Jimena Duran Castellanos is a native of Hidalgo Mexico and a junior in the PVAMU School of Architecture She researched and wrote this essay as a project during her 2019 summer internship with the TIPHC Jimena is also a student-athlete as a member of the Panthers’ women’s tennis team She is proud that tennis has given her the opportunity to study and play in the United States learn the country’s cultures as well as that of Texas: “I have been living in Texas for almost three years and living here makes me love my roots and culture even more I understand that the history of my country is very dramatic because of the cultural shock that happened between Mexican natives and Spaniards after the discovery of the “New World” settlers brought African and Asian people to New Spain (Mexico) and that produced more changes in the country’s social structure as the mixture of cultures and races led to complications between races people’s race does not determine what kind of life a person can have people are more concerned with their social reputation and financial position I knew that Vicente Guerrero had African roots but I never thought about why it was important back then to have a black president Now I understand because during those times in the Americas people of color needed to be heard and understood Guerrero gave freedom to the marginalized classes in Mexico because he identified himself with their issues thus people identified with him and his policies those facts were part of understanding why he achieved what he did It was not until I came to the United States a culturally and socially different country when I found that race was crucial for determining who someone was I realized that perhaps things have not particularly changed I support the idea that no matter the race we all can achieve what we desire if we have a purpose I am proud to say that he was the first black president in North America There were many reasons why people craved independence in New Spain but most obvious was that nobody wanted to be controlled anymore the issues were much more complex than that People were tired of seeing the rich getting richer while the working class and the poor struggled to sustain their lives They were eager to be able to decide what to do with their lives and be what they wanted but labeling based on skin color was a great limitation to their cause The social classes largely depended on race and back then races were easily distinguished with each race having a different standing in society and other marginalized groups united to fight for their land and freedom in the independence movement to terminate the Spanish rule in New Spain It was not until they rebelled against the Spanish that they had a voice This essay will detail the life of Vicente Guerrero his fight for the liberty of his people and their homeland which led to him being hailed as “Mexico’s greatest man of color.” Vicente Ramon Guerrero Saldaña was born on August 9 Vicente Guerrero did not have a formal education while growing up but he dedicated his time to farming activities and working as an “arriero” both of his parents were devout supporters of the Spanish rule in New Spain New Spain likely had the largest number of African slaves of all the Americas Afro-Mexicans outnumbered Spanish and Mestizos (persons of indigenous and Spanish mixed-descent) in urban towns the numbers increased to 116,529 for Afro-Mexicans and 35,089 for those African identified Clearly the number of children from mixed unions accounted for the much of the growth African-descended populations thus comprised 8.8 percent compared to Spaniards and their descendants The New Spaniard society was not only constituted of Spanish and African races as the mid-16th century saw Spaniards beginning to bring from their Pacific colony New Spain began to get a great variety of mixed races that were each identified as a “casta” for instance: mestizos The colonies were a fundamental pillar for the development of European countries by providing them with goods and a workforce which helped countries to get richer and more powerful over European kingdoms Historians have shown that many of the goods that Europeans craved such as gold and other products that Europeans did not have were the fruits of enslaving people from places they had conquered Slavery had existed well before the discovery of the “New World”; however the commerce of Africans became important for Europe only after the 15th century when they began to settle there and build colonies The first Africans in New Spain accompanied explorers and conquistadors like Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes Later enslaved Africans were taken to work in cotton fields or sugar plantations blacks started to take roles previously performed by Mexican natives whose population steadily declined from years of abuse from conquistadors as well as the introduction of European diseases It is estimated that 25 to 30 million West Africans were deported from their home countries and sold to different enslavers approximately 10 or 12 million slaves were brought to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries there were only three ports in which Africans could be brought: Veracruz they would be transported and distributed to other areas of the country Slavery lasted more than 300 years in New Spain until Vicente Guerrero abolished the practice in 1829 almost 40 years before President Abraham Lincoln would do the same in the United States when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 Vicente Guerrero’s journey as a national hero began while traveling as an “arriero” around New Spain and becoming familiar with the growing independence movement and meeting Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon Guerrero started his military career in 1810 after meeting Morelos and participated in many important engagements under the command of insurgent leader Hermenegildo Galeana After Morelos was executed by a Spanish firing squad in 1815 Guerrero became the new Commander in Chief of the insurgent army Guerrero became more powerful with every victory and in an effort to stop him convinced his father to beg his son to offer his sword in surrender to the viceroy of New Spain He has come to offer me rewards in the name of the Spaniards Even after losing a majority of his forces the young Guerrero continued to fight in southern New Spain with only a handful of remaining insurgents years of fighting took a heavy toll on the Spanish decided to make peace with Guerrero to stop the war that had lasted more than ten years and the agreement was sealed with the well-known “Abrazo de Acatempan” (The Acatempan Hug because the two men’s embrace occurred in that city) on February 10 1821 when both legions united to form the “Trigarante” army (the Army of Three Guarantees—religion Iturbide wrote the “El Plan de Iguala” on February 24 that declared Mexico as an independent and sovereign nation where the following points were established: New Spain became the Mexican Empire and its first emperor would be Agustin de Iturbide in 1822 though he ruled for only ten months because the empire was in an economic crisis and its problems were overwhelming with no further funding from Spain or other countries General Iturbide lacked the ability to lead the nation and its people were not happy with the new government because its policies did not help the working and poor classes who were the most affected by the consequences of independence recognized the problems and proclaimed Mexico as a Republic With the help of powerful generals like Nicolas Bravo they fought for the people and defeated Iturbide who abdicated his position in March 1823 a Supreme Executive Power governed the nation and Guerrero was an important member of that group a new Constitution proclaimed Guadalupe Victoria as the first president of Mexico when Victoria’s presidency was about to end and conservative candidate Manuel Gomez Pedraza Guerrero’s supporters did not like the results and forced Gomez resign his presidency 1829 Guerrero became the second president of the republic A “casta” referred to the social stratum in which someone belonged according to his/her race or mixture of races in the Spanish colonies (New Spain and the Philippines) Each “casta” had a particular name depending on the race or mixture of races Guerrero managed to defend Mexico from an attempt by the Spanish to reconquer the nation he exhausted the nation’s back up financial resources which was met with disapproval from the country’s aristocracy Guerrero made remarkable changes to support working classes fought for both racially and economically oppressed people and promoted the purchase of Mexican products His government was clearly dedicated to the people who had many needs after years and years of conflict that left the nation with a predominantly poor class to celebrate the anniversary of independence with an act of justice Guerrero formally abolished slavery in Mexico except in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the south of the country and even members of his administration opposed and betrayed him did not like the idea of losing the economic power they had based on slavery Texas was still part of the Republic of Mexico and Guerrero’s order arrived in Texas October 16 but political chief Ramon Musquiz’ workers rejected it because it violated the colonization laws that secured the settlers properties Guerrero’s decree did not make any changes over slavery in Texas This ultimately became a reason why Texas decided to secede from Mexico and join the United States His own officials said that he did not possess the intellectual capacities to govern a nation ordered his assassination without a legal trial Gurrerro was found and killed at the age of 39 in Cuilapam The phrase “My Motherland comes first” has proliferated over time and it reminds Mexicans that their independence was not given The state of Guerrero was named after Vicente Guerrero and is the only state named after a former Mexican head of state is now home to one of several Afro-Mexican communities in Mexico Africans left their cultural expressions in Mexico as well as their genetic imprint in states such as Veracruz Although the race is blurry or difficult to identify thanks to the mixture of races throughout Mexican history today there are many terms used by black Mexicans to identify themselves such as negro (black) one of the official ethnicity options on Mexico’s census form will be ‘negro’ (black) a great achievement by the black community in Mexico for having their African roots recognized Mexican culture would not be the same today if Africans had not been brought there Mexico would not be what it is if someone like Vicente Guerrero had not fought for his land and his rights which is why he has been called “Mexico’s greatest man of color.” — Los Primeros Africanos en el Nuevo Mundo (The First Africans in the New World): http://www.omerfreixa.com.ar/los-esclavos-africanos-en-el-nuevo-mundo-todo-es-historia/ — The African-American Migration Story: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/on-african-american-migrations/ — ¿Cuando y Por Que Llegaron? (When and Why Did They Come?): https://relatosehistorias.mx/nuestras-historias/cuando-y-por-que-llegaron — What Part of Africa Did Most Slaves Come From?: https://www.history.com/news/what-part-of-africa-did-most-slaves-come-from — Transatlantic Slave Trade: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/slave-route/transatlantic-slave-trade/ — Transatlantic Slave Trade: https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade#accordion-article-history — Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/legacy/almleg.html — Vicente Guerrero: https://www.blackpast.org/aaw/vignette_aahw/guerrero-vicente-1783-1831/ — Vicente Guerrero: https://relatosehistorias.mx/nuestras-historias/vicente-guerrero — Vicente Guerrero: The First Black President in North America: https://kentakepage.com/vicente-guerrero-the-first-black-president-in-north-america/ — Iturbide y La Independencia (Iturbide and The Independence): http://www.mexicanisimo.com.mx/iturbide-y-la-independencia/ — El Plan de Iguala (The “Plan de Iguala”): https://www.historiadelnuevomundo.com/index.php/2017/06/el-plan-de-iguala/ — Agustin de Iturbide, Primer Emperador de Mexico (Agustin de Iturbide, The First Emperor of Mexico): https://morelianas.com/articulos/agustin-de-iturbide-primer-emperador-de-mexico/ — El Fin del Imperio ¿Nacimiento de la Republica? (The End of The Empire. The Beginning of The Republic?): https://todoeshistoria.net/2012/03/19/el-fin-del-imperio-nacimiento-de-la-republica/ — Guadalupe Victoria Primer Presidente de Mexico (Guadalupe Victoria First President of Mexico): https://www.inside-mexico.com/guadalupe-victoria-primer-presidente-mexico/ — ¿Como Fue el Gobierno de Vincente Guerrero (How was Vicente Guerrero’s Presidency?): https://www.lifeder.com/gobierno-vicente-guerrero/ — Vicente Guerrero The Black President of Mexico: http://www.saobserver.com/single-post/2018/01/23/Vicente-Guerrero-the-Black-President-of-Mexico — The Untold History of Afro-Mexicans, Mexico’s Forgotten Ethnic Group: https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/the-untold-history-of-afro-mexicans-mexicos-forgotten-ethnic-group/ -- The Troubling History of Big Tobacco’s Cozy Ties With Black Leaders -- Black Artists and the March Into the Museum The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Integration of Houston" -- New book chronicles African-American characters in "The Little Rascals" -- Study: Black athletes and “The height of hypocrisy in higher education” -- TBHPP Bookshelf: "Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South" SK Guns has launched the fourth pistol in its Mexican War of Independence series called the “Guerrero.” The Guerrero is a full-size Government Model Colt 1911 chambered in .38 Super that celebrates Vincente Guerrero the second president of the Mexican Republic the Guerrero Colt 1911 handgun has an anticipated production run of only 200 units More about Vicente Guerrero: He joined the fighting forces of Morelos to battle against Spain early in the Mexican War for Independence Guerrero famously abolished slavery in Mexico Guerrero was asked for his sword to be presented to the viceroy of New Spain as a sign of goodwill Guerrero refused saying “LA PATRIA ES PRIMERO” (translated This phrase is still referred to today as the motto of the Mexican State of Guerrero and is written in gold letters at the National Palace The left side of the firearm depicts details of Guerrero’s connection with the indigenous Aztecs including a Jaguar fighter reflected in his Coat of Arms and within the borders of the motto La Patria Es Primero Additional shading of the Aztecs flows on the frame and slide flats Union” surrounding a depiction of the shield embroidered with the royal crown following the victory in the Mexican War for Independence This depiction is followed by the Abrazo de Acatempan with Guerrero and Iturbide while the frame flat continues the indigenous connection with Guerrero and the Aztec Jaguar glyph On top of the slide is a portrait of Presidente Guerrero and the Mexican eagle and snake relative to its era barrel and hardware are all highly polished and sport .999 silver plating in select areas Making this historical masterpiece complete are Kirnite grips presenting the silver emblem of the iconic Rampant Colt each Guerrero Colt 1911 pistol will include a special engraved edition number “We are excited to honor an instrumental figure in Mexico’s War for Independence Guerrero was at the center of iconic moments in Mexican history and this allowed us to create a truly striking and unique firearm,” Simon Khiabani MSRP for the Guerrero Colt 1911 starts at $3,000. Go to skguns.com Team Remington’s Madison Sharpe and Todd Hitch claim Main Event High Over All titles at 2025 U.S Magpul allows customizable sight picture selection by adding a hooded front sight variant to its MBUS Pro sight A short history of Winter Olympic Biathlon competition from 1960 to 1976 Highlights from the May 2025 issue of Shooting Sports USA Here’s a look at each product in the new MDT Nanoguard lineup Four taxi drivers were murdered in the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco in a period of just 24 hours this week while the fourth killing came shortly after taxi drivers participated in a protest on Tuesday during which they called on authorities to put an end to violence in Guerrero state’s largest city armed men opened fire from a vehicle and killed three taxi drivers at a taxi stand in the Las Cruces neighborhood of Acapulco another taxi driver was gunned down while walking in the beachside Hornos residential district He reportedly fell into the El Camarón River after he was shot Three other taxi drivers were wounded in a separate armed attack at a taxi stand in an inland neighborhood of Acapulco Authorities have not arrested or identified any of the perpetrators of the attacks 🗣️#Acapulco | Taxistas de la ruta de Las Cruces bloquearon los dos sentidos del bulevar Vicente Guerrero para exigir justicia y seguridad luego del asesinato de tres de sus compañeros en un ataque al sitio.