And I chose this. Stop asking bisexuals to 'choose'! 3 Hace 30 años, un paso contra la discriminación 4 A man in Singapore was sentenced to death over Zoom 7 nuestro Tzompantli, un altar a todas las personas victimas de #LGBTTTIFobia 9 Signs & blunders 10 Coronavirus y gerontofobia 25 Does your AI discriminate? 67 Campaña SG-ONU alerta a mujeres de fases de la violencia 70 Tucumán vuelve a posponer la discusión para adherir a Ley Micaela 71 Study shows how Airbnb hosts discriminate against guests with disabilities as sharing 74 economy remains in ADA gray area ‘¡No más!’, dice a la violencia de género 81 Las mujeres inexistentes 82 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila
El sistema de justicia que no tiene nada de justo - Por Saskia Niño de Rivera * / EL 84 UNIVERSAL Solo te llega si dejas que te llegue 86 Alerta la ONU riesgo para comunidad LGTB 87 Pronunciamiento respecto al Acuerdo por el que se dispone de la Fuerza Armada permanente 89 para llevar a cabo tareas de seguridad pública El mundo en que vivimos 93 Busca mediante sus textos visibilizar la violencia hacia las mujeres cabeza 94 The small Native American tribe fighting Trump's wall in South Texas 98
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Grace *#BlackLivesMatter* @ElmGrace
Day 18/30 for #PrideMonth
! I'm going to be busting a stereotype/giving a message about an identity each day. Today it's about the 3rd letter in 'LGBTQIA+', the B for bi! And I chose this. Stop asking bisexuals to 'choose'! A lot of people say this, implying that bi >>
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Celebraron en un encuentro virtual el Día Mundial contra la homofobia
Hace 30 años, un paso contra la discriminación
Por Ludmila Ferrer
“A la discriminación y al odio se los vence con militancia, trabajo, convicción, con mucho amor y mucha creatividad para hacerle frente a los enfrentamientos que nos hacían y nos siguen haciendo”, afirmó César Cigliutti, presidente de la Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA) durante el evento virtual organizado por el colectivo Orgullo y Lucha para celebrar el día de lucha contra el LGBTI+ odio. Ayer se cumplieron 30 años desde que la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) reconoció que la homosexualidad no era una enfermedad y la retiró de la lista de enfermedades y trastornos mentales. El evento se transmitió en vivo por Facebook y tuvo como expositores a Cigliutti; Greta Pena, abogada y militante de 100% Diversidad y Derechos; María Pía Ceballos, de Mujeres Trans Argentina (MTA); la ministra de las Mujeres, Géneros y Diversidad, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, y Vilma Ibarra, Secretaria Legal y Técnica de la Presidencia de la Nación.
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La primera en intervenir en el encuentro, el cual estuvo moderado por Darío Arias de Orgullo y Lucha, fue Ibarra, clave en la redacción y sanción de las leyes de Matrimonio Igualitario y de Identidad de Género en 2010 y 2012, respectivamente. “Cuando uno está en un lugar del Estado, uno está ahí para hacerse cargo de estas demandas. Lo que está tratando de conseguir es un espacio de reconocimiento de esas luchas ”, sostuvo la funcionaria.
Ibarra destacó que el Estado “no otorga derechos”, sino que “los derechos se conquistan”. “El Estado reconoce derechos que estaban vulnerados”, aclaró. La Secretaria Legal y Técnica recordó también el día que el presidente Alberto Fernández entregó a Isha Escribano el DNI número 9 mil con identidad autopercibida. “Fue un evento muy conmovedor porque uno percibió ahí el dolor que provoca la discriminación -rememoró-. Cuando el Estado hace un acto público y visibiliza es profundamente reparatorio”.
La funcionaria afirmó que “se consiguió mucho”, pero que aún quedan conquistas pendientes, como la ley de aborto legal, seguro y gratuito, cuyo proyecto, aseguró Ibarra, “está terminado y está esperando el momento de llevarlo al Congreso, discutirlo y sancionarlo”. Además, Ibarra señaló la necesidad de exigirle al gobierno de la provincia de Tucumán que se adhiera a la ley Micaela y que la implemente.
“Buscamos construir una sociedad más igualitaria, más hermosa para vivir -dijo Ibarra-. Cuando uno vive con pluralidad, con diversidad, reconociéndonos como somos cada uno, una, une, podemos ser mejores y ser una sociedad mejor”.
Cigliutti hizo un recorrido histórico por las luchas, conquistas, avances y retrocesos del movimiento LGBTI+ en Argentina y destacó que la primera organización del colectivo en el país apareció antes que Stonewall, la represión policial en Nueva York que dio origen a la Marcha del Orgullo Gay. “Hemos sido los pioneros en Latinoamérica y a veces también en el mundo”, remarcó el presidente de la CHA.
Entre los hitos mencionados por Cigliutti estuvo la organización de la primera Marcha del Orgullo Gay -a la que se sumaron otras identidades de género en años posteriores- que se hizo el 2 de julio de 1992. “Carlos (Jáuregui) me dijo ‘loca, ya es momento de hacer una marcha’ y le dije ‘dale, hagámoslo’”. El presidente de la CHA contó que decidieron mantener la palabra orgullo (pride, al igual que su nombre en inglés) porque “el orgullo es lo opuesto de la vergüenza y vergüenza es lo que nos quisieron imponer por ser lo que somos”. “El orgullo es nuestra respuesta política a esa vergüenza que quisieron imponer”, sostuvo.
Cigliutti mencionó también la conquista de la personería jurídica de la CHA; la ley nacional de VIH/sida; la unión civil; la sanción de las leyes de Matrimonio Igualitario e Identidad de Género y el primer DNI a una niña trans, Luana. “Este sentimiento de orgullo hace que nos corramos del papel de víctima, hace que no nos quedemos ahí. La peleamos hace 57 años y vamos a seguir peleando”, prometió.
Greta Pena, por su parte, hizo hincapié en cómo se utilizó el discurso médico para el disciplinamiento de los cuerpos a través de la historia. La integrante de 100% Diversidad y Derechos denunció también que durante el gobierno de Mauricio Macri “ se desmantelaron las políticas públicas con la excusa de la reducción presupuestaria”. “Se suscribió un protocolo de detención de personas LGBTI, se modificó el DNU de migraciones y se calificaba al movimiento feminista y particularmente a las lesbianas como personas que destruyen el mobiliario público -sostuvo Pena-. Y por otro lado, daban lo que nosotros llamamos pink washing. Nos ponían semáforos con dos nenes y dos nenas, pero encarcelaban a travestis y trans por la ley de estupefacientes”.
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Ceballos hizo un llamado a continuar con la militancia y la lucha de Lohana Berkins, Diana Sacayán y Mocha Celis. “Hoy se celebra 30 años, pero las compañeras travesti trans en América latina nos seguimos muriendo a los 32, 35 y 40 años”, denunció. La militante trans travesti afroindígena salteña celebró la creación del Ministerio que encabeza Gómez Alcorta porque “pone en escena esas diversidades”. “Lohana decía que el motor de cambio es el amor. Que el amor que nos negaron sea el impulso para cambiar el mundo. Furia travesti siempre”, afirmó.
El encuentro lo cerró la ministra de las Mujeres advirtiendo que, a pesar de las conquistas, todavía hay 70 países que criminalizan la orientación sexual no heterosexual, incluso con pena de muerte. Gómez Alcorta pidió estar atentos por los avances conservadores en el continente, especialmente Brasil y Bolivia y afirmó la necesidad de hacer cumplir las leyes Micaela y de Educación Sexual Integral.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/266555-hace-30-anos-un-paso-contra-la-discriminacion
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ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images
A man in Singapore was sentenced to death over Zoom
By AJ Dellinger
May 20, 2020
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The Supreme Court of Singapore sentenced a man to death via a Zoom call on Friday, the Singapore newspaper the Straits Times reported. The decision was handed down via the video conferencing app as the city-state remains largely in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Human rights organizations have condemned the decision, calling it cruel and inhumane to deliver a death sentence over a video conference.
Punithan Genasan, a 37-year-old Malaysian man, was informed on the video call that he would be condemned to death by hanging for his alleged involvement in a drug deal. According to the court, Genasan introduced two drug dealers to one another and helped arrange an exchange of one ounce of heroin. The alleged transaction occurred in 2011, and Genasan was extradited to Singapore in 2016 to be tried for his involvement. Genasan, who has denied all charges against him, may still appeal the ruling.
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Singapore is one of just a handful of countries that is still increasing its use of capital punishment. The country uses it for a wide range of crimes that the government considers "heinous," and it has grown increasingly unwilling to publicly share information about executions over the course of the last decade. Singapore's laws allow the death penalty to be assigned to those found guilty of murder, kidnapping, and illegal use of firearms, but it is most often applied in drug cases. The country's Misuse of Drugs Act effectively automatically condemns to death any person found to be in possession of 15g of heroin or 500g of cannabis. According to Amnesty International, Singapore is one of just four countries in the world that still executes people for drug-related offenses.
While Singapore regularly applies the death penalty, the sentencing of Genasan marks the first time the country has handed down the punishment in a remote hearing, as confirmed to NBC News by a spokesperson for the Singapore Supreme Court. This is the second known incident of Zoom being used to issue the death penalty. Earlier this month, a court in Nigeria sentenced a man to death via Zoom for allegedly killing the 76- year-old mother of his employer.
Zoom has taken on a role as impromptu courtroom during the coronavirus pandemic, as justice systems around the world attempt to adjust to social distancing requirements. The shift has resulted in some lighthearted moments, including a live stream of a US Supreme Court hearing where a toilet flush was heard in the background and an apparent issue of attorneys showing up for hearings while still in bed. However, it has also created complications within the legal system. Court watchers have struggled to keep up with the change, making it hard for an essential force for transparency and accountability to do their job. With the recent death penalty cases taking place on the video conferencing service, new questions arise regarding the moral implications of condemning a person to death remotely, and the actual legality of it.
Mic reached out to Zoom to ask the company's view on capital punishment sentences being handed down on its platform and whether such usage falls within the company's terms of service. Zoom did not respond to request for comment.
Genasan's defense lawyer, Peter Fernando, did not object to the ruling being handed down via Zoom. "This has been the arrangement made by the court ... with essential hearings conducted via Zoom," he told NBC News. "We have no complaints."
Human rights groups have voiced their objections to Singapore's actions. “Whether via Zoom or in person, a death sentence is always cruel and inhumane," Chiara Sangiorgio, Amnesty International’s death penalty advisor, said in a statement. “This case is another reminder that Singapore continues to defy international law and standards by imposing the death penalty for drug trafficking, and as a mandatory punishment." Human Rights Watch has also called the decision "inherently cruel and inhumane," while noting that "the use of remote technology like Zoom to sentence a man to death makes it even more so."
https://www.mic.com/p/a-man-in-singapore-was-sentenced-to-death-over-zoom- 22919084?utm_campaign=mic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
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Flor de Fango @FlorFango
Esta pieza que hemos trabajado en colaboración con varias ONGs es nuestro Tzompantli, un altar a todas las personas victimas de #LGBTTTIFobia Vamos a honrarlas a través del color. No más violencia, no más discriminación, no más muertes. #DiaInternacionalContralaLGBTIFobia #IDAHOT
Fuera del Clóset A.C.
