold Glove winner for the Cincinnati Reds’ “Big Red Machine” teams of the 1970’s, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The calypsonian of old combined the bawdy wit of a lovelorn English bard with the improvisatory praise instincts of an African griot. For me, the concept was driven home when my father took me to Trinidad as a 10-year-old, and I watched a roadside calypsonian whip up a rhyming verse comparing Dad to John F. Kennedy, whom he remotely resembled.

Calypso Fantasies: Beyond Island Shores : NPR Music

The rate increased in all regions from 2007 to 2008, except in the Midwest, in which the rate declined slightly to 0.23% from 0.25%. Among states, Georgia and New Mexico showed the hightest entrepreneurial rates at 0.59% and 0.58% respectively, while Pennsylvania and Missouri showed the lowest rates, 0.14% and 0.15%, respectively. The cities with the highest rates were Atlanta and Phoenix, while Philadelphia and Seattle scored at the bottom.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Still Alive And Well - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ

Finally in April 1948, Thelma Porter, a psychology major at Brooklyn College, was selected as Miss Subways. Her picture was splashed across black newspapers and magazines nationwide as a point of pride. She was feted nationally, including a reception at the Royal Manor Ballroom. Among those who honored her: Thurgood Marshall.

A year later, Helen Lee became the first Asian-American Miss Subways.

By the 1970s, with a rise of feminism against beauty pageants, the symbolism of a Miss Subway was less portentous, but still notable. In 1974, Sonia Dominguez became the first Dominican to win Miss Subways, which stirred pride in the Latino community. And even then, “there was definitely a pride in the Miss Subways contest,” said Marcia Hocker, who was Miss Subways for several months in 1974 and 1975.

There She Is, From a Trailblazing Beauty Pageant - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

When Jennifer 8. Lee was in seventh grade, she made a startling discovery — fortune cookies are not an authentic Chinese food. In her New York Times best-selling book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Lee wrote about the experience, “It was like learning I was adopted while being told there was no Santa Claus.”

Born in the United States of Chinese immigrant parents, Lee confesses she is obsessed with Chinese food, in particular with the Chinese-American variety. The book is for anyone who wonders who General Tso is and why we eat his chicken, or where those white takeout boxes come from.

Author of ‘The Fortune Cookie Chronicles’ dishes on Chinese American food: IU News Room: Indiana University

Anyone who doubts that people can turn their lives around quickly should meet Jose Colon.

Over the past 10 weeks, the 33-year-old Colon, of Sixth Street near Indiana Avenue in North Philly’s Fairhill neighborhood, has morphed from a crepehanger whose depression and irritability threatened to cost him his family into an optimist with an infectious love of life.

“My self-esteem was so low,” Colon recalls of the days preceding his transformation, “that I just wanted to be by myself in a dark room. I didn’t want to deal with people. Now nothing bothers me. People can scream at me and I let it go. I’m like, ‘It’s okay. I’m doing right.’”

A Gym of Their Own | News and Opinion | Philadelphia Weekly

Jose Mendez was perhaps the first Latino baseball legend ever. In his homeland of Cuba, they called him “El Diamante Negro,” The Black Diamond.

From 1908 to 1914, Mendez was one of the greatest Negro League pitchers, along with Rube Foster and Smokey Joe Williams.

Born on March 19, 1887 in Cardenas, the slightly build (5-foot-8) Mendez threw hard (he reportedly killed a teammate when he accidentally hit him with a pitch in the chest in batting practice) and had a “jug handle curve.”

Beyond Satchel: Part Three

You might wonder why I allude to this topic on this blog. It’s because, just as diversity and discrimination issues, it is all about human rights and equal rights.

A 17 year old female from Boone County, Indiana, is suing her her high school, Lebanon High School, for forbidding her from wearing a tuxedo to prom. She is a lesbian and wants to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress because a dress reflects a sexual identity that she doesn’t identify with or embrace. School district attorney Kent Frandsen stated that the school district has had a long instated policy that only allows male students to wear tuxedos to prom, and that there is no need to change this policy because up until now it has not been challenged. The student was told to either wear a dress or not go to prom.

Lebanon schools agree girl may wear prom tux

The 2007 Census of Agriculture, which was released in early February, found the operators of American farms have become more diverse in the last five years.

The count of Hispanic operators grew by 10 percent, and the counts of American Indian, Asian and black farm operators rose as well, according to the census.

Census finds more minority-run farms