📲https://t.co/PIYBhoXqek pic.twitter.com/rxMBBeyAwT — Meganoticias IXT (@MeganoticiasIXT) October 15, 2024 The attacks on Tuesday came after taxi drivers blocked the Vicente Guerrero boulevard to protest insecurity in Acapulco protesters complained that Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado hasn’t met with them and presented a security plan for Acapulco “We need more reliable security,” one taxi driver told the Milenio newspaper “…We’ve seen the security that the urban [transport] vans have … We need that security [as well],” he said In addition to calling on the state government to do more to combat violence in Acapulco taxi drivers urged the army and National Guard to take action against crime groups They held up signs with messages such as “We’re taxi drivers we demand security” and “We don’t want any more taxi drivers murdered.” Acapulco has been identified as a priority municipality for the new federal government as it seeks to reduce homicides in Mexico’s most violent cities via the implementation of a new national security security In addition to violence, the city has been severely affected by two hurricanes in less than a year. Hurricane Otis devastated Acapulco in late October 2023, while Hurricane John claimed lives and caused major flooding in the city last month ADVERTISE WITH MND COMMUNITY GUIDELINES Subscription FAQ's Privacy Policy Mexico News Daily - Property of Tavana LLC Almost 180 years before Barack Obama was elected the first Black president of the United States Vicente Guerrero became the first Black president of Mexico Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña was born in 1782 to an Indigenous mother and African-Mexican father Described by contemporaries as “bronze-faced tall and strapping,” Guerrero was one of the leading insurgent generals during the War of Independence Guerrero enlisted in José María Morelos’ army in southern Mexico in December 1810 After the executions of Miguel Hidalgo in 1811 and Morelos in 1815 Guerrero emerged as the visible leader in the War of Independence seeing that conditions could favor the flagging insurgent cause Guerrero combined his forces with those of royalist leader Agustín de Iturbide Their combined army entered Mexico City in triumph on September 27 The first 30 years following independence were turbulent with heads of state coming and going in rapid succession: 49 presidencies between 1824 and 1857 was the only president to complete his full four-year term Victoria came to power by overthrowing Iturbide’s Mexican Empire Freemasonry was an important social force in the early republic In the 1828 election to succeed Victoria as president the Scottish Rite and the York Rite were the de facto political parties Guerrero was the candidate of the liberal York Rite Manuel Gómez Pedraza – who had been a staunch royalist until the very end of the independence struggle and a supporter of the First Empire – ran as the candidate of the “Scots.” with Guerrero coming in second in an indirect election by state legislatures of using the military to influence the election Antonio López de Santa Anna – governor of Veracruz and a former officer in the War of Independence – called for nullifying Pedraza’s election and declaring Guerrero president Guerrero’s supporters marched into Mexico City and violence erupted President-elect Pedraza resigned and fled to England a conservative former royalist military officer named Anastasio Bustamante Guerrero, who was seen as a liberal hero of the independence and was visibly mixed-race, represented a step towards empowering Mexico’s Indigenous, mixed-race, and Black majority Although several states had abolished slavery upon independence Guerrero took it a step further and abolished the condition of slavery throughout Mexico 1829 – 34 years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation –  Guerrero issued a decree that slavery was abolished in the Republic of Mexico and that those who had been enslaved were now free Guerrero was deposed by a rebellion led by Bustamante He fled south to assemble troops to fight the rebellion but was captured in Acapulco by a Genovese merchant ship captain and was paid 50,000 pesos for his role in the coup plot Picaluga turned Guerrero over to federal troops in Oaxaca where he was court-martialed and executed by firing squad in the town of Cuilapan Historian Juan Ortiz Escamilla writes that “Guerrero’s government was discredited not because he headed a supposedly ‘illegitimate’ government but because he was Black; ‘Black Guerrero,’ as the Mexico City aristocracy pejoratively referred to him They hated him because they were segregationists and because he impeded the preservation of their rights They killed him in a bold-faced act of racism.” Abolishing slavery in Mexico opened a new route to freedom for people escaping slavery in the U.S author of the groundbreaking 2020 book “South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War,” estimates that thousands of enslaved people reached freedom in Mexico Some enslaved people received help from the loosely organized Underground Railroad to Mexico ship and barge captains and even mail carriers Many runaways used their own ingenuity – acquiring forged travel passes they disguised themselves as white men and women the northern states were hundreds of miles away and even if they managed to cross the Mason-Dixon line fugitive slaves could be captured and returned to their enslavers Felix Haywood was born into slavery in St. Hedwig, Texas, in 1844.  Interviewed for the federal Slave Narrative Project in 1936 at the age of 92 he recalled that others would sometimes “come ’long and tell us we should run up North to be free and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande Hundreds of slaves did go to Mexico and got on all right We would hear about ‘em and how they was goin’ to be Mexicans They brought up their children to speak only Mexican.” Project Manager of the Texas Runaway Slave Project at Stephen F which documents and archives records of slaves who escaped to Mexico “I am constantly amazed by the courage of runaways… inevitably every escape required that runaway slaves take risks with uncertain outcomes That so many made it to Mexico is a testament to their desire for freedom and a better life.” abolitionists like Nathaniel Jackson and John Webber had ranches that provided refuge as they assisted escapees from slavery in getting to Mexico left Alabama in the 1850s with his African-American wife Matilda and their children to escape the intolerance of interracial marriage Founding a ranch on the Rio Grande in Texas he became part of the underground railroad to Mexico John Webber was a white settler who fell in love with Silvia Hector He purchased her freedom and the freedom of her children from his business partner and moved to the Rio Grande Valley just down from Jackson and his wife Webber would ferry runaways across the Rio Grande to freedom Both families were well known in the clandestine network of runaways and abolitionists “The evidence that Mexican officials and citizens protected freedom seekers comes from various sources—municipal records in Mexico citizens were arrested for attempting to kidnap fugitive slaves and Mexican military records.” American diplomats pressured Mexico to sign an extradition treaty to return the runaway slaves to their owners but Mexico flatly refused each time – in 1850 “Mexico actually contributed to global debates about slavery and freedom and is rarely given credit for its role in providing a safe haven for runaway slaves The enslaved people who escaped from the United States and the Mexican citizens who protected them ensured that the promise of freedom in Mexico was significant,” Baumgartner says Guerrero championed the causes of the racially and economically oppressed He has been honored as a folk hero of the War of Independence his role in ending slavery was his greatest achievement as president and its impact on escapees from slavery in the United States is now being recognized Sheryl Losser is a former public relations executive, researcher, writer, and editor. She has been writing professionally for 35 years.  She moved to Mazatlán in 2021 and works part-time doing freelance research and writing. She can be reached at [email protected] "I was shocked at the poverty and the level of emotion that hit me," said Teri Dose a Pine Island resident who traveled to the Mexican town "I literally cried on and off for a couple of days when I got home." This was Dose's first mission trip to Mexico the family joined 27 members of Pine Island's Saint Paul Lutheran Church ELCA to build homes for needy families during a recent spring break trip March 19-26 "The level of poverty that these folks live with," Dose said "I’ve been a social worker for 30 years here but I've never seen poverty to that level." Dose and her team build a home – a 20-by-22-foot wood home on concrete slab with a door that locks and windows – for a family that had been living on a dirt floor shack made of cardboard The trip was organized for the missionaries from Pine Island by YWAM – Youth With a Mission – a California-based organization that focuses on building homes in the Mexican state Karen Doll has been on all five trips to Vicente Guererro with Saint Paul Lutheran Doll took a trip to an orphanage in the city in 2001 with a friend and learned about the mission trip opportunity she'd convinced her pastor to let the church sponsor a mission trip – after raising funds for the project – and took their first trip to Baja California in 2008 going again every three years until COVID made them skip 2020 and it's recommended children 12 and older participate so if there are younger kids they’d have to have their parents watch them," Doll said The larger group splits into groups of about 10 or 11 to build a home for a family The recipients of these homes are very poor families who make just dollars a day working in the fruit and vegetable fields the children have to leave school in about third or fourth grade to help support the family they find families who have purchased a piece of land for a home but paying off the loan for that land can take a generation and any thought of building an actual home might take another generation those families can keep their children in school longer “It’s the only way end this cycle of poverty," she said Doll said church members in Pine Island fund-raise the money for building materials and when they arrive YWAM has a cement slab poured and the missionaries need just follow the plans they were able to add solar panels to the homes to give them electricity and by Thursday we have a house built," she said YWAM has helped mission teams build more than 2,000 homes in the region Pastor Marie Anderson from Saint Paul Lutheran said the mission trips provide a tangible benefit for the families in Mexico – a real home that is safe and helps them move away from poverty – but it gives much to those who go from her church as well "God expects us to provide for others," Anderson said "There's a reason why we don’t just spend money Our point of view for the world is enlarged often has a lasting impression on the missionaries making them more grateful for the things we have here in America giving them the desire to help more people it opens their eyes to a level of poverty they haven’t been used to," Anderson said they have a chance to have faith conversations that generally don’t happen at home." Doll said the experience also teaches those on the mission teams to step back and see what is important Young musicians from the makeshift Oaxaca neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero have defied the odds to offer hope to their blighted community the music school in Vicente Guerrero is abuzz with preparations for the debut concert of its chamber orchestra: in one shady corner a group of fledgling clarinetists are practising breathing exercises; in the courtyard the cello section are rehearsing scales; nearby a flute lesson for five schoolgirls is under way What makes this idyllic scene so remarkable is Vicente Guerrero’s location on the edge of a vast rubbish dump. The community, in one of Mexico’s poorest states has a reputation for drug abuse and gang violence But it is undergoing a transformation after a fortuitous encounter with a French pilot helped launch a musical venture offering rare hope to its youth and the neighbourhood is now home to 13,000 people But Vicente Guerrero still has few basic services but just one health clinic and one paved road The music school opened in 2011 as part of a violence-prevention programme set up by the local Catholic church a clarinet player from Oaxaca’s indigenous Zapoteco region 25 students learned to read music and tapped out rhythms on empty buckets and chairs View image in fullscreenArmando Juarez Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/The Guardian“The community’s reputation was so bad that that at first no other music teachers would come here,” said Lopez “People joked that in Vicente Guerrero they kill for free de Boves began collecting unwanted instruments from friends and relatives back home Within a couple of months she sent her first shipment: 21 trumpets and spoke about their dreams as musicians,” said De Boves “Their parents are good people: they fight for this project selling tortillas after mass every Sunday to buy instruments They didn’t expect anything and were not used to receiving help.” De Boves has organised countless benefit concerts in Paris to buy instruments and send musicians to give classes at the school which was built by the parents using materials paid for by Air France’s charitable foundation has become a focal point of the community and even the most sceptical parents are allowing their children to attend is the only sousaphone player – and one of the school’s most challenging pupils He joined last year around the same time he dropped out of primary school where he was in constant trouble for skipping classes and talking back to the teachers View image in fullscreenRigoberto Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/The Guardian“I preferred hanging out in the streets and doing graffiti with my friends,” said Júarez whose antics led to frequent fights with boys in other neighbourhoods short-tempered and just the kind of youngster the school was set up to serve his mother works long hours to make ends meet and his cousins are involved with local gangs I hardly hang out on the streets anymore.” The school now boasts 165 instruments and an impressive workshop run by local woman Patricia García who gained a scholarship to study instrument repair in Paris Most students pay 60 pesos (£2.50) per week but those from the poorest families attend for free Oaxaca has a rich musical history and most neighbourhoods have brass bands that perform at parties and religious functions The Vicente Guerrero school band is now gaining a reputation and plays at masses community events – and most recently at the city’s children’s hospital View image in fullscreenPatricia García in her workshop. Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/The GuardianThis year, the school has assembled an orchestra with a full string section. It makes its debut on Tuesday as part of International Music Day celebrations. On a recent morning, Vanessa Silva Vásquez, 8, was trying her best to grasp finger placements for the flute. She really wanted to play the saxophone, but her front tooth fell out and its replacement is stubbornly refusing to come through. Until that happens, the sax is out of the question. Nonetheless, she diligently attends classes six days a week. Vásquez’s parents moved from the coast 10 years ago to find work. “I never had the chance to play an instrument but music can distract children, stop them getting into trouble,” said her mother, Maria de Los Angeles Vásquez, 29. “It’s a long day after school, but Vanessa loves it and can’t wait till she’s good enough for the band.” Read moreMusic has buoyed this community’s collective sense of worth and is opening doors for some of the children who are starting to believe in themselves Florida Velasquez, 15, a talented clarinetist, was recently accepted at the prestigious Cecam indigenous music school becoming the fifth Vicente Guerrero student to gain a place studying elsewhere but was forced to drop out to work as a builder to support his family Velasquez still dreams of becoming a professional musician “Life has been really hard for us and I worry about my family all the time but music helps me imagine life outside of this neighbourhood – and think about a different future.” Lindsay Schakenbach Regele receives funding from Miami University and the Kluge Center Miami University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US View all partners If people know the name Joel Roberts Poinsett today, it is likely because of the red and green poinsettia plant In the late 1820s, while serving as the first ambassador from the U.S. to Mexico, Poinsett clipped samples of the plant known in Spanish as the “flor de nochebuena,” or flower of Christmas Eve, from the Mexican state of Guerrero. He then introduced it to the U.S The plant has been named poinsettia ever since Poinsett had a complex and troubling past An ambitious politician, financial investor and enslaver, Poinsett was a secret agent for the U.S government in South America who fought for the Chilean army against Spain during Chile’s War for Independence in the early 1800s A confidant of President Andrew Jackson, Poinsett also served as U.S. secretary of war under President Martin Van Buren and oversaw the ignominy of the Trail of Tears the forced relocation and deadly march of Cherokee people from the South to reservations in the West during the 1830s And yet Poinsett, an avid botanist who brought scores of other plants to the U.S., also helped found an organization that led to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution I came across his history almost by accident. I am a historian of capitalism in early America, and while I was on a research fellowship for my first book, “Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry,” another researcher suggested I go to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to check out the papers of a few War Department officials There, I found a large collection of his letters and other personal papers that spanned five decades of his life. I became so fascinated with his life that I decided to write a book about him. I detail his complicated life in another book and Money: Joel Roberts Poinsett and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism.” Poinsett was the son of a wealthy doctor and lived a life of privilege He traveled throughout Europe and Russia in his early 20s before starting a military career In the 1810s, Poinsett traveled around South America as a secret agent of the U.S. State Department. His intelligence reports led in part to the drafting of the Monroe Doctrine That doctrine, written by Secretary of State John Adams and buried in President James Monroe’s address to Congress on Dec sought to prevent European colonization in South America and claimed the entire Western Hemisphere for the U.S The doctrine also set the stage for two centuries of rocky relations between the U.S and Latin America It was on a trip to assess the profitability of some mines that Poinsett admired the red and green plant and cut clippings to send to horticulturalists in the U.S Exactly where and how these clippings were made and sent is not quite clear but he remarked on the beauty of the plants he saw which Franciscan friars in Mexico had been displaying at Christmas since the 1600s Several prominent horticulturalists in the United States later reported that Poinsett sent them plant samples agricultural reports described a plant with brilliant scarlet foliage “lately referred to as the poinsettia,” as having been introduced by Poinsett in 1828 Poinsett also supported a coup in Mexico City During the Mexican presidential campaign in 1829, Poinsett supported Vicente Guerrero, whom he saw as more amenable to his and U.S. financial interests. When Guerrero lost to moderate Manuel Gómez Pedraza Guerrero staged a coup with Poinsett’s approval that forced Gómez Pedraza to flee Mexico Because of Poinsett’s poor conduct during the election, the Mexican government requested Poinsett’s removal from his post. President Andrew Jackson instead allowed Poinsett to resign Poinsett left Mexico and went back home to South Carolina wealthy widow from South Carolina who owned a rice plantation and almost 100 enslaved people Though he wrote that he enjoyed married plantation life he was not done with politics or the military In 1837, Poinsett was named U.S. secretary of war and oversaw the execution of Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act that the Cherokee people referred to as the Trail of Tears That act saw the violent displacement of members of the Cherokee Chickasaw and Choctaw nations from their homelands in the South to reservations in the West Based on his travels and experiences around the world should have a national museum to conduct scientific research and display the expanding government collections In his retirement, Poinsett helped found in 1840 and became president of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts That organization later became part of the Smithsonian Institution whose gardens now showcase thousands of poinsettias during the Christmas season It remains unclear how long the plant that bears his name will remain known as the poinsettia. After years of controversy, the American Ornithological Society announced that it was going to remove all human names from as many as 152 bird species including those linked to people with racist histories or people who have done violence to Indigenous communities Though no attempts as yet have emerged to rename plants it’s my belief that Poinsett’s poinsettia may be the first Strawberries grown for export have become so valuable and are allowed to use more groundwater than nature replenishes what probably matters most in this story are the strawberries For most Mexicans in the northern Baja peninsula what matters is the robust economy strawberries bring what matters most is the steady loss of the fresh groundwater that makes strawberries possible here Visitors can see this meeting place while riding along the two-lane highway through the valley towns These sprawl at crazy angles in what academics call “anarchic growth.” Each year brings more ramshackle homes Seemingly endless strawberry fields surround town centers Old American school buses shuttle workers to and from the fields; trucks carry lumber and cement to construction sites Will the engine of strawberries continue powering the economy Sárah Eva Martínez, dean of academic affairs at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), a small college based in Tijuana whose researchers have done meticulous studies of agriculture and energy in the valley’s 1,437 square miles speculated that the strawberry fields may not last The government-supported system of overdrafting groundwater is “not working and they will get to a critical point when they see that they just can’t go on any longer,” she said Strawberries under cultivation - and under wraps - by the Pacific coast of Baja California. (Photo credit: Alan Harper/Flickr) There is another possibility: using water from the Pacific Ocean What happens in the next decade or two will decide whether the San Quintín valley towns begin to resemble Colorado ghost towns whose mines played out or continue to expand as farmers use strawberry profits to pay the immense energy cost of treating seawater 49 percent come from the San Quintín valley Meeting the demand for the berries has made Baja agriculture very lucrative.  roughly 9,000 tons of berries were produced in the San Quintin valley in the winter winter berries had a minimum value of 1.88 billion pesos — about $145 million in 2013 dollars As pumping exceeds the rate of natural recharge the groundwater basins have gotten saltier and saltier.  “Intensification of horticultural production has also contributed to a dramatic decline in the region’s water quality… [and] caused sustained saltwater intrusion in the watersheds which severely affected wells used for irrigation,” wrote Christian Zlolniski an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Texas in a 2011 edition of the journal “Cultural Anthropology farmers chose between cleaning the groundwater or reduced pumping and lower yields an agent of the Ensenada municipal water agency said the first desalination plant appeared in 1994 “Some can fit inside a truck container that runs from 50 to 150 gallons a minute,” said William Hedrick the operations vice president of the large BerryMex farms Larger ones produce “up to a plant that can range as high as 2,000 gallons a minute.” CONAGUA reports that 12,427,074 cubic meters Both pumping and desalination plants require government permits and A scholar with contacts in the berry-growing industry said they confirm that the government subsidizes electricity for desalination.  a senior researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera said that he has repeatedly sought data on these subsidies — which his research showed can reduce electrical costs by two-thirds — but he has not been successful.  The groundwater supply here was never abundant people lived by fishing and growing onions “We know pumping and water consumption in the area puts a big burden on the aquifers,” said Hedrick More than 74,000 acres of land in the San Quintín valley had been devoted to the older version of local agriculture in the 1980s with less water — and lower quality water — available for the strawberry and tomato crops the land under cultivation is less than 20,000 acres BerryMex “We’re in the middle of an ambitious project” to desalinate seawater “We are in the process of installing a plant — it’s 70 percent complete — on the Pacific coast of the town of San Quintín.” He added “Our future in the region going forward is totally dependent on seawater desalination.” The company aims to use solar power for the plant A BerryMex spokeswoman declined to give the plant’s cost The proliferation of subsidies of the San Quintín valley wells desalination plants and the electricity they need “is as crazy as it looks,” said Jay Famiglietti a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena We are seeing it all over the world: massive overdraft unlimited future source of water.” To have Baja’s desalination plants subsidized It’s a bad idea for the health of the aquifers.” a professor at the Oceanographic Research Institute at the University of Baja California in Ensenada said the BerryMex plant represents “the first time that seawater is being desalinated for agricultural purposes” in Mexico — and perhaps anywhere His reaction to the existing desalination of the groundwater is mixed “I don’t like natural systems being depleted for any purpose...” But “it is really hard to argue against the number of jobs produced “I’m a very big advocate of wastewater reuse But really there is no large urban area in San Quintín that would produce enough reclaimed water for irrigation.” The area’s misfortune is a fragile groundwater supply Its good fortune is its proximity to the United States About 180 miles up the road is the border where strawberries turn to gold Workers are employed by big operations like BerryMex and Los Pinos, or by mid-sized farms. For months in 2015, workers staged a strike over wages and living conditions One irony highlighted during the unrest: in a place whose economy depends on water and migrants More than 95 percent of the water in the valley goes for irrigation Academic researchers at COLEF put the national average at about 77 percent The population of the entire valley jumped to 92,177 people in 2010 according to a 2014 paper done by