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In 1918, a state-sanctioned vigilante force killed 15 unarmed Mexicans in Porvenir. When their descendants applied for a historical marker a century later, they learned that not everyone wants to remember one of Texas’ darkest days.
– by Daniel Blue Tyx November 26, 2018
The name of the town was Porvenir, or “future.” In the early morning hours of January 28, 1918, 15 unarmed Mexicans and Mexican Americans were awakened by a state-sanctioned vigilante force of Texas Rangers, U.S. Army cavalry and local ranchers. The men and boys ranged in age from 16 to 72. They were taken from their homes, led to a bluff over the Rio Grande and shot from 3 feet away by a firing squad. The remaining residents of the isolated farm and ranch community fled across the river to Mexico, where they buried the dead in a mass grave. Days later, the cavalry returned to burn the abandoned village to the ground.
These, historians broadly agree, are the facts of what happened at Porvenir. But 100 years later, the meaning of those facts remains fiercely contested. In 2015, as the centennial of the massacre approached, a group of historians and Porvenir descendants applied for and was granted a Texas Historical Commission (THC) marker. After a three-year review process, the THC approved the final text in July. A rush order was sent to the foundry so that the marker would be ready in time for a Labor Day weekend dedication ceremony planned by descendants. Then, on August 3, Presidio County Historical Commission Chair Mona Blocker Garcia sent an email to the THC that upended everything. Though THC records show that the Presidio commission had been consulted throughout the marker approval process, Garcia claimed to be “shocked” that the text was
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approved. She further asserted, without basis, that “the militant Hispanics have turned this marker request into a political rally and want reparations from the federal government for a 100-year-old-plus tragic event.”
Captain James Fox (left), the massacre’s ringleader, voluntarily retired and rejoined the Texas Rangers a few years after the massacre. This picture was taken following a raid in Brownsville. THE ROBERT RUNYON PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, IMAGE 00097, COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Four days later, Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton sent a follow-up letter. Without identifying specific errors in the marker text, he demanded that the dedication ceremony be canceled and the marker’s production halted until new language could be agreed upon. Ponton speculated, falsely, that the event was planned as a “major political rally” for Beto O’Rourke with the participation of La Raza Unida founding member José Ángel Gutiérrez, neither of whom was involved. Nonetheless, THC History Programs Director Charles Sadnick sent an email to agency staff the same day: “After getting some more context about where the marker sponsor may be coming from, we’re halting production on the marker.”
The American Historical Association quickly condemned the THC’s decision, as did the office of state Senator José Rodríguez, a Democrat whose district includes both Presidio County and El Paso, where the ceremony was to be held. Historians across the country also spoke out against the decision. Sarah Zenaida Gould, director of the Museo del Westside in San Antonio and cofounder of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, responded in an email to the agency that encapsulates the views of many of the historians I 11
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interviewed: “Halting the marker process to address this statement as though it were a valid concern instead of a dog whistle is insulting to all people of color who have personally or through family history experienced state violence.”
How did a last-gasp effort, characterized by factual errors and inflammatory language, manage to convince the state agency for historic preservation to reverse course on a marker three years in the making and sponsored by a young Latina historian with an Ivy League pedigree and Texas-Mexico border roots? An Observer investigation, involving dozens of interviews and hundreds of emails obtained through an open records request, reveals a county still struggling to move on from a racist and violent past, far-right amateur historians sowing disinformation and a state agency that acted against its own best judgment.
Narciso and Juan Flores, sons of massacre victim Longino Flores and survivor Juana Flores. COURTESY MONICA MUÑOZ MARTINEZ/BULLOCK TEXAS STATE HISTORY MUSEUM
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The Porvenir massacre controversy is about more than just the fate of a single marker destined for a lonely part of West Texas. It’s about who gets to tell history, and the continuing relevance of the border’s contested, violent and racist past to events today.
Juan Flores at the Porvenir gravesite. COURTESY BENITA ALBARADO
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Several rooms in Benita Albarado’s home in Uvalde are almost overwhelmed by filing cabinets and stacks of clipboards, the ever-growing archive of her research into what happened at Porvenir. For most of her life, Benita, 74, knew nothing about the massacre. What she did know was that her father, Juan Flores, had terrible nightmares, and that in 1950 he checked himself in to a state mental hospital for symptoms that today would be recognized as PTSD. When she asked her mother what was wrong with him, she always received the same vague response: “You don’t understand what he’s been through.”
In 1998, Benita and her husband, Buddy, began tracing their family trees. Benita was perplexed that she couldn’t find any documentation about her grandfather, Longino Flores. Then she came across the archival papers of Harry Warren, a schoolteacher, lawyer and son-in-law of Tiburcio Jáquez, one of the men who was murdered. Warren had made a list of the victims, and Longino’s name was among them. Warren also described how one of his students from Porvenir had come to his house the next morning to tell him what happened, and then traveled with him to the massacre site to identify the bodies, many of which were so mutilated as to be virtually unrecognizable. Benita immediately saw the possible connection. Her father, 12 at the time, matched Warren’s description of the student.
Benita and Buddy drove from Uvalde to Odessa, where her father lived, with her photocopied papers. “Is that you?” she asked. He said yes. Then, for the first time in 80 years, he began to tell the story of how he was kidnapped with the men, but then sent home because of his age; he was told that the others were only going to be questioned. To Benita and Buddy’s amazement, he remembered the names of 12 of the men who had been murdered. They were the same as those in Harry Warren’s papers. He also remembered the names of the ranchers who had shown up at his door. Some of those, including the ancestors of prominent families still in Presidio County, had never been found in any document.
Talking about the massacre proved healing for Flores. His nightmares stopped. In 2000, at age 96, he decided that he wanted to return to Porvenir. Buddy drove them down an old mine road in a four-wheel-drive truck. Flores pointed out where his old neighbors used to live, even though the buildings were gone. He guided Buddy to the bluff where the men were killed — a different location than the one commonly believed by local ranchers to be the massacre site. His memory proved to be uncanny: At the bluff, the family discovered a pre- 1918 military bullet casing, still lying on the Chihuahuan desert ground.
Benita and Buddy began advocating for a historical marker in 2000, soon after their trip to Porvenir. “A lot of people say that this was a lie,” Buddy told me. “But if you’ve got a historical marker, the state has to acknowledge what happened.” Their efforts were met by resistance from powerful ranching families, who held sway over the local historical commission. The Albarados had already given up when they met Monica Muñoz Martinez, a Yale graduate student from Uvalde, who interviewed them for her dissertation. In 2013, Martinez, by then an assistant professor at Brown University, co-founded Refusing to Forget, a group of historians aiming to create broader public awareness of border violence, including Porvenir and other extrajudicial killings of Mexicans by Texas Rangers during the same period. The most horrific of these was La Matanza, in which dozens of Mexicans and Mexican Americans were murdered in the Rio Grande Valley in 1915.
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In 2006, the THC created the Undertold Markers program, which seemed tailor-made for Porvenir. According to its website, the program is designed to “address historical gaps, promote diversity of topics, and proactively document significant underrepresented subjects or untold stories.” Unlike the agency’s other marker programs, anyone can apply for an undertold marker, not just county historical commissions. Martinez’s application for a Porvenir massacre marker was accepted in 2015.
Though the approval process for the Porvenir marker took longer than usual, by the summer of 2018 everything appeared to be falling into place. On June 1, Presidio County Historical Commission chair Garcia approved the final text. (Garcia told me that she thought she was approving a different text. Her confusion is difficult to understand, since the text was attached to the digital form she submitted approving it.) Martinez began coordinating with the THC and Arlinda Valencia, a descendant of one of the victims, to organize a dedication ceremony in El Paso.
“They weren’t just simple farmers. I seriously doubt that they were just killed for no reason.”
In mid-June, Valencia invited other descendants to the event and posted it on Facebook. She began planning a program to include a priest’s benediction, a mariachi performance and brief remarks by Martinez, Senator Rodríguez and a representative from the THC. The event’s climax would be the unveiling of the plaque with the names of the 15 victims.
Then the backlash began.
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“Why do you call it a massacre?” is the first thing Jim White III said over the phone when I told him I was researching the Porvenir massacre. White is the trustee of the Brite Ranch, the site of a cross-border raid by Mexicans on Christmas Day 1917, about a month before the Porvenir massacre. When I explained that the state-sanctioned extrajudicial execution of 15 men and boys met all the criteria I could think of for a massacre, he shot back, “It sounds like you already have your opinion.”
For generations, ranching families like the Brites have dominated the social, economic and political life of Presidio County. In a visit to the Marfa & Presidio County Museum, I was told that there were almost no Hispanic surnames in any of the exhibits, though 84 percent of the county is Hispanic. The Brite family name, however, was everywhere.
White and others in Presidio County subscribe to an alternative history of the Porvenir massacre, centering on the notion that the Porvenir residents were involved in the bloody Christmas Day raid.
“They weren’t just simple farmers,” White told me, referring to the victims. “I seriously doubt that they were just killed for no reason.” Once he’d heard about the historical marker, he said, he’d talked to everyone he knew about it, including former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Mona Blocker Garcia.
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Presidio County Historical Commission Chair Mona Blocker Garcia at her Marfa home. SARAH VASQUEZ
I visited Garcia at her Marfa home, an 1886 adobe that’s the same age as the venerable Marfa County Courthouse down the street. Garcia, 82, is Anglo, and married to a former oil executive whose ancestry, she explained, is Spanish and French Basque. A Houston native, she retired in the 1990s to Marfa, where she befriended the Brite family and became involved in local history. She told me that she had shared a draft text of the marker with the Brites, and they had agreed that it was factually inaccurate.
Garcia cited a story a Brite descendant had told her about a young goat herder from Porvenir who purportedly witnessed the Christmas Day raid, told authorities about the perpetrators from his community and then disappeared without a trace into a witness protection program in Oklahoma. When I asked if there was any evidence that the boy actually existed, she acknowledged the story was “folklore.” Still, she said, “the story has lasted 100 years. Why would anybody make something like that up?”
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The Brite Ranch. BRYAN WILDENTHAL MEMORIAL LIBRARY/SUL ROSS STATE UNIVERSITY
The actual history is quite clear. In the days after the massacre, the Texas Rangers commander, Captain J.M. Fox, initially reported that Porvenir residents had fired on the Rangers. Later, he claimed that residents had participated in the Christmas Day raid. Subsequent investigations by the Mexican consulate, the U.S. Army and state Representative J.T. Canales concluded that the murdered men were unarmed and innocent, targeted solely because of their ethnicity by a vigilante force organized at the Brite Ranch. As a result, in June 1918, five Rangers were dismissed, Fox was forced to resign and Company B of the Texas Rangers was disbanded.