Marie Laure Coubès In 2010 in the town of San Quintín, COLEF reported, using state data, 1,667 households – comprising 17.6 percent of the population — had no fresh water piped into their homes Three years ago, strikers demanded desalinated water for people. Now a consortium consisting of an American company, RWL Water Group, and two Mexican partners is building $32 million new desalination plant to serve residents the increase in workers and the strike are the culmination of 24 years of desalination With it began this cycle: Desalination plants clean brackish groundwater The level of dissolved solids in seawater is 34,000 parts per million Hedrick said that the levels in at least one of the San Quintín basins exceed 10,000 ppm irrigation water should not exceed 450 ppm, more than 2,000 ppm is ruinous Using some of the techniques adopted by Driscoll’s Berries near the central California coast, San Quentín Farmers work to conserve water They use drip irrigation and some berries now grow in high cylindrical plastic greenhouses — Hedrick calls them “tunnels” — that cover fields with tightly bunched rows of off-white fabric production in such shielded environments requires less water… and generates higher yields and better quality crops,” wrote Zlolniski Covering the strawberries reduces water use (Photo credit: Alan Harper / Flickr)  There are two ways to see the transformation of the valley “If you ask people now living in San Quintín They don’t have fresh water but they have a lot of other things the state of Baja would say it’s good because it creates value.” Referring to politicians’ terms of office here It doesn’t care what happens in 20 years’ time.” “The problems they are building for the middle term are much bigger than the short-term problems they are solving But how do you make people have a long-term view?” Seth M. Siegel, who wrote “Let There Be Water,” a 2015 overview of Israeli water systems explained that governments subsidize desalination because “what they are buying is social stability They are buying lower unemployment levels.” Part of the cost is heavy energy use and creating harmful compared to the energy drain of a seawater desalination plant “The idea of allowing an aquifer to become saline is a far greater threat to the environment Even with a big [ocean] desalination plant the amount of energy needed … and fish problems is all modest compared to the catastrophic effect of Baja aquifers being ruined.” Felicity BarringerThe Bill Lane Center for the American Westfebarr@stanford.edu Stanford researchers have found large thawed or close-to-thawed areas under coastal portions of the ice sheet that holds back glaciers in the Wilkes Subglacial Basin Making high-quality care accessible to local and Indigenous communities was correlated with a 70 percent reduction of deforestation in an Indonesian national park the community-designed program reduced incentives for illegal logging Stanford researchers used millimeter-sized crystals from the 1959 eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano to test models that offer insights about flow conditions prior to and during an eruption Stanford complies with all applicable civil rights laws and does not engage in illegal preferences or discrimination Stanford's non-discrimination policy MEXICO CITY — Officials this week announced the creation of 13 new protected areas across six states in Mexico putting the country’s list of total federally protected areas at 200 Mexico introduced six new national parks and seven “flora and fauna protection areas” covering 17,918 hectares (44,276 acres) to be overseen by the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp) The commission said it expects to declare three additional protected areas by the end of the month “It gives us much pleasure that in this administration…we can leave behind such a grand legacy for the Mexican people,” said secretary of the environment and natural resources María Luisa Albores González at a press conference The 85-hectare (210-acre) San Quintin National Park was created in Baja California The 2,076- hectare (5,129-acre) Nopoló National Park and 6,217-hectare (15,362-acre) Loreto II National Park were created in Baja California Sur The 4-hectare (9.8-acre) Playa Delfines Flora and Fauna Protection Area 16-hectare (39-acre) Jacinto Pat Flora and Fauna Protection Area 37-hectare (91-acre) San Buenaventura Flora and Fauna Protection Area and 10-hectare (24-acre) Cenote Aerolito Flora and Fauna Protection Area were all created in Quintana Roo Banderas Flora and Fauna Protection Area was created in Sinaloa The 723-hectare (1,786-acre) Vicente Guerrero National Park and 282-hectare (697-acre) Hermenegildo Galeana Flora and Fauna Protection Area were created in Guerrero three protected areas were created: the 1,923-hectare (4,751-acre) Bajos de Coyula Flora and Fauna Protection Area the 2,237-hectare (5,527-acre) Huatulco II National Park and 1,812-hectare (4,477-acre) Ricardo Flores Magón National Park Plans for the management of the new protected areas weren’t available at the time of the announcement The wave of new of protected areas came in response to a mandate from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to establish a conservation status in areas with “high environmental value.” Since taking office in 2018 López Obrador’s administration has protected over 4 million hectares (9.8 million acres) of land and water “I want to go down in history as the president with the second-most protected reserves created,” López Obrador said earlier this year Banner image: Huatulco National Park in Oaxaca. Photo courtesy of Conanp FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post Mexico approves mining reforms to protect environment, Indigenous people The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa as protected areas become battlegrounds over history and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins and trying to forge a path forward […] 16 commemorates the famous cry for Mexico’s independence from Spain it is important to remember that Texas was part of Spain in 1810 and that the “grito” reverberated through what is now the Lone Star State as well The role of the Africans in Mexico’s quest to stop three centuries of Spanish rule is a little known story but one that deserves attention The Spanish relied on slavery to expand their empire and to increase their wealth African slaves were brought to Mexico to toil in sugar fields and work in silver mines but between 200,000 and 500,000 slaves were brought to Mexico during the colonial expansion After the cry for independence from Spain by the rogue priest Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on Sept 1810, Spain’s worst nightmares became reality The first to respond to Hidalgo’s plea were the enslaved indigenous blacks (Afro-Mexicanos) and many liberal creoles (Spaniards born in Mexico)  During the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821) it is estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of the rebel army was comprised of mixed-race Mexicans or blacks As Hidalgo and his rag-tag army of 80,000 Indians and Spanish Army deserters marched toward Mexico City, they were successful in every encounter mainly because of their huge numbers Unfortunately as the revolutionary army approached Mexico City, Hidalgo would not allow them to enter and turned back a spirit of cooperation between enslaved indigenous  This would actually lead to the election of a black as president of Mexico in 1829 Hidalgo would meet the black priest José María Morelos y Pavón Morelos would be given an assignment by Hidalgo to go south to Michoacan and to recruit an army  As the rebel army retreated from Mexico City an explosion killed thousands As Hidalgo tried to flee with the remnants of his army he would be captured and executed on July 30 leaving the revolution in the hands of the black priest José María Morelos y Pavón Morelos would meet an officer named Vicente Guerrero Guerrero quickly earned promotions for his leadership and bravery Now it was two Mexicans with African heritage — two blacks — who were leading the Mexican Revolution against Spain would continue to excel and would win victory after victory and in 1818 he was named General-in-chief of the Army of the South The revolution would rage on for another six years now in the hands of the black general the political winds of change would bring a different climate to Spain, causing the Spanish Royalist General Agustín de Iturbide to switch sides Iturbide sent word to Guerrero to bring his army north and to join him He told Guerrero he had seen the errors of his ways and was now fighting for the independence of Mexico Guerrero was no fool and had no faith in Iturbide Guerrero would wait and continue with his own war in the south Guerrero’s own father was sent with a message from Iturbide that his intentions were honorable and he should come and join him in the revolution There is now a saying in Mexico where Guerrero responds to his father “Mi patria antes que mi padre,” or “My country before my father.” That saying is now the official motto of Guerrero, Mexico Guerrero and Iturbide would finally force the Spanish government to sign the Treaty of Cordoba Iturbide crowned himself emperor — declaring himself Agustín I — and would cause yet another struggle between the liberals and the conservatives Iturbide was exiled from Mexico and a democratic form of government finally took place It would not be until under the administration of the black President Vicente Guerrero in 1829 that Mexico officially abolished slavery forever Vicente Guerrero and José María Morelos y Pavón — two men of African descent (Afro-Mexicanos) — played a crucial role in the development of the new country of Mexico Dan Arrellano is a Tejano author and historian from San Antonio and founder of the Battle of Medina Society He is an adviser to the Tejano Civil Rights Museum and Resource Center in Corpus Christi professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville Here are five prominent Black Mexicans from that era Published: Jan 10, 2024written by Greg Pasciuto Modern Mexico has long valorized its fusion of Indigenous American and European heritage has the country come to recognize Mexican citizens of African descent “Black” is now a racial option to select on the national census Black Mexicans are becoming more visible to their fellow citizens Black Mexicans may make up a small proportion of Mexico’s current population but they have played a prominent role in the country’s history They have existed since the Spanish colonial era at times mingling with other ethnic groups and at others forging their own communities They can count among their members major leaders The Spanish invaded Mesoamerica in the early decades of the 16th century. Contrary to common assumptions, however, not all of these conquistadores in early colonial Mexico were European others possibly free — accompanied the Spanish expeditionary forces One of the earliest (and most famous) of these Black Mexican progenitors was Juan Garrido Juan Garrido was born during the 1480s in West Africa Garrido traveled to Portugal and then Spain Most other details about his early life are unknown Whether he went to Europe enslaved or as a free man is also up for debate Garrido took part in Spain’s most significant New World conquests. Between 1503 and 1533, he served as a conquistador in the Caribbean, Florida, and Mexico. In 1519, he joined Hernán Cortés during the siege of the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán Garrido made his home just outside the newly christened Mexico City He started a family and established himself as a successful wheat cultivator — the earliest in North America the final period of Garrido’s life is difficult to reconstruct He continued his life as a conquistador until 1533; his petition to King Charles V of Spain in 1538 illustrates this Juan Garrido is known not only as the first Black Mexican conquistador Juan Garrido may have been a free man who reaped the spoils of war, but thousands more Africans in colonial Mexico could not say the same. Slavery spread across Mexico as the 16th century went on. Initial Spanish efforts to enslave indigenous Mesoamericans were halted in the 1540s only to be replaced by the importation of West African captives the earliest Black Mexicans lived tumultuous lives This brings us to our second Black Mexican leader: Gaspar Yanga Although he is now revered by Black Mexicans as a great freedom fighter he was almost forgotten by the rest of Mexico until relatively modern times his contributions to Black Mexican history are undeniable and deserve our full attention but he was rumored to be a prince from modern-day Gabon Enslaved on a sugar plantations near the city of Veracruz The Africans formed a fugitive slave community in the southeast Yanga’s community was a huge thorn in the side of Spanish colonial authorities They repeatedly tried to destroy the fugitives but with no success the Viceroy of New Spain himself decided to negotiate with Gaspar Yanga in the hopes that Spain would regain control A Catholic priest named Alonso de Benavides acted as the intermediary Yanga was not one to back down in the face of a challenge he demanded that the authorities recognize his community as a free one he would act as a slave catcher and return anyone who hadn’t escaped before that year to the Spanish any truce the Africans and Spanish may have had was broken Yanga’s community finally reached a deal with the Spanish but the community — known as San Lorenzo de los Negros to the Spanish — did become semi-autonomous in honor of the great Black Mexican liberator Our next great Black Mexican figure is possibly the most historically elusive a prominent member of a Catholic brotherhood in Mexico City But this doesn’t mean that he was insignificant What we do know about Juan Roque is unique in the colonial history of Black Mexicans he was a free man possessing considerable wealth We also know his specific ethnic background Records refer to him as a Zape — a member of a people from the modern country of Sierra Leone His Catholic brotherhood was actually a predominantly Zape one illustrating how Africans in colonial Mexico forged their own communities Its detailed instructions for the brotherhood and his surviving daughter attest to the wealth and influence of Juan Roque It was in accordance with his will that the Zape brotherhood ultimately won a battle over ownership of his houses in 1634 A folding screen depicts people from across the known world. Indigenous Mesoamericans occupy the far left section, followed to the right by what seems to be an Ottoman Turkish scene Further right still are the king and queen of Spain with a white horse The screen’s narrative concludes with African elites on the far right The screen’s panels could very well illustrate the ethnic diversity of colonial Mexico itself What you are looking at is one of the earlier known works of Juan Correa the most prominent Black Mexican painter of the era while