But justice remained elusive. In the coming years, Fox re-enlisted as captain of Company A, while three of the dismissed lawmen found new employment. One re-enlisted as a Ranger, a second became a U.S. customs inspector and the third was hired by the Brite Ranch. No one was ever prosecuted. As time passed, the historical records of the massacre, including Harry Warren’s papers, affidavits from widows and other relatives and witness testimony from the various investigations, were largely forgotten. In their place came texts like Walter Prescott Webb’s The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, which played an outsize role in the creation of the heroic myth of the Texas Rangers. Relying entirely on interviews with the murderers themselves, Webb accepted at face value Fox’s discredited version of events. For more than 50 years, Webb’s account was considered the definitive one of the massacre — though, unsurprisingly, he didn’t use that word.
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An Observer review of hundreds of emails shows that the state commission was aware of potential controversy over the marker from the very beginning. In an email from 2015, Executive Director Mark Wolfe gave John Nau, the chair of the THC’s executive committee, a heads-up that while the marker was supported by historical scholarship, “the [Presidio County Historical Commission] opposes the marker.” The emails also demonstrate that the agency viewed the claims of historical inaccuracies in the marker text made by Mona Blocker Garcia and the county commission as minor issues of wording.
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On August 6, the day before the decision to halt the marker, Charles Sadnick, the history programs director, wrote Wolfe to say that the “bigger problem” was the ceremony, where he worried there might be disagreements among Presidio County residents, and which he described as “involving some politics which we don’t want a part of.”
What were the politics that the commission was worried about, and where were these concerns coming from? Garcia’s last-minute letter may have been a factor, but it wasn’t the only one. For the entire summer, Glenn Justice, a right-wing amateur historian who lives in a rural gated community an hour outside San Angelo, had been the driving force behind a whisper campaign to discredit Martinez and scuttle the dedication ceremony.
From left: Amateur historian Glenn Justice, former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and archaeologist David Keller during a 2015 excavation at the massacre site. JESSICA LUTZ/IWMF FELLOW ADELANTE REPORTING INITIATIVE
“There are radicals in the ‘brown power’ movement that only want the story told of Rangers and [the] Army and gringos killing innocent Mexicans,” Justice told me when we met in his garage, which doubles as the office for Rimrock Press, a publishing company whose catalog consists entirely of Justice’s own work. He was referring to Refusing to Forget and in particular Martinez, the marker’s sponsor.
Justice has been researching the Porvenir massacre for more than 30 years, starting when he first visited the Big Bend as a graduate student. He claims to be, and probably is, the first person since schoolteacher Harry Warren to call Porvenir a “massacre” in print, in a master’s thesis published by the University of Texas at El 18
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Paso in 1991. Unlike White and Garcia, Justice doesn’t question the innocence of the Porvenir victims. But he believes that additional “context” is necessary to understand the reasons for the massacre, which he views as an aberration, rather than a representatively violent part of a long history of racism. “There have never been any problems between the races to speak of [in Presidio County],” he told me.
Filming the as-yet-unreleased documentary Porvenir, Texas. COURTESY ANDREW SHAPTER
In 2015, Justice teamed up with former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Sul Ross State University archaeologist David Keller on a privately funded excavation at the massacre site. He is working on a new book about the bullets and bullet casings they found — which he believes implicate the U.S. Army cavalry in the shooting — and also partnered with Patterson to produce a documentary. But they’d run out of money, and the film was taken over by noted Austin filmmaker Andrew Shapter, who pitched the project to PBS and Netflix. In the transition, Justice was demoted to the role of one of 12 consulting historians. Meanwhile, Martinez was given a prominent role on camera.
Justice was disgruntled when he learned that the dedication ceremony would take place in El Paso. He complained to organizer Arlinda Valencia and local historical commission members before contacting Ponton, the county attorney, and Amanda Shields, a descendant of massacre victim Manuel Moralez.
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“I didn’t want to take my father to a mob scene,” Shields told me over the phone, by way of explaining her opposition to the dedication ceremony. She believed the rumor that O’Rourke and Gutiérrez would be involved.
Arlinda Valencia, a descendant of a Porvenir victim, is frustrated by the Texas Historical Commission’s handling of the Porvenir marker. COURTESY ARLINDA VALENCIA
In August, Shields called Valencia to demand details about the program for the ceremony. At the time, she expressed particular concern about a potential Q&A event with Martinez that would focus on parallels between border politics and violence in 1918 and today.
“This is not a political issue,” Shields told me. “It’s a historical issue. With everything that was going on, we didn’t want the ugliness of politics involved in it.” By “everything,” she explained, she was referring primarily to the issue of family separation. Benita and Buddy Albarado told me that Shields’ views represent a small minority of descendants.
Martinez said that the idea of ignoring the connections between past and present went against her reasons for fighting to get a marker in the first place. “I’m a historian,” she said. “It’s hard to commemorate such a period of violence, in the midst of another ongoing humanitarian crisis, when this period of violence shaped the institutions of policing that we have today. And that cannot be relegated to the past.”
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After communicating with Justice and Shields, Ponton phoned THC Commissioner Gilbert “Pete” Peterson, who is a bank investment officer in Alpine. That call set in motion the sequence of events that would ultimately derail the marker. Peterson immediately emailed Wolfe, the state commission’s executive director, to say that the marker was becoming “a major political issue.” Initially, though, Wolfe defended the agency’s handling of the marker. “Frankly,” Wolfe wrote in his reply, “this might just be one where the [Presidio County Historical Commission] isn’t going to be happy, and that’s why these stories have been untold for so long.” Peterson wrote back to say that he had been in touch with members of the THC executive committee, which consists of 15 members appointed by either former Governor Rick Perry or Governor Greg Abbott, and that an email about the controversy had been forwarded to THC chair John Nau. Two days later, Peterson added, “This whole thing is a burning football that will be thrown to the media.”
At a meeting of the Presidio County Historical Commission on August 17, Peterson suggested that the executive board played a major role in the decision to pause production of the marker. “I stopped the marker after talking to Rod [Ponton],” Peterson said. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with the chairman and vice-chairman [of the THC]. What we have said, fairly emphatically, is that there will not be a dedication in El Paso.” Through a spokesperson, Wolfe said that the executive committee is routinely consulted and the decision was ultimately his.
The Marfa & Presidio County Museum includes almost no Hispanic surnames in its exhibits. SARAH VASQUEZ
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The spokesperson said, “The big reason that the marker was delayed was to be certain about its accuracy. We want these markers to stand for generations and to be as accurate as possible.”
With no marker to unveil, Valencia still organized a small commemoration. Many descendants, including Benita and Buddy Albarado, chose not to attend. Still, the event was described by Jeff Davis, a THC representative in attendance, as “a near perfect event” whose tone was “somber and respectful but hopeful.”
–
Most of THC’s executive committee members are not historians. The chair, John Nau, is CEO of the nation’s largest Anheuser-Busch distributor and a major Republican party donor. His involvement in the Porvenir controversy was not limited to temporarily halting the marker. In August, he also instructed THC staff to ask the Presidio historical commission to submit applications for markers commemorating raids by Mexicans on white ranches during the Mexican Revolution, which Nau described as “a significant but largely forgotten incident in the state’s history.”
Garcia confirmed that she had been approached by THC staff. She added that the THC had suggested two specific topics: the Christmas Day raid and a subsequent raid at the Neville Ranch.
The idea of additional plaques to provide so-called context that could be interpreted as justifying the massacre — or at the very least setting up a false moral equivalence — appears to have mollified critics like White, Garcia and Justice. The work on a revised Porvenir massacre text proceeded quickly, with few points of contention, once it began in mid-September. The marker was sent to the foundry on September 18.
“It’s hard to commemorate such a period of violence, in the midst of another ongoing humanitarian crisis, when this period of violence shaped the institutions of policing that we have today.”
In the end, the Porvenir descendants will get their marker — but it may come at a cost. Martinez called the idea of multiple markers “deeply unsettling” and not appropriate for the Undertold Marker program. “Events like the Brite Ranch raid and the Neville raid have been documented by historians for over a century,” she said. “These are not undertold histories. My concern with having a series of markers is that, again, it casts suspicion on the victims of these historical events. It creates the logic that these raids caused this massacre, that it was retribution for these men and boys participating.”
In early November, the THC unexpectedly announced a dedication ceremony for Friday, November 30. The date was one of just a few on which Martinez, who was still planning on organizing several public history events in conjunction with the unveiling, had told the agency months prior that she had a schedule conflict. In an email to Martinez, Sadnick said that it was the only date Nau could attend this year, and that it was impossible for agency officials to make “secure travel plans” once the legislative session began in January.
A handful of descendants, including Shields and the Albarados, still plan to attend. “This is about families having closure,” Shields told me. “Now, this can finally be put to rest.”
The Albarados are livid that the THC chose a date that, in their view, prioritized the convenience of state and county officials over the attendance of descendants — including their own daughters, who feared they wouldn’t be able to get off work. They also hope to organize a second, unofficial gathering at the marker site 23
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next year, with the participation of more descendants and the Refusing to Forget historians. “We want people to know the truth of what really happened [at Porvenir],” Buddy told me, “and to know who it was that got this historical marker put there.”
Others, like Arlinda Valencia, planned to stay home. “Over 100 years ago, our ancestors were massacred, and the reason they were massacred was because of lies that people were stating as facts,” she told me in El Paso. “They called them ‘bandits,’ when all they were doing was working and trying to make a living. And now, it’s happening again.”
Read the most updated version of the historical marker text below.
https://www.texasobserver.org/who-writes-history-the-fight-to-commemorate-a-massacre-by-the-texas- rangers/
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DANIEL SERRANO COLLANTES
Coronavirus y gerontofobia
Las residencias de mayores han sido la punta del iceberg de una gestión nefasta. Sin material, sin poder salir para ser atendidos... el resultado ha sido miles de fallecimientos
Coronavirus y gerontofobia / ROSELL
Lo que está sucediendo en esta pandemia me lleva a hacer algunas reflexiones sobre nuestro modelo de sociedad. El coronavirus está matando en una mayor proporción a nuestros ancianos. Así, sólo en las residencias de ancianos y según datos oficiales (no reales) del Ministerio de Sanidad, los fallecidos en residencias de ancianos son 17.653, la mayoría en Madrid,Cataluña, Castilla y León y Castilla-La Mancha, que equivaldrían al 67% de fallecidos. Pero la realidad es otra y ya nadie duda de que el número de fallecidos 25
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es mayor, que se oculta la cifra real. Las residencias de mayores han sido la punta del iceberg de una gestión nefasta y negligente. Sin material, sin poder salir para ser atendidos, con contagios múltiples, el resultado ha sido miles de fallecimientos, llegando a casos en los que en una sola residencia ha fallecido 50 personas.
En esta crisis sanitaria la gestión de las Unidades de Cuidados Intensivos ha resultado determinante. El hospital de Ifema fue una feliz solución en Madrid, pero también se podían haber encontrado más alternativas para la saturación de las UCI, como apoyarse en las Comunidades con menor número de infectados y haber trasladado los pacientes, como se ha hecho en Francia -un país unitario donde las regiones no tienen autonomía legislativa-, pero esta España de las autonomías ha creado la España de la insolidaridad, de mirarse al ombligo y mirar con recelo al vecino.
Durante el estado de alarma, la Vicepresidencia de Derechos Sociales y Agenda 2030, presidida por el Sr. Iglesias, asumió la coordinación con los Servicios Sociales de las regiones para la atención de las residencias geriátricas. ¿No les resulta paradójico que los que aprobaron una proposición de ley, con los socialistas, sobre la eutanasia tengan la responsabilidad de las residencias geriátricas? Realmente el Covid-19 está actuando como un eficaz ejecutor de ese "presunto derecho" al suicidio, la eutanasia, ese que primero se dice que es voluntario, que lo solicita quien quiere, que a nadie obliga, pero acaba por descartar a muchas personas, sin solicitarlo. Muestra de ello son países como Holanda o Bélgica donde hoy se practica la eutanasia a pacientes con perturbaciones depresivas grave, demencias o a bebés con espina bífida.
Nuestra sociedad occidental -explícita o implícitamente- valora las personas que producen y se rige por criterios únicamente economicista, de productividad, donde la dignidad de cada persona pueda depender de la autonomía absoluta, de la capacidad física o intelectual, de la edad, lo cual es una pendiente muy peligrosa. Cada vez se valora menos a los ancianos, ya que cada vez son vistos como personas improductivas, que sólo consumen recursos. Comienza a haber un cambio de mentalidad. Mi opinión, es que la línea que separa la indiferencia a los ancianos -que hoy se palpa en mayor o menor medida- de la acabar en el abismo, como la historia reciente ha gerontofobia es muy delgada. Desde hace ya tiempo, y antes de la crisis del coronavirus, son muchos los ancianos que me han manifestado -de diferentes maneras- en mi consulta que consideran su existencia una carga excesiva para los demás. A veces puede que no sea la realidad, pero es la percepción que podemos trasmitir con nuestras palabras, acciones y actitudes, cada uno de nosotros. Realmente se nos está inoculando, poco a poco, esa idea de la "carga" que suponen los mayores y esta pandemia ha podido contribuir aún más.
Hoy se plantea abiertamente en España que el coste que suponen nuestros mayores será cada vez más inasumible como sociedad, esa misma que cada año aborta, descarta a casi 100.000 niños, a 260 por día (desde que se aprobó la ley en 1985 han sido 2,1 millones). Pero esta es una realidad oculta, desconocida, tabú, socialmente aceptada por la inmensa mayoría de la sociedad y de los partidos. Una sociedad que permite -le puede parecer mal, pero es indiferente- el aborto tarde o temprano acaba admitiendo la eutanasia.
Espero que esta crisis nos sirva para que nuestras palabras, acciones y actitudes valoren más a cada persona, especialmente a los mayores, los discapacitados físicos o psíquicos, al no nacido; que sepamos rechazar contundentemente la cultura del descarte y la exclusión, sabiendo que cada vida importa y así conseguir que nadie se sienta una carga, sin olvidar que el valor de una sociedad se mide por la manera de tratar a los más indefensos y vulnerables.
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https://www.granadahoy.com/opinion/tribuna/Coronavirus-gerontofobia_0_1465053554.html
What Is It Like To Raise Kids In Malaysia When You’re LGBT? by Kazimir Lee
“I’m Muslim, I’m queer as hell and I’m not gonna let the hardliners push me out of my own religion.”
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The Nib is entirely independent! Become a member today to support us publishing great comics.
https://thenib.com/malaysia-lgbt-families/
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Does your AI discriminate?
May 15, 2020 8.43am EDT
Author
1. Julie Manning Magid
Professor of Business Law, IUPUI
Disclosure statement
Julie Manning Magid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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IUPUI provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
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We believe in the free flow of information
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
Women leaders like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and San Francisco Mayor London Breed are receiving recognition for their quick action in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But men are chosen as leaders of government around the world in vastly greater numbers.
This disparity is not confined to political leadership. In 2019, Forbes choose 100 of America’s “Most Influential Leaders,” and 99 of them were men.
The lack of diversity is not limited to gender. A survey of nonprofit sector chief executives found that 87% of survey respondents self-identified as white.
As the executive and academic director of a leadership center, I study employment discrimination and inclusion. I’ve seen that many organizations want a process where bias could be removed from identifying leaders. Investors want to invest in businesses with diverse workforces, and employees want to work in diverse organizations.
My research indicates that relying on data analytics to eliminate human bias in choosing leaders won’t help.
AI isn’t foolproof
Employers increasingly rely on algorithms to determine who advances through application portals to an interview.
As labor rights scholar Ifeoma Ajunwa writes, “Algorithmic decision-making is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.” In February 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor convened a hearing called “The Future of Work: Protecting Workers’ Civil Rights in the Digital Age.”
Hiring algorithms create a selection process that offers no transparency and is not monitored. Applicants struck from an application process – or as Ajunwa refers to it, “algorithmically blackballed” – have few legal protections.
For instance, in 2014, Amazon reportedly began developing a computer-based program to identify the best resumes submitted for jobs. The idea was to automate a process and gain efficiency, much as it has done with other aspects of its business.
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However, by using computer models to observe patterns in the previous 10 years of submitted resumes to choose the best, the computer taught itself that resumes from men were preferred to a resume that included the word “women’s,” as in a women’s club or organization. Amazon subsequently abandoned the project, according to reports.
Although often historic biases are inadvertently built into algorithms and reflect human prejudices, recent scholarship by Philip M. Nichols has identified an additional threat of potential intentional manipulation of underlying algorithms to benefit third parties.
Inadvertent or intentional, the ability to detect bias of an algorithm is extremely difficult because it can occur at any stage of the development of AI, from data collection to modeling.
Therefore, although organizations have access to leadership analytical tools based on research and analysis of leadership traits, the white male leader stereotype is deeply ingrained and even sometimes perpetuated by those who themselves are diverse. This cannot be eliminated simply by developing an algorithm that selects leaders.
After the interviews
The data to build these algorithms increase exponentially.
One video interview service, HireVue, boasts of its ability to detect thousands of data points in a single 30- minute interview, from sentence structure to facial movements, to determine employability against other applicants.
Imagine the opportunity, then, for a current employer to collect data continuously to determine leadership potential and promotions of its workforce. For instance, cameras in the workplace can collect facial expressions all day at work, particularly when entering and exiting the workplace.
Increasingly, the data are not just collected during the work day or while at work, but during off-duty conduct as well. In a recent article, Professor Leora Eisenstaedt identified workplace programs that gathered massive amounts of data of off-duty conduct of employees from Facebook posts and Fitbit usage, for example, without transparency about future use of the data. Employers then used those bits of data to draw correlations to predict workplace success.
As Eisenstaedt notes, most workers “will likely chafe at the notion that their taste in beer, love of indie rock and preference for the Washington Post, along with thousands of other variables, can be used to determine professional development opportunities, leadership potential and future career success.”
Nonetheless, that potential exists today in workplaces, and the law simply has not caught up to the vast amount of data collected and utilized by employers wanting to know the promotion and leadership investment in its employees is supported by the data.
In many cases, employees agree to collection of meta-data without a thorough understanding of what that data can reveal and how it can be used to help or hamper a career.
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https://theconversation.com/does-your-ai-discriminate-132847
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Campaña SG-ONU alerta a mujeres de fases de la violencia
Fabiola Martínez
Periódico La Jornada Jueves 14 de mayo de 2020, p. 13
Ante el incremento de la violencia contra las mujeres, especialmente en este periodo de confinamiento por el coronavirus, la Secretaría de Gobernación (SG) lanzó la campaña No estás sola, cuyo objetivo es ubicar y monitorear las agresiones, así como la atención a las víctimas.
El material a difundir, en coordinación con la Agencia de Naciones Unidas para las Mujeres, alerta que el fenómeno se presenta en fases: acumulación de tensión (hostilidad y tensa calma), explosión violenta (agresión física y/o sexual) y arrepentimiento (promesas, supuesto cambio y falsas esperanzas).
Explica que las expresiones anteriores van desde bromas hirientes, celos o jaloneos, hasta patadas, manoseo sin consentimiento o violación sexual, por mencionar algunas.
Sugiere a las víctimas tener a la mano o dejar con alguien de confianza documentos y algo de dinero, y solicitar apoyo a la policía. Si vives violencia marca al 911; ellos están obligados a canalizarte a un Centro de Justicia para las Mujeres y/o a un refugio, se indica en el folleto elaborado por el gobierno y la ONU.
La Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres informó que en el primer trimestre del año se atendió a 46 mil 783 personas en dichos centros, 702 de las cuales debieron ser canalizadas a un refugio o casa de acogida.
En tanto, el Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública señala en su último reporte que igualmente de enero a marzo se registraron casi mil homicidios de mujeres: 240 clasificadas en el grado extremo de feminicidio y el resto como asesinato intencional. Igualmente, en ese lapso se captaron poco más de 67 mil llamadas de auxilio sobre incidentes de violencia contra ellas.
La titular de la SG, Olga Sánchez Cordero, dijo que la campaña es un grito de solidaridad con quienes por años han sufrido violencias, como retumbó el 8 de marzo. Ante irregularidades en la investigación, instruyó a las autoridades ponerse en contacto con los ministerios públicos y los tribunales para hacer notar las fallas y la revictimización.
El plan incluye además información para prevenir el embarazo y campañas de reconocimiento al trabajo doméstico.
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/05/14/politica/013n1pol
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Legisladores antiderechos, oficialistas y opositores, cuestionan la norma por su "ideología feminista"
Tucumán vuelve a posponer la discusión para adherir a Ley Micaela
En lo que va del 2020, en Tucumán se registraron al menos ocho femicidios, de los cuales cinco se produjeron durante el aislamiento social, preventivo y obligatorio por la pandemia de coronavirus, según informó la ONG Andhes.
Por Mariana Carbajal
Imagen: Leandro Teysseire
Tucumán es la única provincia que no adhirió a la Ley Micaela. Este jueves estaba previsto el tratamiento de un proyecto para adherir a la norma, que establece la capacitación obligatoria en el abordaje de las problemáticas de género y las violencias machistas para todas las personas que se desempeñan en la función pública de los tres poderes --Legislativo, Ejecutivo y Judicial-- en todos sus niveles y jerarquías. ¿Quién puede estar en contra? Pero la fuerte resistencia de legisladores de la oposición --entre bussistas y macristas-- y también de oficialistas y aliados al gobernador Juan Manzur obligó a postergar el debate hasta la semana próxima. Cuestionan la norma por su supuesta “ideología feminista” y pretenden imponer la objeción de conciencia.