his father was a mixed-race Spaniard Art historians view him as one of Mexico’s greatest Baroque artists Among his patrons was the Catholic Church itself Two of his most famous paintings were commissioned to be housed in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City The painting shown above is the Virgin of the Apocalypse stands with the Virgin Mary above a menacing hydra-like monster Two other angels occupy the top of the painting While details of Juan Correa’s life may be hard to come by establishing himself as an enduring name in the canon of colonial Mexican art Our final Black Mexican leader on this list is nearest to our own time one of the greatest leaders of the Mexican War of Independence is a source of pride not only to Black Mexicans but to Mexicans of all racial backgrounds Following a short-lived local emperor’s reign after intense battles (both military and political) against his conservative opponents resented having a multiracial man leading Mexico They feared Guerrero’s liberal political leanings could pose a threat to their interests in the new country Guerrero’s life did not have a happy ending Not even three months after he decreed the end of slavery Guerrero retreated south with a number of his supporters Yet someone he met betrayed him to the new authorities Although his opponents thwarted his work, Vicente Guerrero seems to have gotten the last laugh. He is remembered in the 21st century as a national hero in Mexico. The state of Guerrero even bears his name. A statue of Guerrero stands tall in Mexico City — an enduring testament to the legacy of the first Black Mexican president Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World Greg is a Massachusetts-based writer whose curiosity has always felt unquenchable He is intrigued by stories from societies across time and around the world His historical interests are particularly centered on the history of religion and the interactions of different cultural groups Independence hero and former president Vicente Guerrero died almost two centuries ago but a new exhibition in Oaxaca is helping to keep his memory alive Organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History the exhibition Vicente Guerrero: Hero Liberator of Mexico opened Sunday in Cuilápam de Guerrero to mark the 190th anniversary of the revolutionary’s death was executed by firing squad on February 14 a town east of Guerrero state capital Chilpancingo in 1782 to a mother of African slave descent and a mestizo father Guerrero joined the revolt against Spain in 1810 He became a major leader in the fight for independence rising to the rank of chief general of the rebel troops after the execution of Catholic priest and independence leader José María Morelos in 1815 About 7 1/2 years after Mexico gained its independence from Spain Guerrero became the second president of the first Mexican republic after a liberal revolt forced president-elect Manuel Gómez Pedraza to resign and leave the country only lasted 8 1/2 months as president before he was deposed in a rebellion led by his vice-president he was lured onto a ship in Acapulco by an Italian sea captain who promised to serve him a meal but had actually reached a lucrative deal with Bustamante’s government to capture the ex-president where he was handed over to federal troops at a beach that is now called La Entrega (The Handover) convicted of rebellion and treason and sentenced to death The exhibition in Cuilápam makes use of high resolution images artworks and other sources to tell the story of the erstwhile general and ex-president It focuses on his fight for freedom and independence and his “last breath,” among other stages of his life It also examines the legacy he left for the generations that succeeded him told the newsmagazine Proceso that the exhibition will travel to other parts of the country with Guerrero’s native Tixtla slated to be the first stop after Oaxaca A digital version is to be uploaded here but has not yet appeared. Another Guerrero exhibition (Spanish only) is available online at the federal government’s historical repository, Memórica For Americans looking to mix in a little dental work with their vacations there is no better place than Vicente Guerrero a small Mexican border town better known by its nickname: Los Algodones Mexico is a top destination for "medical tourists" from the US who go south of the border for significantly cheaper dental work In Los Algodones, some 350 dentists work within a few blocks of the city center Photographer Andrew Waits recently headed down to the town for a day to figure out why it has become a bustling medical mecca Waits shared a number of the photos with us here, and you can check out the rest on his website WASHINGTON — The South Texas man at the center of a new ad attacking U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is a self proclaimed “conspiracy theorist” who has spread theories on social media about 9/11 and the COVID pandemic and mocked both Michelle Obama and a Republican congressman The ad was released this week by the National Republican Congressional Committee on behalf of former U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores who is trying to win back the seat for the GOP Texas Congressional District 34 stretches from Brownsville to Kingsville along the state’s southeastern coast It is one of the few competitive races in the state and a top priority for both major political parties to win The ad features Brownsville business owner Ruben Guerrero ridiculing Gonzalez, a McAllen Democrat, for pushing “sex changes for kids” over caring about the economy. The ad is part of an $800,000 ad reservation in the South Texas market to be broadcast in both English and Spanish. Guerrero’s voice was also featured in a radio ad by the NRCC has denied supporting tax-funded gender transition surgeries for minors Guerrero posted memes on Instagram calling 9/11 “the biggest inside job in history … until COVID,” ridiculing former First Lady Michelle Obama as secretly a man, and mocking U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s eyepatch which he wears after losing his right eye serving in Afghanistan which was not involved in the creation of the ad distanced her from Guerrero’s social media “These posts are clearly not reflective of Mayra's views,” the Flores campaign said in a statement it’s a great ad with an important message about Vicente Gonzalez’s extreme record of supporting taxpayer funded sex change surgeries for children.” Guerrero is not the first conspiracy theorist to be featured in a congressional ad this year. A Republican running in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, another top target for Republicans this year, has also been criticized for spotlighting a 9/11 conspiracy theorist Guerrero’s social media influence is small “I'm a conspiracy theorist that's almost batting .400,” he said in a telephone interview before insisting guidance given during the COVID-19 pandemic was wrong When asked about the meme mocking Crenshaw’s eye patch Guerrero said he couldn’t recall his reasoning behind posting the meme but said that Republicans “are not all equal,” suggesting that Crenshaw is a Republican in name only Guerrero posted the meme in January of last year — around the same time Crenshaw angered many right-wing Republicans for criticizing far-right U.S. House Republicans who did not support Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker Political campaigns often recruit everyday voters to offer testimonials in ads that get blasted to thousands of viewers Subjects of testimonials are generally vetted to ensure their backstories are accurate Mass media ads have diminishing impact on changing opinions a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin who previously worked on the 2000 George W the background of a person giving a testimonial likely won’t make much of a difference in the efficacy of an ad “There’s a question about the overall effect of this sort of advertising on voters' preferences “The country is so polarized politically and so siloed that the number of voters who are up for grabs in a given election major party competitions The Harlingen media market includes over 400,000 households with TVs The lower Rio Grande Valley has a population of over 1 million on the U.S Gonzalez criticized the attacks as misrepresenting his stances but their actor is a 9/11 conspiracist who insulted my colleague Dan Crenshaw a decorated Navy Seal veteran — it’s amateur hour over there,” Gonzalez said in a statement LGBTQ+ rights groups have also criticized the Republican strategy tying Democrats to youth gender transition surgery as fear-mongering Gender transition surgery is exceedingly rare with most care for trans youth consisting of changing pronouns adopting new names and hormone blockers to delay puberty The Texas Legislature banned hormone blockers for minors last session Still, Republicans have leaned into the attacks The NRCC said it was the top polling issue to convert voters from Gonzalez to Flores performing better than issues related to the border or the economy Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here Choose an amount or learn more about membership Guam LegislaturePacific Daily NewsBallot Order: 9 Education: George Washington High School; University of Guam what will be your priority in the Legislature If elected, my priorities will be election reform (part-time Legislature eliminating the primary election) to expand the pool of candidates for public office I will work to strengthen our public health care system which insulates GMH from critical review and oversight repair the hospital and expand programs at Public Health  I'll work to make the government more transparent so all citizens will be able to know how their taxpayer dollars are spent I will introduce legislation allowing citizens to sue the government for wasting taxpayer dollars  I’ll work to improve government financial stability by rolling back the business privilege tax to 4% and pass laws mandating balanced budgets as a way to reduce operational costs  I’ll work to fight government corruption by investing in more drug detection dogs. As part of strengthening enforcement we also need to strengthen the corrections system by building a new prison This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Volume 5 - 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2020.593494 This article is part of the Research TopicBest Practices in Bibliometrics & Bibliometric ServicesView all 11 articles This paper presents a large-scale document-level comparison of two major bibliographic data sources: Scopus and Dimensions The focus is on the differences in their coverage of documents at two levels of aggregation: by country and by institution The main goal is to analyze whether Dimensions offers as good new opportunities for bibliometric analysis at the country and institutional levels as it does at the global level Differences in the completeness and accuracy of citation links are also studied The results allow a profile of Dimensions to be drawn in terms of its coverage by country and institution Dimensions’ coverage is more than 25% greater than Scopus which is consistent with previous studies the main finding of this study is the lack of affiliation data in a large fraction of Dimensions documents We found that close to half of all documents in Dimensions are not associated with any country of affiliation while the proportion of documents without this data in Scopus is much lower This situation mainly affects the possibilities that Dimensions can offer as instruments for carrying out bibliometric analyses at the country and institutional level Both of these aspects are highly pragmatic considerations for information retrieval and the design of policies for the use of scientific databases in research evaluation Given the potential value of these data sources for research evaluation it is important to assess their key properties to better understand their strengths and weaknesses to decide whether their data is sufficient in volume Traditionally, the only homogeneous record of published research available when funders and governments sought additional information to help them make evidence-driven decisions was the Web of Science (WoS). The appearance of the Scopus database (Baas et al., 2020) and Google Scholar in 2004 as “competitors” to WoS providing metadata on scientific documents and on citation links between these documents led to an immense quantity of studies focused on comparative analyses of these other new bibliographic sources the basic intention being to look for novel bibliometric opportunities that these tools might bring to the academic community and policymakers Google Scholar appeared to be an alternative to WoS and Scopus, but its suitability for research evaluation and other bibliometric analyses was called strongly into question. For a comprehensive review of this data source in research evaluation, we would refer to Martín-Martín et al. (2018a) and Martín-Martín et al. (2020) and Microsoft Academic and their implications for the robustness of university rankings The present communication extends previous comparisons of Scopus by expanding the study set to include distinct levels of aggregation (by country and by institution) across a larger selection of characteristics and measures A particular aim is to inquire closely into just how balanced Dimensions’ coverage is compared with that of the Scopus database The goal of this study was to compare Dimensions’ coverage with that of Scopus at the geographic and institutional levels The following research questions were posed: (1) How comprehensive is Dimensions’ coverage compared with that of Scopus in terms of documents (2) Are the distributions of publications by country and by institution in Dimensions comparable with those in Scopus (3) Are Dimensions’ citation counts by country and by institution interchangeable with those of Scopus in the sense of their being strongly correlated (4) Is Dimensions a reliable new bibliometric data source at the country and institutional levels The SCImago group annually receives a raw data copy in XML format through a contract with Elsevier In 2018, Digital Science published the Dimensions database with scientific publications and citations, grants, patents, and clinical trials (Hook et al., 2018; Herzog et al., 2020). Since then, there has been characterization published of it (Bornmann, 2018; Harzing, 2019; Visser et al., 2020) we shall only consider the scientific publications Bibliographic databases often give bibliometric studies problems with author affiliations which usually do not include standardized names of institutions. One of the improvements that Dimensions incorporates is the mapping of author affiliations in documents to an entity list for organizations involved in research. This is the GRID (Global Research Identifier Database) system (Hook et al., 2018) This mapping is not an addition to but a replacement for author affiliations But if the list of organizations