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Sin embargo, la Ley Micaela responde a obligaciones asumidas por el Estado a través de la Ley 26.485 para Prevenir, Sancionar y Erradicar la violencia contra las mujeres y de tratados internacionales incorporados a la Constitución Nacional. La discusión del tema genera la siguiente paradoja: quienes más se resisten a aprobar la adhesión son quienes más necesitan recibir la capacitación que marca la Ley Micaela. El ejemplo más claro lo encarna el legislador de Fuerza Republicana Ricardo Bussi, hijo del genocida Domingo Bussi, quien en declaraciones a la FM Futurock este miércoles dijo: “No conozco casos de asesinatos por la condición de mujer. Conozco hombres que han asesinado a mujeres por celos, envidia, por depresión, por drogas, pero por el hecho de ser mujer… no conozco ningún homicidio”.
En lo que va del 2020, en Tucumán se registraron al menos ocho femicidios, de los cuales cinco se produjeron durante el aislamiento social preventivo y obligatorio por la pandemia de coronavirus, según informó la ONG Andhes.
En febrero, el proyecto de adhesión a la Ley Micaela obtuvo dictamen de mayoría de la Comisión de Mujer, que encabeza la peronista Marta Najar, una de las principales promotoras de la norma. Pero los sectores antiderechos --del oficialismo y la oposición--, que ven “ideología de género” o “feminista” donde se protegen o amplían derechos de mujeres y personas LGBT, empezaron a tejer alianzas para frenarlo.
Semanas atrás se acordó que el proyecto se votaría en la sesión de este jueves de la Legislatura tucumana. Unas doscientas organizaciones de derechos humanos, sociales, y políticas y referentes del movimiento de mujeres y LGBT --entre ellas Ni Una Menos Tucumán-- firmaron un documento en apoyo a la sanción de la ley, que lleva el nombre de Micaela García, la joven víctima de femicidio en 2016 en Entre Ríos. Pero por la polémica que insólitamente despertó el tema en Tucumán, se decidió postergar la discusión una semana.
En ese contexto, el 5 de mayo, la legisladora de Fuerza Republicana Nadima Pecci presentó un proyecto de ley que se opone a su adhesión. La iniciativa, que firman también Ricardo Bussi y el macrista Walter Berarducci, pretende mostrarla como una manifestación de una supuesta “ideología de género”. “Desde su punto de vista, la Ley Micaela adoctrina en lugar de proteger, y ataca un modelo tradicional y ortodoxo de familia, en lugar de brindar herramientas para que diseñadores y decisores de políticas públicas puedan gobernar para todes, incluyendo a quienes se encuentran especialmente desprotegides y por fuera de estas formaciones tradicionales”, señaló a PáginaI12 Fernanda Rotondo, coordinadora de Género de Andhes.
Este martes, el presidente subrogante de la Legislatura, el peronista Regino Amado --ex ministro de Gobierno y Justicia de Manzur-- presentó otro proyecto que directamente vacía de contenido la Ley Micaela: establece que las capacitaciones las pueden dar entidades privadas --y no exclusivamente desde el Estado--, incorpora la objeción de conciencia --es decir, deja de ser obligatoria la formación-- y además, saca de las modalidades de violencia machista que hay que abordar aquella que sufren las mujeres y personas con capacidad de gestar en la atención gineco-obstétrica, que sí están previstas en la Ley 26.485. El proyecto lo firman también la oficialista Sandra Mendoza, Walter Berarducci, aliado del gobernador (ex macrista) y el radical Raúl Albarracín. “Es un mamarracho, habilita la objeción de conciencia y excluye las violencias en la atención gineco-obstetricas tan luego en nuestra provincia, cuna de estas violencias. Está en juego qué conducción política prima en la provincia: la que afianza la igualdad de género o la que vacía de contenido la Ley Micaela”, cuestionó en diálogo con PáginaI12 la abogada de la ONG Mujeres X Mujeres Soledad Deza.
“La Ley Micaela no pretende imponer a nadie cómo pensar, en todo caso es una herramienta para que profesionales del sector público cuenten con conocimientos adecuados y puedan ponerlos en práctica de manera crítica en la tarea que corresponde a su sector”, explicó Rotondo, de Andhes. 74
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Hasta ahora, Tucumán no ha mostrado voluntad política para adherir tampoco a la Ley de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva. Pero sí intenciones de obstaculizar derechos de mujeres y niñas violadas para acceder a los abortos legales, como ocurrió obscenamente en 2019 en el caso de Lucía, la niña de 11 años violada por la pareja de su abuela, a quien desde el sistema de salud provincial se pretendió obligar a continuar con un embarazo forzado, aunque ella claramente había dicho: “Quiero que me saquen esto que me puso adentro el viejo”.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/265677-tucuman-vuelve-a-posponer-la-discusion-para-adherir-a-ley-mi
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Study shows how Airbnb hosts discriminate against guests with disabilities as sharing economy remains in ADA gray area
May 12, 2020 8.34am EDT
Authors
1. Mason Ameri
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Rutgers University Newark
2. Douglas L. Kruse
Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University
Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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“How could you see my listing if you’re blind?”
“I’d have to check with our insurance company to see if we’re covered to host guests with disabilities.”
“Does the dog drive?”
Those are three typical responses we got from Airbnb hosts while posing as guests with disabilities for a study we conducted on the home-sharing service. Some hosts were willing to accommodate us. Some were uneasy. Some were insensitive. We effectively became Airbnb’s secret shopper – even secret to Airbnb – to determine if its credo to “belong anywhere” implied that this service was designed with disability access and civil rights in mind.
Our results revealed that Airbnb’s platform perpetuates the social exclusion of people with disabilities. We don’t believe this is done intentionally, but the unregulated nature of rental listings end up subverting the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which turns 30 in July.
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President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. AP Photo/Barry Thumma
What the ADA changed
Before this landmark law, people with disabilities had a very hard time engaging in American life. Structural barriers like buildings without elevators made it difficult to use public transit and limited where people with disabilities could work. They were essentially rendered second-class citizens.
For example, people using wheelchairs had to abandon them if they needed to ride trains or buses. Grocery stores and other buildings were usually not accessible to people with disabilities, and restaurants even refused to serve them. Public schools excluded an estimated 1 million children with disabilities. And employers could legally avoid hiring someone because of his or her disability – and paid them less than their able-bodied peers with similar qualifications.
This began to change in 1990 with the passage of the ADA, which prohibits disability-based discrimination in all areas of public life. The law makes sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as those without disabilities. Particularly, Title III of the ADA covers public accommodations – 78
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including private hotels – and requires them to make appropriate changes in policies, practices and procedures, unless this would radically change how businesses operate.
The law, however, was never designed to cover private citizens, such as Airbnb hosts. The recent rise of the largely unregulated sharing economy thus complicates whether the ADA applies to these new types of largely person-to-person transactions. It’s a world in which workers are rarely “employees,” and businesses are often just regular people sharing their apartment with a stranger.
Traditionally, the ADA prohibits businesses like hotels from discriminating against people with disabilities. However, Airbnb is not a normal hospitality company that manages and franchises a collection of hotels and resorts. Instead, it’s a broker between hosts who temporarily sublet their homes and guests who seek affordable and unconventional places to stay.
To that end, listings are not hotels either. And the ADA specifically applies only to places with more than five rooms to rent and are not occupied by the homeowner as a place of residence. These conditions are seldom met on Airbnb. Therefore, many hosts are not legally prohibited from discriminating, which means that guests with disabilities are subject to pre-ADA conditions.
Wheelchair protestors demanding easy-access transportation protested in San Francisco, California, in 1978. AP Photo/Sal Veder
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Documenting discrimination
We began our study in June 2016, investigating access to nearly 4,000 Airbnb listings by requesting lodgings with the use of simulated people who had disabilities or were able-bodied. Inconspicuously, across the U.S., we solicited hosts with fake guests who experience blindness, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, dwarfism or no disability. The study concluded in November 2016, and we analyzed host responses through early 2017. Following a peer review, we published our findings in February 2019.
Discrimination against our disabled guests was evident. Those without disabilities were offered preapprovals – that is, following an initial inquiry about availability, hosts may make approval automatic once a guest requests a booking – 75% of the time, whereas those with disabilities had a much harder time, depending on the disability.
Those with dwarfism were preapproved 61% of the time, while people with blindness were at 50%. Guests suffering from cerebral palsy were at 43%. And having a spinal cord injury meant a preapproval rate of just 25%.
Overall, the more extreme the disability, like using a wheelchair, the more discrimination our disabled “guests” endured.
‘How do you drive?’
Through the process of seeking preapprovals, we engaged with every host in our review, which gave us insights into how they reacted to people with disabilities.
Some hosts were extremely positive and offered assistance. For example, one eagerly explained to our “guest” with a spinal cord injury, “I can carry you and your chair up the stairs… I really want you to stay.”
Another kindly replied to a traveler with dwarfism, “We would be glad to modify anything as needed.”
But some hosts weren’t as accommodating. For example, one expressed concerns over cleaning costs specific to a traveler with blindness who uses a guide dog, “[I]f you’re willing to pay $100 for animal cleaning, I would be OK with you staying.” This was on top of the location’s typical cleaning fee assessed to all guests.
A second was especially disrespectful toward a traveler with blindness by replying, “Um. That’s a new one. How do you drive?”
And while a third was a bit more empathetic, the host was still dismissive toward a traveler with cerebral palsy, blaming an architectural constraint. “Our place has a very narrow and circular stairway, so it would be too difficult for you,” the host said.
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Airbnb hosts had mixed responses when guests with disabilities tried to book lodging. Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images
Airbnb’s efforts to fix the problem
To Airbnb’s credit, it had recognized the problem of disability access in its listing before we began our investigation and began implementing changes during the study. This allowed us to see in real time what kind of impact it had.
The company announced a nondiscrimination policy in November 2016 that explicitly banned using a guest’s disabilities in turning down a requested stay, in addition to other characteristics like race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation and marital status.
However, our study found that compliance didn’t vary after the policy was implemented.
At the time, we felt that this was due to how nascent the policy was. However, as recently as 2019, there have been anecdotes detailing its weak enforcement. Haben Girma, a disability rights lawyer who is deaf and blind, claims she was denied lodging after disclosing that her service animal would accompany her.
The host defended himself by indicating that his rental was under construction and would be hazardous for any stay, yet the listing was successfully booked by an able-bodied colleague of Girma for the same dates. 81
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Soon after our study, in late 2017, Airbnb purchased Accomable, a travel website focused on those with disabilities. This acquisition helped Airbnb improve its search filter by allowing hosts to list accessibility features more precisely.
It remains to be seen how effective this has been, though some guests have found the accessibility filters to be inaccurate.
Time for an ADA update
The ADA emerged from a long history of frustration of how people with disabilities were marginalized in the areas of employment and more.
Now, as the sharing economy continues to expand, we believe the law should be amended to specifically protect people from disability-based discrimination on these online platforms. While it would not be realistic or sensible to force every mom-and-pop listing on Airbnb to become ADA-compliant, there must be ways to ensure that when guests without disabilities have access to listings, those with disabilities can have access to similar ones at the same cost.
As the ADA approaches its 30th anniversary, this is an opportunity for legislators, disability rights activists, Airbnb, as well as its users to collectively and proactively ensure equal access for everyone.
https://theconversation.com/study-shows-how-airbnb-hosts-discriminate-against-guests-with-disabilities-as- sharing-economy-remains-in-ada-gray-area-127416
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‘¡No más!’, dice a la violencia de género
Salma Hayek participa en la campaña del movimiento ‘Chime for Change’
Salma manifestó su postura a través de un video en sus redes sociales. AP / EL DIARIO CLOSE UP
Por Agencia México
Salma Hayek mostró su preocupación por la violencia de género que viven niñas y mujeres durante esta época de confinamiento, y por tal motivo, realizó una campaña junto a la cantante Beyoncé y la marca Gucci para ayudar a este sector de la población durante la pandemia de Covid-19 a través del movimiento “Chime for Change”, del que forma parte desde hace algunos años. Por medio de un video compartido en su cuenta de Instagram, la actriz mexicana manifestó su apoyo a las mujeres que sufren cualquier tipo de violencia mientras están en casa protegiéndose del coronavirus enviando un contundente mensaje.
“Nos retiramos a nuestros hogares para protegernos de la amenaza del Covid-19, pero y si nuestro hogar fuera una amenaza en sí misma. Según ONU Mujeres, los datos emergentes muestran que la violencia contra la mujer se ha intensificado significativamente durante la pandemia. Por eso es tan importante que tomemos una postura en contra de la violencia de género y nos solidarizarnos con las mujeres”, inició.
NO PERMITIR ABUSOS
Invitando a las mujeres que son violentadas a poner un alto y no permitir este tipo de abusos, Hayek agregó: “Yo creo que realmente podemos generar un cambio si unimos nuestras voces para gritar ¡No más!, unámonos para proteger los derechos humanos de las niñas y las mujeres en todas partes”.
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https://www.eldiariodecoahuila.com.mx/close-up/2020/5/21/no-mas-dice-la-violencia-de-genero-901142.html
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Las mujeres inexistentes
PEDRO PEÑALOZA
@pedro_penaloz
ANALISIS
/ JUEVES 21 DE MAYO DE 2020
La construcción patriarcal de la diferencia entre la masculinidad y la feminidad es la diferencia política entre la libertad y el sometimiento.
Carole Pateman
El presidente Lopez Obrador ha construido una narrativa del feminismo y de la lucha de las mujeres a partir de que éstas son “manipuladas” por “las fuerzas conservadoras” y que sus reclamos buscan desprestigiar al gobierno. Recordemos que en el contexto del día internacional de la mujeres y del paro nacional se vio claramente la fractura entre las demandas feministas y el discurso oficial. hasta se llegó al extremo de tratar de sabotear el “día sin mujeres”. La visión conservadora ha dominado el discurso presidencial.
PUBLICIDAD
En un nuevo capitulo de su concepción “humanista”, el tabasqueño vuelve a reñir con la realidad. Recientemente afirmó que el 90% de las denuncias de violencia contra las mujeres, en éste periodo de confinamiento, “son falsas”, no obstante, que, los datos oficiales señalan lo contrario. Veamos algunos cifras: el 23 de marzo, la secretaria de Gobernación, Olga Sanchez Cordero, aseguró que la administración federal estaba preparando una campaña para combatir el aumento de los delitos por violencia intrafamiliar durante la emergencia sanitaria, ya que de acuerdo al reporte que se deriva de las llamadas al 911, éstas tuvieron un incremento de 120%; a su vez, el Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad y la Justicia de la Ciudad de México 85
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expresó que se han incrementado las llamadas de auxilio, subrayando que el 66% de las llamadas son por violencia física y el 22% por situaciones psicoemocionales (La Jornada, 17/4/20, p.5); por su parte, el Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública, señala que durante marzo hubo 115 mil 614 llamadas de emergencia de mujeres víctimas de algún tipo de agresión en el contexto de la cuarentena, ésta cifra representa 18% más a la registrada en febrero, cuando hubo 94 mil 518 llamadas (El Universal, 26/4/20, p7); por si fuera poco, éste grave panorama, la Secretaría de las Mujeres de la Ciudad de México reportó que en las unidades territoriales de atención a la violencia contra las mujeres conocidas como “Lunas”, se detectaron 155 casos de riesgo crítico en lo que va del encierro obligatorio (La Jornada, 15/5/20, p.31).
En conclusión, AMLO vive en una grave contradicción, entre sus creencias religiosas-conservadoras y la explosión de violencias que padecen, en éste caso, las mujeres. Con un pequeño detalle, olvida que es el presidente de la república y que su moral no puede confrontarla a las cifras oficiales y con ello, la ausencia de políticas públicas para enfrentar éste cáncer social. No debemos permitirlo.
@pedro_penaloz https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/analisis/las-mujeres-inexistentes-5257952.html
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El sistema de justicia que no tiene nada de justo - Por Saskia Niño de Rivera * / EL UNIVERSAL
EDITORIALES
Por AGENCIAS jueves, 21 de mayo de 2020 · 00:09
Miguel Ángel Alejo lleva 12 años de su vida en una prisión. Es mucho o es poco según quiera verse; apenas lleva 12 de los 50 años que le impusieron como condena por el delito de homicidio, que no cometió.
Miguel Ángel es uno más en la cifra negra de inocentes tras las rejas. Era soldador de oficio, como toda su familia. Solo tenía 21 años cuando su vida cambió y fue sesgada por la peor de las injusticias.
Día de la tragedia: Miguel Ángel acudió a una boda. La fiesta transcurrió como cualquier otra de las muchas fiestas que se organizaban en el pueblo en el que vivía. Alrededor de la media noche, se retiró a su casa.
A los pocos días, al salir de un juego de futbol soccer del equipo local, que él entrenaba, fue detenido y llevado al Ministerio Público sin explicación alguna. No puso resistencia, confiaba en que las cosas se aclararían. Al llegar al MP y escuchar a los judiciales que lo detuvieron mencionar que él era el asesino de un chavo de 17 años que había muerto en la fiesta de hace unos días, se quedó frío.
“Oiga, de qué niño está hablando, yo no he matado a nadie”, dijo a los judiciales frente al MP. Horas después fue liberado por falta de pruebas. Tan pronto llegó a casa su familia le aconsejó irse del pueblo. “Ya sabes cómo son de corruptos, no vaya ser la de malas hijo”, le rogó su mamá. Miguel Ángel, confiado en la justicia, sabiendo que no tenía nada que ocultar, decidió quedarse. “El que nada debe nada teme”, decía.
Al cabo de unos meses volvió a ser detenido por el mismo asesinato, sin saber que esta vez las cuatro paredes del reclusorio serían su nueva casa. En un abrir y cerrar de ojos, el juez que resolvió su caso determinó que Miguel era culpable de asesinar a Juan, un joven de 17 años.
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Los supuestos hechos que le imputaron: lo habría encontrado de camino a su casa al salir de la fiesta, tuvieron una riña en la que Miguel le aplicó a Juan una llave china que le quitó la vida y posteriormente le arrojó una piedra en la cabeza… al menos eso dijeron los primos de Juan, todos menores de edad, cuando declararon.
El juez pasó por alto que los mismos primos de Juan, más adelante, durante el juicio, se retractaron de lo dicho, refiriendo que, en realidad, nunca habían visto a Miguel Ángel y que la pelea fue con los chavos de una pandilla rival a la cual Juan pertenecía. El cráneo de Juan no presentaba ninguna lesión, hecho que el juez decidió descartar. Tampoco consideró las causas del fallecimiento que establecieron los médicos legistas. Juan había muerto de asfixia por el vómito que provocó una sobredosis. ¿Y la supuesta riña?
En efecto, sí hubo una riña con una pandilla del pueblo, un hombre de esa pandilla fue quien golpeó a Juan y paradójicamente, ese hombre comparte hoy prisión con Miguel Ángel.
La mamá de Miguel Ángel ha estado encima de las autoridades peleando por la justicia de su hijo por más de 12 años. “Alguien tiene que pagar, así es la justicia de nuestro país”, dice casi con resignación.
A la corrupción e impunidad que inundan nuestro sistema de justicia penal hay que ponerle nombre y apellido. Estamos rompiendo familias y vidas. No son cifras. Son vidas. Son cientos de personas que hoy se enfrentan a un sistema de justicia que de justo no tiene nada. Hoy se llama Miguel Ángel, pero también se llama Pedro, Rocío, Mariana, Daniel, Alejandro, Roberto y Fernanda. Son Érica, Vanesa, Pablo o Christian quienes están en prisión por delitos que no cometieron. Hoy por cada inocente tras las rejas, una víctima menos encuentra justicia.
Miguel Ángel llegó, por medio de la organización Reinserta, a manos del Despacho Ruiz Durán. Después de 12 años de una vida en pausa, tenemos la esperanza de un posible final feliz en su historia. Pero no solo es Miguel Ángel, son todos los demás. No olvidemos los nombres de todas y todos.
* Presidenta y cofundadora de Reinserta AC
https://www.eldiariodecoahuila.com.mx/editoriales/2020/5/21/el-sistema-de-justicia-que-no-tiene-nada-de- justo-por-saskia-nino-de-rivera-el-universal-901209.html
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Ricardo Cucamonga @CucamongaMX
Solo te llega si dejas que te llegue
. Hay que dejar el victimismo, trabajar en nuestra autoestima y como dijo Quentin Crisp, volvernos inofendibles. Es una lucha de todos los días. ¡Fuerza! #DiaMundialContraLaHomofobia #DiaContralaLGTBIfobia #DiaInternacionalcontralaLGTBIfobia
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Alerta la ONU riesgo para comunidad LGTB
La creciente vulnerabilidad de personas en este concepto, destacó Guterres
El secretario general de la ONU, Antonio Guterres, participa en un foro sobre migración en la sede del organismo en Ginebra, Suiza.AP / El Diario
INTERNACIONAL
Por AP lunes, 18 de mayo de 2020 · 02:41
El secretario general de Naciones Unidas, António Guterres, advirtió el domingo de la creciente vulnerabilidad de personas lesbianas, gays, bisexuales y trans durante la pandemia del Covid-19, en el Día Internacional contra la Homofobia, la Bifobia y la Transfobia.