or the mapping is incomplete this could be a major problem because there would be loose documents without any possibility of associating them with institutions or countries thus leaving the output of the institutions and countries affected incomplete The SCImago group has had the possibility of downloading a copy of Dimensions in Json format through an agreement with Dimensions Science From the Scopus and Dimensions data of April 2020 the SCImago group created a relational database for internal use that allows for massive computation operations that would otherwise be unfeasible For the analysis that was an objective of this study, it was necessary to implement a matching procedure between the Dimensions and Scopus databases. To this end, we applied the method developed in the SCImago group to match PATSTAT NPL references with Scopus documents (Guerrero-Bote et al., 2019) This method has two phases: a broad generation of candidate pairs followed by a second phase of pair validation In this case, a modification was made, similar to that in Visser et al. (2020) in which not all the candidate pairs were generated at the same time accepting as valid the matches that exceeded a certain threshold This reduced the combinatorial variability of the following generations of candidates The pairs that did not exceed the threshold were not discarded but were saved in case at the end they were unpaired and were those with the greatest similarity In more detail, our procedure began with the normalization of the fields to facilitate pairing, although, unlike Visser et al. (2020) we did not stay exclusively with the numerical values of the volume or pages because at times those fields do not contain numerical values This is the case with journals such as PLOS One or Frontiers Then we started to generate candidate pairs in phases The phases were centered on the following conditions: there are conditions that include some previous phases it should be borne in mind that each candidate pair generation phase is followed by a validation phase So the first phases are quite specific; they generate a relatively small number of candidate pairs most of which are accepted and come to constitute the majority of the definitively matched pairs the lists of documents waiting to be matched are reduced allowing for broader searches in the following phases without greatly increasing the computational cost the percentage of success in the candidate pairs decreases from phase to phase Once the coincidence score had been calculated in each field we took the product to get the total score The individual scores by field never have a zero value because that would mean the total score would be zero the field score may be unity if the field is considered to be nonessential coincidence in several fields increases the total score geometrically rather than arithmetically Once the candidate pairs of a phase have been validated we take as matched the pairs that obtain a total score greater than 1,000 and in which neither the Scopus nor the Dimensions record scores higher with any other pair The total score threshold of 1,000 was set after sampling and verifying that under these conditions no mismatched pair was found a repechage operation was initiated for the rejected candidate pairs This accepted pairs in which both components obtained a lower score in the rest of the pairs Also accepted were those in which the score was greater than 300 but one of the components had another pair with exactly the same score This latter was done because both databases contain some duplicated records The general results are given in Table 1. It is true that, even though our study includes more years than that of Visser et al. (2020) it gives fewer matched documents for the period 2008–2017 The number of matched pairs grows from year to year due to the great growth this database experienced from year to year Dimensions’ coverage is more than 25% greater than Scopus’s although there is a significant overlap in coverage between the two data sources Almost three-quarters of the Scopus documents and more than half of the Dimensions documents match The question now is to see if these percentage differences are maintained at levels of grouping of lower rank (countries and institutions) The percentage of matching in Scopus by document type is presented in Table 2 (We have not listed some document types due to their low output.) For the primary output (articles Scopus matching percentages by most frequent document type Table 3 presents the same information Articles and conference proceedings are the most matched types Dimensions matching percentages by document type Figure 1 shows that the total and matched output distributed by country is systematically greater in Scopus than in Dimensions The solid line represents the ideal positions of the countries if they had the same output in Scopus and Dimensions It is noticeable at a glance that most countries appear above the solid line in the graph indicating that the Scopus output by country tends to be greater than the Dimensions output Scatter plot of the total and matched Dimensions/Scopus output by country Figure 2 shows the relationship of the output by institution between Dimensions and Scopus The solid line represents the positions of the institutions if they had the same output in both databases It is again noticeable at a glance that most institutions are above the solid line indicating that there are more institutions with more output in Scopus than in Dimensions Scatter plot of the total and matched Dimensions/Scopus output by institution Figure 3 allows one to analyze the evolution of the average number of countries whose institutions correspond to the author's affiliations in the documents present in one or the other database What most stands out in this graph is the difference between the two databases The two sets of evolution should be very similar These differences remain stable over time and need to be confirmed with the data representing the evolution of the number of institutions that appear in the author's affiliations Evolution of the average number of countries per document in Scopus and Dimensions in total and in the matched subsets the evolution of the average of institutions per document in the two databases and in the matched documents The two sets of evolution reveal the average of institutional affiliations associated with the items in the four subsets of the two data sources the comparison between the two graphical representations is consistent Evolution of the average number of institutions per document in Scopus and Dimensions in total and in the matched subsets which is consistent from the perspective of data interpretation Evolution of the annual percentage of items without country in the four subsets of documents belonging to Dimensions and Scopus one can say that the information about institutional affiliations that allows documents to be discriminated by country and institution has greater completeness in Scopus than in Dimensions The case is similar when analyzing this same situation from the perspective of the matched documents despite the positive trend in the number of countries and institutions associated with the items in both databases the difference between the two sources in this regard tends to be maintained over time A more detailed characterization of the Dimensions documents where no country affiliation data is available is provided in Table 4 The distribution of document types shows that there are distinct document types affected by this situation Distribution of document types where no country affiliation data is available Using as a basis the citation data (Figure 6), it is easy to see that, both for total documents and for matched documents, the volume of citations in Scopus is in all cases greater than that of Dimensions, as noted previously by Visser et al. (2020). The case is similar when the problem is analyzed from the point of view of the citing date (Figure 7) and these conform to the 2.5% of cases that have more citations in Dimensions than in Scopus Relationship between total citations and matched documents by country Relationship between total citations and matched documents by institution Our starting hypothesis was that the difference in overall coverage between the two databases should be similar in general terms when the total set of documents was fragmented into smaller levels of aggregation it is important that overall coverage levels be maintained on average when the source is split into smaller groupings (countries or institutions for example) in order to guarantee the bibliometric relevance of the source we continued along the path begun by other workers trying to deepen the comparative analysis of the coverage of the two sources for reasons that have to do with the data structures themselves the two sources have notable differences in coverage at the level of countries and institutions with a tendency for there to be greater coverage at those levels in Scopus than in Dimensions This is even though what was to be expected would have been the opposite given the overall differences in coverage between the two sources for which the data has been curated and each institution assigned a persistent identifier This set of institutions represents an international coverage of the world’s leading research organizations indexing 92% of funding allocated globally that the repeated differences between Scopus and Dimensions in output and citation are related to the fact that Dimensions’ method of linking institutional affiliations to GRID it limits linkages of item with countries and institutions This situation mainly affects the possibilities that the two sources can offer as instruments for carrying out bibliometric analyses “Dimensions incorrectly has not identified citation links this data source fails to identify a substantial number of citation links” (p Dimensions also has the limitation that it does not provide data for references that have not been matched with a cited document (p The results described should help fill the gap in exploring differences between Scopus and Dimensions at the country and institutional levels. Figure 5 appears to be the main cause that explains most of the other results Most of the other results in this manuscript are an effect or consequence of this This should allow a profile of Dimensions to be outlined in terms of its coverage by different levels of aggregation of its publications in comparison with Scopus Both of these aspects are highly pragmatic considerations for bibliometric researchers and practitioners in particular for policymakers who rely on such databases as a principal criterion for research assessment (hiring this study has shown that not all articles had complete address data Even though there was a decreasing trend over time in the number of documents with no country information in the address data in 2018 still more than 40% of documents in Dimensions remained without a country Given the size of the data source and its goal in the scientific market missing information of the country in the affiliation data has important implications at all levels of aggregation and analysis Dimensions does not currently appear to be a reliable data source with which to define and evaluate the set of output at the country level We have not been comparing document types but presenting results derived from the matching procedure. As in Visser et al. (2020) we found that there were many articles in Dimensions for which there was no matching document in our matching procedure This is because it seems that any document published in a journal is classified as an article in Dimensions But we are confident that studies like the present will help to improve this tool and the data in the near future The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because the SCImago group annually receives a raw data copy in XML format through a contract with Elsevier. The SCImago group has the possibility of downloading a copy of Dimensions in Json format through an agreement with Digital Science. We are not allowed to redistribute the Scopus and Dimensions data used in this paper. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to ZmVsaXgubW95YUBzY2ltYWdvLmVz All authors read and approved the final manuscript The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest The Scimago group annually receives a raw data copy in XML format through a contract with Elsevier The Scimago group has the possibility of downloading a copy of Dimensions in JSON format through an agreement with Digital Science We are not allowed to redistribute the Scopus and Dimensions data used in this paper.We thank the Dimensions and Scopus development teams for their availability to provide us with access to the information necessary to carry out this analysis The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frma.2020.593494/full#supplementary-material we subtract the Levenshtein distance (multiplied by 1.3) from the number of characters in the largest of the fields to be compared thus obtaining a number indicative of the number of matching characters between the fields (with a 30% penalty) Recall that the Levenshtein distance is the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions or substitutions) required to change one string into the other 2https://www.grid.ac/pages/policies Dimensions–A collaborative approach to enhancing research discovery CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Comparing bibliometric statistics obtained from the Web of Science and Scopus CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar high-quality bibliometric data source for academic research in quantitative science studies CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Field classification of publications in Dimensions: a first case study testing its reliability and validity CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Galton 2011 revisited: a bibliometric journey in the footprints of a universal genius CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Analysis of scientific production in food science from 2003 to 2013 PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar The citation from patents to scientific output revisited: a new approach to Patstat/Scopus matching CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Hane, P. (2004). Elsevier announces Scopus service. Information Today. Available at: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=16494 (Accessed June 9 Google Scholar Two new kids on the block: how do crossref and dimensions compare with Google scholar CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Dimensions: bringing down barriers between scientometricians and data CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Dimensions: building context for search and evaluation CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Comparison of bibliographic data sources: implications for the robustness of university rankings CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar h‐core citation rate and the bibliometric profile of the Scopus database CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Journal maps on the basis of Scopus data: a comparison with the journal citation reports of the ISI CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Martín-Martín Coverage of highly-cited documents in Google scholar and Scopus: a multidisciplinary comparison CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Martín-Martín and Scopus: a systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Martín-Martín and OpenCitations’ COCI: a multidisciplinary comparison of coverage via citations Google Scholar The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Moya-Anegón Coverage analysis of SCOPUS: a journal metric approach CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Moya-Anegón Statistical relationships between corresponding authorship international co-authorship and citation impact of national research systems CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Elsevier prepares Scopus to rival ISI Web of Science Google Scholar Dimensions: a competitor to Scopus and the Web of Science CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Visser, M., van Eck, N., and Waltman, L. (2020). Large-scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, dimensions, crossref, and Microsoft academic. arXiv:2005.10732 [Preprint]. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10732 Google Scholar Mendoza A and de Moya-Anegón F (2021) Comparative Analysis of the Bibliographic Data Sources Dimensions and Scopus: An Approach at the Country and Institutional Levels Received: 10 August 2020; Accepted: 10 November 2020;Published: 22 January 2021 Copyright © 2021 Guerrero-Bote, Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Mendoza and de Moya-Anegón. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez, emFpZGEuY2hpbmNoaWxsYUBjc2ljLmVz Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish leaving the Hennepin County jail in the custody of ICE agents on Feb 2017.Courtesy of Hennepin County Sheriff's Office filePlayListenPlan would give immigration defendants free legal aid in Hennepin CountyGo Deeper.CloseCreate an account or log in to save stories We have added it to a list of your favorite stories Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek routinely cooperates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigrant advocates and local elected officials have been trying to find ways to interfere with that practice which they say is intended to hand undocumented immigrants to federal authorities on a platter MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all Ellison's office has been hearing from families affected by the process A mother who got rear-ended and was deported for not having a driver's license is one that sticks in his mind Another is a business owner who's been here for years and was forced to leave his auto body shop and employees because he was picked up by ICE a fresh berry supplier based in Watsonville released this statement on Wednesday regarding the continued labor strife in Baja California "We are disturbed by the recent violence in San Quintin and in no way condone these actions We urge government officials as well as protesters to maintain a productive dialogue and to work together to resolve differences in a peaceful manner "We cannot stress enough that Driscoll's prioritizes and supports the rights and safety of those workers and their families who grow and harvest our berries even though they're not employed by Driscoll's one of our most trusted growers and largest produce employers in Baja proactively provided its workers among the highest wages and earning potential in the region combined with some of the region's best housing options and access to unique medical programs "Current media reports, as well as statements shared on social media channels regarding worker conditions are categorically false and inaccurate. We believe in fair and responsible coverage of the facts, and urge people to review BerryMex's updates which are posted here: http://www.berry.net/company-updates/ "We urge protesters to end the physical intimidation of our growers' employees and allow these workers access to the fields so that they are able to provide for their families and rebuild their local community." Baja California farmworkers plan to meet with the state’s lieutenant governor and other officials Wednesday to continue demanding higher wages after a violent clash with police this weekend Hundreds of farmworkers accepted the offer and went back to work The workers were supposed to meet with government officials last Friday The meeting was canceled and then rescheduled prompting protesters to gather on a street near the town of Vicente Guerrero on Saturday morning They stopped farmworkers on their way to work and asked them to join the strike Police arrived in response to calls from growers Those reports say farmworkers threw rocks and set police cars on fire while police used rubber bullets and tear gas against them Videos uploaded to YouTube showed farmworkers with bloody wounds on their heads backs and stomachs that they claimed were caused by police The men in one video alleged that the police entered their home and attacked them after the protest Protesters said they are considering organizing another protest if negotiations don’t go as planned Growers have said they can't afford to collectively increase wages any further The value of agricultural production in San Quintin is around $450 million a year roughly half of the total in Baja California The majority of the region's crops are shipped to the United States is one of the main suppliers for the well-known berry brand Driscoll's Government and industry officials say the damage to crops earlier this spring amounted to tens of millions of dollars CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Driscoll's owns BerryMex This photo from by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office shows Vicente Guerrero-Fernandez leaving the county jail in the custody of ICE agents on Feb 3.Courtesy of Hennepin County Sheriff's OfficePlayListenSheriff disputes ICE determination Hennepin County was uncooperativeGo Deeper.CloseCreate an account or log in to save stories The sheriff says that contradicts a statement federal officials released on Monday The bank robber who instructed a teller with a note to put money in a plastic bag was sentenced to almost six years in federal prison Prosecutors urged Senior Judge Alex Munson in the District Court of Guam on Tuesday to give Vicente Guerrero Perez 10 years in prison for robbing First Hawaiian Bank in Harmon last year "He didn't threaten anybody," Gorman said before saying a 60-month sentence was "sufficient but not greater than necessary." Gorman also stated that during his lengthy legal career this was the first time someone committed a crime because he wanted to go to jail Perez went to the nearby King's Restaurant in Harmon and waited to be arrested for 40 minutes before calling a taxi to go to another restaurant He later checked himself into Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center when FBI agents discovered he was the suspect in the bank robbery "I've never had a case like this," Gorman said before Munson agreed Perez explained he wanted to go to jail primarily to have food "I just wanted to get caught to come back to prison to get the right treatment," said Perez who added he has Lupus and has no way of treating it on island What I really needed to do was live back there in the mainland because that's where all the doctors are at," he said He also made a judicial recommendation that he be housed in a Bureau of Prisons medical center Email notifications are only sent once a day Poll results are published every Monday in The Guam Daily Post Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: In the narrative of abolitionism in the United States northern destinations figure prominently: slaves in the American South followed the North Star on the Underground Railroad to the free states of the northern U.S Yet a new book holds that there was also an overlooked but important movement south — to Mexico which abolished slavery decades before the U.S History professor Alice Baumgartner of the University of Southern California makes this case in South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War The book shares the individual accounts and wider narrative of enslaved Black people who crossed the border into Mexico Baumgartner also shows the political dynamics that affected the narrative including the history of abolitionism in Mexico and its hostile responses in the U.S American hostility toward Mexican abolitionism helped cause the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War Although the number of slaves who fled northward is much larger Baumgartner estimates that 3,000–5,000 people escaped to Mexico during the period of the book which extends from the era of New Spain to the French intervention “I think it’s very conservative,” Baumgartner said of the figure she cites whereas slaves in Louisiana and Texas would look southward Baumgartner came across the topic in the summer of 2012 while doing research into a separate issue in northern Mexico She found documents reporting that slaveholders from the United States were entering Mexico to kidnap fugitive slaves and bring them back across the border — and that Mexican authorities tried to prevent such raids The discovery of this history sparked what Baumgartner describes as her nonstop efforts over the next eight years “It took pretty much every waking moment between then and now,” she said Rosalie Schwartz’s book Across the Rio to Freedom: U.S Louisiana and Mexico while learning more about escaped slaves who found refuge south of the border Some not only made the journey safely but were protected by their new fellow citizens a fugitive slave in northern Mexico was kidnapped by a slaveholder but four townspeople confronted and killed the kidnapper Other accounts did not end so successfully a slave who stowed away on a ship bound for Veracruz where Jean Antoine stabbed himself instead of going back to slavery learned about their abolitionist neighbor to the south in several ways including Mexican laborers working in the area and already-escaped slaves in Mexico who returned to the States to free family members One example of the latter was a man who settled in Coahuila and went back north to free his brother slaves generally gravitated toward one of two opportunities Baumgartner says: they could live in a military colony on the northern border aggression and raids by Native Americans or they could enter the labor force “Both had a certain risk,” Baumgartner notes enslaved people who joined the military colonies had to risk their lives in military duties.” But their counterparts in the labor force faced a cash-poor economy and adverse employment practices such as indentured servitude their adopted country allowed these formerly enslaved people “to have land and an opportunity for citizenship in a very straightforward way.” She describes freedom for escaped slaves in Mexico as similar to that in the northern states of the U.S escaped slaves could “engage in a measure of political participation that was unheard-of in the U.S.” These opportunities existed because of Mexican abolitionism which Baumgartner describes as a post-independence means of distancing the new nation from Spain and its slave traders and conquistadors “Newly independent Mexico was inspired by liberal rhetoric of equality for all,” Baumgartner said [It was] an important reason for the early surge of antislavery in Mexico.” Mexico’s president Vicente Guerrero was a descendant of African slaves over half of all Mexican states had either abolished slavery outright or established gradual emancipation laws and it was abolished nationwide in 1837 after Texas Mexico’s northern colony that held slaves Abolitionism had put Mexico at odds with Texas Anglo settlers had brought their slaves with them classifying them as indentured servants to circumvent Mexican laws Baumgartner lists tensions over slavery as a reason for the Texas Revolution She also sees the Mexican nationwide ban on slavery as stemming from its defeat by Texas “Mexico was unable to stop Texas from declaring independence,” she said “Half of its territory was stolen from them They were able to forge victory from defeat by ending slavery to show they were morally upright in a way the slaveholding U.S With Texas joining the United States as a slave state American presidential administrations continually sought to negotiate a treaty with Mexico that would extradite fugitive slaves Predating these demands from Washington was the U.S invasion that led to the Mexican-American War Slaveholders envisioned it as a way to spread slavery into newly conquered territory but the United States government eventually held that it could not establish slavery where it had been already prohibited under Mexican law It was a victory for abolitionists — but a source of resentment for slaveholders as tensions simmered and the U.S Baumgartner described the Civil War as “one of the most American conflicts” in her nation’s history “I’m not surprised that people are skeptical of the idea of a neighboring country having such a profound effect on that national conflict It took me a long time to recognize that myself,” she said The contemporaneous crises of the Civil War and the French intervention upended longstanding policies finally abolished slavery — first in rebellious southern states with the Emancipation Proclamation then throughout the country with the 13th Amendment defeated Confederates were welcomed to Mexico by the emperor Maximilian who was criticized for allegedly wishing to reintroduce slavery he was toppled and executed under president Benito Juárez in 1867 the end of slavery was confirmed in both Mexico and the United States Baumgartner says that some continue to live in cohesive communities whereas others are more dispersed nationwide “Fugitive slaves who got jobs in Mexico tended to [live in] much less concentrated communities,” Baumgartner said “Their descendants are much harder to trace Nacimiento is the place where those descendants are still present They still have a lot of oral traditions and oral histories.” Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily A man who allegedly admitted that he waited for police to arrest him at a restaurant moments after he robbed a Dededo bank was indicted by a federal grand jury also known as "Ben Mangga," was indicted on charges of bank robbery failure to update sex offender registration and commission of crime of violence while failing to update sex offender registration is scheduled to answer the charges in the District Court of Guam today Perez allegedly handed a teller a note at the First Hawaiian Bank branch along Harmon Loop Road in Dededo He fled with a total of $1,560 the teller put inside a plastic bag before triggering the bank alarm The FBI found Perez more than a week later Perez allegedly admitted he was the person caught on surveillance video at King's Restaurant adding that he robbed the bank then went to the restaurant He also told investigators he knew it was wrong to rob the bank adding that he wanted to get caught and that's why he went next door to eat and wait for the police to show up He left after he felt officers took too long to arrive Perez was convicted in a 1992 third-degree criminal sexual conduct case He also has a record of multiple local and federal arrests between 2000 and 2013 Medal images courtesy of Stephen Album Rare Coins When fighter Augustin de Iturbide couldn’t beat Vicente Guerrero in the Mexican War of Independence Iturbide met with Guerrero and agreed to the Plan de Iguala Guerrero’s goal for the full independence of Mexico the Mexican Congress awarded the Imperial Crown to Iturbide and he was crowned as Augustin the First in Mexico City on July 21 but long enough for Proclamation medals to be issued A gold example of an 1823 Proclamation medal for Iturbide highlights Stephen Album Rare Coins’ auction No The proclamation medal for the Feast of the Proclamation on Jan weighs 35.34 grams and measures 39 millimeters in diameter meaning it’s heavier than a 1-ounce gold Libertad surrounded by inscriptions proclaiming his role as emperor “by divine providence.”  The reverse carries the familiar crowned eagle on cactus The medal is cataloged as Grove 11 in Medals of Mexico Vol Proclamation medals are highly historic and important Since these medals were thrown to the crowds during the proclamation ceremonies likely more were spent or melted than saved.  Proclamation medals were produced in various cities to display loyalty and allegiance to the new monarch they were produced in various colonial cities and were issued during the festivals and ceremonies arranged in honor of the new king.  Though festivities celebrating Iturbide’s ascension to power were notable his initial popularity did not prevent him from being ousted on March 19 His body was finally buried in 1838 in the cathedral of Mexico City with the title of “Liberator National.”  Proclamation medals survive to the current day in quite small numbers Medals for an earlier king were often melted repurposed into medals for a new king.  The offered example appears to have been used as a pendant and is in Extremely Fine condition.  One other example sold in the Numismatica Genevensis SA auction of December 2008 in approximately About Uncirculated condition This example has an estimate of $12,000 to $18,000.  World Coins $270.00 donatedin the past month If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay Frontera NorteSur Near the intersection of Vicente Guerrero and Lopez Mateos in Ciudad Juarez local artist Maclovio describes a hypnotizing mural that honors three female victims of disappearance and homicide-Esmeralda Castillo Rincon Rosa Virginia Hernandez Cano and Adriana Sarmiento Conjuring up a sweeping and turbulent landscape Maclovio and his helpers place the short lives of three girls and women in a world of militarism and nuclear bombs or feminicide- the systemic killing of women the mural’s themes connect wars at home and abroad Shown are important local landmarks including the Rio Bravo the muddy and often water-starved river which both divides and unites Ciudad Juarez from its neighbor of El Paso army base of Fort Bliss; and “the country of femicides” symbolized by a red cross in the center of the Mexican flag instead of the eagle Splashed in purple and showered with raining crosses the Navajo Arroyo in the Juarez Valley is shown at the bottom Scores of murdered women have been recovered from the rural zone outside the city once famous for growing cotton since the 1990s officials had completed yet another search of the Navajo Arroyo The face of Esmeralda Castillo Rincon shines from the Vicente Guerrero mural which is located a couple of blocks from the Rio Grande Mall near Juarez’s Pronaf zone Esmeralda was only 14 years old when she disappeared in downtown Ciudad Juarez A closer look at the Vicente Guerrero mural reveals a stairway leading from the scenery to a billboard situated above the apartment building where the big work of art stands The billboard pitches a local subdivision where a beaming couple says they like living and happy residents can enclose their lives from the outside world “I liked this contrast,” Maclovio quips about the semiotic clash between the billboard and the mural Maclovio says victims’ relatives contributed to the design and painting mother of Jocelyn Calderon (disappeared 2012) and Paula Flores mother of Sagrario Gonzalez (disappeared and murdered 1998) Maclovio pulls out his phone and shows a photo of a rainbow that appeared after the mural group was painting one day and a storm burst from the heavens he says with a smile flashing across his face… Finish reading Women Never Forgotten: The Murals and Memorials of Ciudad Juarez Support non-profit journalism and perspectives from around the world The Lingua project at Global Voices works to bring down barriers to understanding through translation What do a Mexican music school from the Vicente Guerrero community in the state of Oaxaca and children from the Paraguayan city of Cateura have in common That the music being played in both places has not only changed the kids’ lives but has a deep connection to…garbage It's a project that has evolved into a symphony orchestra made up of children and adolescents who have found a way to overcome the poverty surrounding them with their musical instruments: Una escuela de música con 100 estudiantes se ha vuelto un eje central de la comunidad de Vicente Guerrero en Oaxaca https://t.co/gbQciibvcj — José Luis Moyano (@NicksNames) 23 de noviembre de 2016 A music school with 100 students has become a focal point for the community of Vicente Guerrero in Oaxaca The British newspaper The Guardian wrote about the project: The young band members take their commitment to the musical group very seriously according to local media outlet Noticias Oaxaca NVI: ni bien comen y se encaminan por las polvorientas calles para encontrarse con su gran pasión […] aprenden día a día a tocar con destreza la trompeta they almost run back to their homes; and as soon as they have lunch they head through dusty roads to take up their grand passion […] They learn day by day to skilfully play the trumpet More than 7,000 kilometers south from Vicente Guerrero, the children of Cateura — a village practically located on top of the main landfill of Asunción, Paraguay's capital — play instruments made out of recycled materials: [Interpretan] obras musicales con instrumentos reciclados fabricados a partir de residuos sólidos domiciliarios en el taller de lutería que posee el grupo en Cateura han comenzado a utilizar restos de “basura” para elaborar instrumentos que emitieran sonidos musicales Los instrumentos […] imitan a violines Entre su repertorio ejecutan música clásica [They perform] musical pieces with recycled instruments at the musical instrument workshop the group has in Cateura where recyclers under the guidance of Favio Chávez […] have started to use “garbage” parts to fashion instruments that make musical sounds In an article by US newspaper the Los Angeles Times, Favio Chávez, a local ecologist and musician who is teaching the children of Cateura to play, remembers their early days: At first it was very difficult because we had no place to rehearse and we had to teach in the same place where the parents were working in the trash […] The children knew nothing about music and it was very difficult to contact parents because many of them do not live with their children That all changed when Favio was shown something he had never seen before: a violin made out of garbage. Today, there is a whole orchestra of assembled instruments, called The Recycled Orchestra A documentary called “Landfill Harmonic” chronicled the musical effort: The world generates about a billion tons of garbage a year Those who live with it and from it are the poor – like the people of Cateura And here they are transforming it into beauty Landfill Harmonic follows the orchestra as it takes its inspiring spectacle of trash-into-music around the world The orchestra has even performed its music for Pope Francis: The Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados Cateura were invited to play for Pope Francisco, and presented him with a… http://t.co/gPXweZrNqV — Landfill Harmonic (@landfillhrmnic) July 13, 2015 These two groups, as well as some others ERROR: SECURITY TIMEOUT - Please copy your message to a backup location Global Voices stands out as one of the earliest and strongest examples of how media committed to building community and defending human rights can positively influence how people experience events happening beyond their own communities and national borders Please consider making a donation to help us continue this work Donate now Authors, please log in » Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Stay up to date about Global Voices and our mission. See our Privacy Policy for details. Newsletter powered by Mailchimp (Privacy Policy and Terms) Global Voices is supported by the efforts of our volunteer contributors, foundations, donors and mission-related services. For more information please read our Fundraising Ethics Policy Special thanks to our many sponsors and funders A convicted child molester denied that he failed to update his sex offender registration appeared before District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Michael Bordallo on Thursday "I am not pleading guilty because ...," said Perez before the judge stopped him from saying more "I don't want you to make any further statements We will let your attorney speak for you on that," said Bordallo Defense attorney John Gorman told the court that Perez pleads not guilty to all counts in the indictment that was handed down against him on Wednesday Perez remains in federal custody at the Department of Corrections Adult Correctional Facility in Mangilao Perez allegedly gave a teller at the First Hawaiian Bank branch along Harmon Loop Road a note saying he was robbing the bank The FBI found Perez more than a week later at the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center "I've been going in and out of Mental Health," Perez said during his arraignment on Thursday "When was the last time you were in?" Bordallo asked "I was in there a week and then federal agents came and picked me up at Mental Health." Perez allegedly admitted to federal authorities following his arrest that he was the person caught on surveillance video at King's Restaurant Investigators learned that he allegedly robbed the bank then went to the restaurant He also said he knew it was wrong to rob the bank Perez was convicted in an April 1992 third-degree criminal sexual conduct case According to the Guam Sex Offender Registry the victim in the case was a 14-year-old girl The registry also states that Perez is a level-two sex offender and last reported to authorities in December 2020 Prison records also show multiple local and federal arrests between 2000 and 2013 A man pleaded guilty to robbing a bank of $1,560 in August appeared before Magistrate Judge Michael Bordallo to enter a plea of guilty for robbing a bank and failing to register as a sex offender I was just running around because I had a lot of anxiety I was always going over to mental health.” Perez also revealed he has dealt with alcohol withdrawals “Do you understand what we’re doing here today?” In August, Perez walked into First Hawaiian Bank in Harmon and handed a teller a plastic bag and a note that read: Perez then walked out of the bank with $1,560 and went next door to eat at King’s Restaurant because he wanted to be caught left because he felt police were taking too long to arrive Law enforcement officers then found Perez in treatment at Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center Perez did not have any money from the robbery and said he spent some of the money on beer and cigarettes Perez’s third-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction in 1992 means he’s supposed to update his registration every six months the last time Perez updated his registration was December 2020 He was previously charged with failure to update in 2013 Perez was convicted in 2002 on a charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and again in 2003 for facilitation of a controlled substance Perez was confined several times in the Department of Corrections for charges in the local court that range from assault Reach reporter Shane Healy at shealy@guampdn.com Sign In Register A man accused in the bank robbery at the First Hawaiian Bank Dededo branch earlier this month faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison also known as "Ben Mangga," appeared before District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Michael Bordallo on Monday Perez will remain behind bars because he is a danger to the community and a flight risk The court appointed Federal Public Defender John Gorman to represent Perez He is scheduled to appear back in court on Sept The FBI confirmed Perez’s arrest on Monday after he was found at the Guam Behavioral Health and Wellness Center undergoing treatment According to the complaint filed by the US Attorney’s Office 13 and passed a note to the teller that read: put a total of $1,560 inside a plastic bag that Perez handed over The teller triggered the alarm after the suspect fled Surveillance footage at the Compadres Mall where the bank branch is located shows the suspect walked next door to King’s Restaurant where he paid $20 for food and drink before he left the restaurant in a taxi Investigators tracked down the taxi driver and learned the suspect at first wanted to be dropped off to the airport but changed his mind and was taken to another location to look for a massage The feds received a tip of the suspect’s identity Authorities learned the suspect was taken by ambulance to the Guam Memorial Hospital before being transferred to GBHWC Perez allegedly admitted that he was the person caught on surveillance video at King’s Restaurant adding that he robbed the bank prior to going to the restaurant He also told investigators that he knew it was wrong to rob the bank adding that he wanted to get caught and that’s why he went next door to eat and wait for the police to show up Perez allegedly told the feds he did not have any money left from the bank robbery but that the sellers took the car back and stole all his belongings He said he spent some of the money on beer and cigarettes Perez holds an extensive local and federal record of arrests that goes back to 2000 According to records at the Department of Corrections possession of a controlled substance known as ice possession of a firearm without a firearms ID 2002 – taken into custody by DEA on charges of violation of federal controlled substance act 2011 – illegal possession of a Schedule II controlled substance 2013 – transferred to an off-island facility