En un mensaje con motivo de la fecha, el jefe de Naciones Unidas dijo que el día llegaba en un momento de gran desafío, en el que el mundo tiene que proteger a la comunidad LGTBI.
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Los riesgos
Muchos miembros de la comunidad que ya sufren discriminación, ataque y asesinatos “simplemente por quiénes son o a quién aman (...) están sufriendo un estigma adicional como resultado del virus, así como nuevos obstáculos al buscar atención médica”.
“También hay reportes de directivas del Covid-19 mal aprovechadas por la policía para perseguir a personas y organizaciones LGBTI”.
“Mientras evoluciona la pandemia, Naciones Unidas seguirá señalando estas y otras injusticias, así como la necesidad de que todo el mundo esté protegido e incluido en la respuesta a la crisis”, dijo el secretario general. “Juntos, alcémonos unidos contra la discriminación y por el derechos de todos a vivir libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos”.
El Día Internacional contra la Homofobia, la Bifobia y la Transfobia se conmemora el 17 de mayo para celebrar la decisión de la Organización Mundial de la Salud de retirar la homosexualidad de la lista internacional de enfermedades en esa fecha en 1990.
https://www.eldiariodecoahuila.com.mx/internacional/2020/5/18/alerta-la-onu-riesgo-para-comunidad-lgtb- 900520.html
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CNDH en México
@CNDH
·
12 may.
Pronunciamiento respecto al Acuerdo por el que se dispone de la Fuerza Armada permanente para llevar a cabo tareas de seguridad pública de manera extraordinaria, regulada, fiscalizada, subordinada y complementaria:
SANTIAGO CORCUERA C
@CORCUERAS
Bien por la @CNDH por este pronunciamiento en respuesta a las declaraciones de @lopezobrador_ sobre violencia intrafamiliar #sinviolenciadegenero
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https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1255510204365656067/photo/1
Be A King @BerniceKing
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KAREN DANIELA GONZÁLEZ ELIZONDO JOVEN ESCRITORA Busca mediante sus textos visibilizar la violencia hacia las mujeres cabeza Es finalista de un concurso literario en un Portal de España
SOCIALES Por Hilda Soria miércoles, 15 de abril de 2020 · 00:02 Karen Daniela González Elizondo, quien escribe desde hace diez años y gracias a la guía de sus maestros ha logrado calidad en sus escritos, comenta que durante sus años de estudiante de psicología se sensibilizó sobre las problemáticas sociales, lo que amplió su panorama, transformándola en una persona tolerante en constante búsqueda de la justicia. SENSIBLE A LA VIOLENCIA DE GÉNERO Un tema que le afecta especialmente es la violencia de género, al estar consiente que cada día en nuestro país asesinan de manera violenta a diez mujeres. “Estos feminicidios son la máxima expresión de la violencia machista, que también se manifiesta en otras acciones menos letales, pero igual de denigrantes. “Debido a la emergencia sanitaria, se nos ha pedido resguardarnos en casa, y se ha manifestado que este fenómeno no se ha detenido, al contrario han aumentado las denuncias de violencia doméstica y casos de violaciones y tampoco han disminuido los feminicidios que siguen su curso dentro de una terrorífica normalidad. 97
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“Este fenómeno nos ha mostrado aquello que han tratado de decirnos, pero no hemos escuchado: las agresiones no son provocadas por la víctima o las circunstancias. Los agresores son los únicos responsables”, explica Karen.
Nuestra entrevistada ahonda que por su educación, ha desarrollado un sentimiento de empatía, sintiendo: miedo, enojo y preocupación ante todo tipo de abuso, especialmente contra las mujeres. Razón, por la que desde hace algunos años decidió visibilizar estas agresiones en sus textos. ESCRITOS DE KAREN SON SELECCIONADOS POR PORTAL ESPAÑOL
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Karen Daniela, participó recientemente en el concurso de relatos convocado por la página FB Portal del Escritor, para motivar al público a escribir durante esta contingencia; este es sitio español publica artículos de escritores autodidactas, y ofrece cursos específicos para mejorar la escritura. El tema central del relato solicitado debía ser una historia de amor durante la pandemia… Karen explica: ”Al construir mi relato “El Día Treinta y Tres”, fue inevitable pensar en todas esas mujeres que han sido obligadas a permanecer en cuarentena con su agresor. Mujeres que probablemente buscaban su independencia y que se verán obligadas a recibir el 50% de su sueldo o que han sido despedidas. Mujeres y niñas en alto riesgo que el Estado ignora. Mi relato busca visibilizar este problema mediante la ficción.” PORTAL DEL ESCRITOR LANZA DOS CONVOCATORIAS La página de FB: Portal del Escritor, planteó dos formas de ganar el concurso: una por medio de likes y el premio al escritor del relato ganador, era tomar un curso de escritura en línea totalmente gratuito. Desafortunadamente, Karen en esta modalidad, no ganó. Portal del Escritor para una segunda convocatoria invitó un jurado conformado por profesionales de la literatura ,para seleccionar el mejor relato en esta categoría. Los relatos ganadores de esta versión y el ganador por likes serán publicados en la página en Facebook “Portal del Escritor” al siguiente enlace: https://www.facebook.com/portaldelescritor/photos EL DÍA TREINTA Y TRES, FINALISTA EN LA SEGUNDA CATEGORÍA El trabajo literario de Karen El Día Treinta y Tres resultó finalista en esta segunda categoría y la autora quien esta a la espera del veredicto, nos comenta: ”Ganar este concurso y que mi relato sea publicado en el sitio web, me daría la oportunidad de ser conocida en mi localidad e internacionalmente, debido al beneficio que representa curricularmente. “Para una escritora en formación como yo en busca de espacios en el mundo editorial de Saltillo, ser validada y reconocida por una página española, significa la posibilidad de publicar en diversos espacios. Actualmente el desarrollo cultural y profesional de los artistas depende enteramente de uno mismo, por lo que es necesario prepararse y crecer en otras plataformas, para, en el futuro, poder ocupar un lugar en la cultura de la ciudad”, expresa la artista. NACE PROYECTO LÁUDER Con base a esta problemática, David Beltrán propuso la creación de una antología ilustrada conformada por obras de distintos talentos visuales y literarios donde Karen trabaja junto con otros artistas, ubicando creadores que aún viven en el anonimato para que sus publicaciones aparezcan en esta antología. Explica: ”Desde diciembre del 2019, gestamos “Proyecto Láuder” idea que poco a poco se va posicionando en la ciudad. Somos un grupo de artistas locales entusiasmados por reunir a algunos de los mejores talentos de la zona metropolitana de Saltillo en torno a la expresión de los sentimientos que todos hemos experimentado. “Pretendemos ser una plataforma sin fines de lucro, que reconozca e impulse a los artistas de la comunidad y su voz suene y se oiga más fuerte . En Proyecto Láuder nos mueven el respeto y el amor al arte; invitó visiten nuestra página en FB: Proyecto Láuder, para que conozcan su filosofía y a los artistas que forman parte de “Láuder” “nos dice. LA PRIMERA ANTOLOGÍA SERÁ PRESENTADA EN JUNIO Karen explica que para el primer número de la antología cuyo tema central es la nostalgia, convocaron quince escritores y veintiocho artistas visuales, siendo que cada texto será ilustrado por un artista visual especializado en diferentes categorías. Este primer número será presentado en el mes de junio de 2020.
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“Mi participación en Proyecto Láuder como Directora Editorial, soy la encargada de invitar algunos escritores a participar; seleccionar los textos que formarán parte de la antología y guíar a los escritores menos experimentados en la edición necesaria de sus textos, para dejarlos listos para su publicación”, agrega la escritora. “Aprovecho el espacio para agradecer a David Beltrán por su confianza para participar en Proyecto Láuder. Este viaje ha sido una experiencia desafiante que me ha hecho valorar y perfeccionar mis habilidades probandome como escritora. Nada de esto hubiera sido posible sin él.”, expresa nuestra entrevistada. Karen comenta para finalizar: ”los involucrados en “Láuder”, trabajamos duro para que los participantes reciban el reconocimiento y la difusión que se merecen y estamos emocionados por el alcance que el proyecto pueda llegar a tener;.” ASí LO DIJO “Me siento feliz y esperanzada al saber que esto es apenas el comienzo, porque tenemos un mundo de posibilidades. Me enorgullece ser pionera en este tipo de proyectos y espero que esto sea un parteaguas en cómo la gente de Saltillo percibe el arte, sobre Proyecto Láuder” ¿QUIÉN ES KAREN DANIELA GONZÁLEZ ELIZONDO? Karen es egresada de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila y gusta escribir en su tiempo libre, por lo que ha tomado varios cursos y talleres de creación literaria que la han ido formando como escritora. https://www.eldiariodecoahuila.com.mx/sociales/2020/4/15/busca-mediante-sus-textos-visibilizar-la- violencia-hacia-las-mujeres-cabeza-892725.html
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Illustration by Dewey Bryan Saunders
The small Native American tribe fighting Trump's wall in South Texas
By Robert Dean
May 20, 2020
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When President Trump announced plans to build a wall along the Rio Grande River, Juan Mancias smelled a rat. Mancias is the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribal leader and a founding member of the Texas chapter of the American Indian Movement — not to mention an experienced human rights advocate and Native rights activist. When Trump first touted his plans to run a border wall through South Texas back in October 2018, Mancias couldn’t make sense of how this new construction would help protect the border, where his family has lived for generations. Through some document digging, though, he’d eventually uncover a possible alternative reason the government was so desperately seeking a border fence in this area — and Mancias thinks it has little to do with national security.
The land in question spans 1,954 miles in Texas along the state’s border with Mexico. It snakes through Cameron, Starr, and Hidalgo counties, passing through the city of Brownsville and up to McAllen. Included in this region are multiple Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe burial sites stretching from the Garcia Pasture down to the Eli Jackson Cemetery. The Carrizo/Comecrudo people were in Texas long before the Spanish colonists or any other white folks set foot on their land; the entire Rio Grande Valley is their ancestral home.
Mancias is an intense man — tall, with long silver hair and a commanding presence. Years of legal battles over land and human rights atrocities have left Mancias suspicious of simple answers and fluffy rhetoric. Case in point: When the city of San Antonio asked him to come to the Alamo as a “spiritual leader” for an anniversary speech in the spring of 2018, Mancias didn’t offer warm words about cultures bonding. Instead,
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the tribal head flipped the script, speaking at length about the slaughter of Native people on the supposed “hallowed ground.”
Given his generations-long commitment to the land and his status as a revered community leader, Mancias is uniquely qualified to lead the charge against this section of Trump’s border wall. His initial question was simple: Why is the Trump administration pushing so hard for a glorified fence in the Rio Grande Valley, where the river itself has long served as a natural wall since boundary lines between Mexico and the U.S. were established in the 19th century?
A map showing the region of South Texas where Native lands are threatened by Trump's border wall and the construction of a liquefied natural gas pipeline. [Dejan Cuturilov/fiverr.com/truesightdesign]
With a width of nearly three football fields, pollution from years of misuse, and powerful undercurrents, the Rio Grande River is already a deadly barrier to entry for immigrants and refugees attempting to slip across the U.S.-Mexico border unnoticed. And if the topography weren’t enough on its own, there’s also comprehensive U.S. surveillance in the area. Government helicopters patrol the skies, while state and local law enforcement cruise adjacent roadways and patrol the water with speedboats, keeping an eye on the river 24/7.
In other words: There are plenty of longstanding obstacles to illegal border crossings. That’s why Mancias started digging for another reason to build a border wall — and he found that 28 Environmental Protection 102
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Agency laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act were being ignored in order to force the wall through. The structure would disrupt historic tribal lands and create a path of destruction through the Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and down to the National Butterfly Center, a federally recognized preservation area for a variety of wildlife species and a critical stopping point for migrating monarch butterflies.
A sign posted outside the National Butterfly Center. [Robert Dean]
Mancias’s theory is this: The government is using the border wall to hide what they really want to build, which is a liquefied natural gas pipeline. Both projects would infringe on tribal lands, but per Mancias, the border wall is the patriotic cover story that allows the government to secure the permits and land deeds they need to plow the pipeline project forward. The Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe sees themselves as protectors and defenders of this land. From the rocks to the trees, this place is their history, even if they are a relatively small group at only 2,500 members. So they plan to fight the incursions.
After decades working to advance Native American causes, Mancias has established a two-fold method of attack for when problems like this arise. The most visible side is the public fight and begins when a group of 103
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protesters occupy the indigenous site under threat to ensure safety and preservation. But historical nightmares like Wounded Knee and recent occupations like Standing Rock have made clear to Mancias that this isn’t enough to win the public battle. It’s the work done behind the scenes — researching and preparing for contentious court battles — that is the only way to truly beat the federal government.
Mancias reached out to Ray Cavazos, a native of the Rio Grande Valley whose family’s presence in the area dates back to pre-Spanish rule. The Cavazos family owns a large piece of property along the river. For generations, this slice of the Rio Grande has been quiet, but now, it’s littered with noise pollution. Only a patch of tall grass and bamboo separates Cavazos’s property and Trump’s wall — hardly enough to keep out construction noises.
The sun setting over the bend of the Rio Grande River, as seen from Ray Cavazos's property near where the wall is being constructed. [Robert Dean]
Tell me where the immigration crisis is. Because I don't see it ... This is pure hate.
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The thing people don’t understand about the wall is that it’s not one long stretch of fence. It’s pieces of steel situated on various parts of available property. Cavazos and his family immediately granted the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe permission to camp on their land, should they want to act as watchdogs while the government’s bulldozers inch closer every day.
"This wall is the dumbest of the dumb,” Cavazos told Mic in December while watching the purple sunset over the water from the dock he and his cousins built by hand as young boys.
“Anyone who knows this river knows the wall is going to kill this land,” Cavazos says, “and soon these banks are going to be gone. The river already carries natural debris. The wall is going to lead to further erosion which will clog up how [the river] moves. It'll create a dam. Who's going to pay for that?"
Cavazos stood quiet for a moment, with the stillness of the water behind him, before spreading his arms out to indicate the silent landscape. "Tell me where the immigration crisis is,” he says. “Because I don't see it. I don't know what these people are thinking. This is pure hate."
Because Cavazos’s family hasn’t granted the government permission to build on their land, the wall will be constructed instead in bits and pieces all along the border. Not only is that worse for the surrounding environment, but one could also argue that it seems like more work than it’s worth. Just about everyone along the border knows that if they deny the government, they’ll eventually end up in court.
In this case, that’s the outcome the tribe is hoping for, given that they don’t have the same legal claim to the land on paper that a deeded landowner would. Recently, a judge has allowed a lawsuit to move forward in the courts with both landowners and the tribe represented, and a new court case is coming in November.
Mancias agrees with Cavazos that the wall would devastate the Valley, but he knows an argument about disrupted butterfly flight patterns or overarching racism won’t win this fight. If he can raise awareness of how the proposed sites would desecrate Native burial grounds, though, the tribe might stand a chance.
The tribe has representation in Washington with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but because they’re not a federally recognized group, the government has no obligation to adhere to any Native American protection laws when it comes to disrupting Carrizo/Comecrudo lands — like Garcia Pasture, located down near Brownsville.
Garcia Pasture was a massive hub of commerce for Native tribes, and as a result, the site is rich with artifacts. But a proposal for a liquefied natural gas pipeline that originated in 2016 has recently started to take shape — and its proposed trajectory would disrupt Garcia Pasture. Called the “Rio Grande LNG,” the pipeline is a massive undertaking, with a 984-acre pumping station sitting smack-dab in Brownsville.
The LNG pipeline is what Mancias found when he started digging through files, following his hunch that the border wall near McAllen made no practical sense. Since discovering the pipeline plans in 2017, Mancias, along with other ecological rights groups, has protested any further disruption of the Garcia Pasture area until its full cultural potential is known. As of today, over 300 Native American artifacts, in addition to ceremonial graves, have been found there.
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Mancias sees the pipeline project as another example of companies trying to bulldoze the environment to push their capitalist agenda, just as Trump has already done to clear the way for his wall. So since 2017, he has been working around the clock, filing injunctions, using writs of seizure and sale, looking for every loophole — every piece of legislation on the books — to tie the wall up in courts.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Hidalgo County, another sector of the tribe’s most cherished land — the Eli Jackson Cemetery, which is home to many of their ancestors — is in danger of being disturbed by Trump’s construction plans. Up until about a year ago, most people in the Valley didn’t know what the Eli Jackson Cemetery was or where they could find it. Located off a dirt road about 15 miles outside McAllen, it's not the kind of spot people go looking for. But buried at the Eli Jackson Cemetery are Carrizo/Comecrudo veterans from World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, along with others in graves that pre-date Texas.
The tribe heard about the possible disruption of the Eli Jackson Cemetery and Garcia Pasture back in 2005, although nothing really started to take shape until late 2015 when an inside government source let them know what was being planned for the pipeline project. That’s when the tribe and other concerned parties spurred into action.
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A flag near the entrace of the Yalui Village camp. [Robert Dean]
After learning of the threat to this land, the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe moved quickly to protect the sacred area, setting up what they dubbed the “Yalui Village” camp at the entrance to the graveyard. It’s dotted with tents and shelters, along with a fire that sits front and center in the graveyard that they believe can’t be put out; for the tribe members, the blaze is a symbol of cleansing and renewal, an emblem of their fight. The goal is to stop anyone from trespassing on this sacred land — especially the government. The small settlement has flags championing indigenous rights, along with a giant yellow banner that bellows: "Human Remains Are Human! Respect Them."
At the camp, Mancias and his tribe have welcomed outsiders who have joined in the fight against Trump’s border wall. Former freight hoppers who go by the names of Wolf and Danny jumped trains down to South Texas to join the resistance. "This is important,” Wolf told Mic in December, while stoking the fire at Yalui Village. “We can't let them build a wall based on greed."
So far, Wolf and Danny have equipped the graveyard camp with solar panels and a mobile kitchen. They also keep an ever-present eye on their surroundings. Awareness is especially important when Mancias is on-site, because government officials seem to magically appear in his wake, he says.
“Whenever I’m at Yalui,” Mancias says, “you’ll see choppers over the property more than usual. You’ll see undercover trucks. They’re always watching. They don’t like it when I come around.”
We want to make sure they recognize our presence.
"We left for two days,” he adds, “and the truck we keep on the property was messed with. They did a whole bunch of stuff to the engine. They pulled spark plugs so it couldn't run."
Government officials have denied to Mancias that they meddled with his or his tribe’s property. And last July, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said it would “avoid” the Eli Jackson Cemetery land while still fulfilling the mission of Trump’s border wall. (Mic reached out to various federal and state agencies for comment on this story, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Texas governor’s office, but none replied.)
Once the Yalui Village camp was up and running and the court battle pending, “we filed a cease and desist to stop the wall going forward,” Mancias says. “We want to make sure they recognize our presence.”
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A sign posted at the Yalui Village camp. [Robert Dean]
All the while, Mancias dug deeper into the Trump administration’s plans. He had a hunch from the tribe’s efforts near Brownsville that the connection between the LNG pipeline and the border wall wasn’t coincidental. “When they said the LNG pipeline was happening, we went down [to Brownsville]. We got involved in the fight against fracking, we assisted landowners, fighting against building more wells. We set up camps, we’ve been fighting the toxic waste issue.” 108
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“Now, they’re using the wall as a cover up,” he says. “This is about oil, not safety.”
The pipeline is being developed with as much help from the state of Texas as possible, but while you can Google its name and look at the plans, no one is really talking about it. News of a South Texas pipeline isn’t a secret, but it does make for a convenient distraction for the government, per Mancias's theory.
Mancias knows answers often lurk in seemingly benign government documents, so he checked permits and land use codes and discovered a vital piece of information. Turns out, "this wall isn't actually on the border,” Mancias explains.
The Los Angeles Times quoted a Border Patrol official in 2018 who acknowledge that the topography in south Texas made for some unique hurdles. “The Rio Grande has a set of challenges nowhere else has in that the wall is not on the border, and there’s some homes we have to accommodate access to,” the official said. Per Mancias, that's exactly the issue.
“They're creating a no-go zone that will disrupt lives thanks to eminent domain. We'll be blocked from the water and the land this community has known for generations,” he says, noting records available in Zapata and Webb Counties in particular, which stretch east up the Texas border from Hidalgo County (home to McAllen). In Zapata and Webb Counties, the government has applied for permits to build pipelines. “Anyone can go right now to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,” Mancias says. “It’s public knowledge.”
The guise of new jobs and industry coupled with good ole’ American scare tactics could help get the wall up while also laying the groundwork for the Rio Grande LNG. It’s the perfect storm of private business and public funding, if you ask Mancias. His theory isn't confirmed, nor is it an overarching narrative, but it is one that the longtime tribal leader believes. And because the building of the wall will facilitate the clearing of the tribal land, Mancias says, when citizens do eventually get wind of the shady practices, it will be too late. The land will be already taken.
“They say it’ll be clean, but it won’t,” Mancias says of the LNG pipeline. “We believe they’re staging attacks, ramping up the border scares, to get this pushed through.”
Could South Texas become another Standing Rock? Is the wall about protecting Americans, or is it a red herring to facilitate pipeline greed? If you ask Mancias, he'll tell you it's just business as usual.
https://www.mic.com/p/the-small-native-american-tribe-fighting-trumps-wall-in-south-texas- 22612542?utm_campaign=mic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
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