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Southwest's secession from U.S. predicted
2.26.00     F.Zoretich Albuquerque Tribune

What about Pringle? In 1988, Pringle, then an Assembly candidate from Garden Grove, hired private poll guards to intimidate Latino voters on Election Day. Did not Lopez and David rail against him then? Is he not here today? "This has nothing to do with Pringle," Lopez argues. "Anyone willing to speak out against Anaheim's refusal of Gigante is welcome." But does he think Pringle is with them for his own political ambitions? "Everyone has their interest," Lopez says with a sly grin. "You have to ask him."
The press conference starts, but not before Waters tells Pringle & Lopez to stand side by side for the duration. They suffer as we all do. The conference is a bore, a formality in which a succession of talking heads approaches the microphone to preach the gospel of anti-racism, open borders, diversity, free markets, globalism and cheap prices. David and Lopez accuse the city of racism (Lopez refers to the Stipkovich Memorandum as "market ethnic cleansing"), but Pringle, a Republican, remember, eludes the charge nimbly when reporters question him. "I won't use the same words [as Lopez]," he says, "but I feel the same sentiment."

Frias concludes the snoozefest by announcing that Gigante's CEO will fly in from Mexico to address the Anaheim City Council on Aug. 20. And when he comes, he will teach them that local liquor-license regulations are no match for the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But the conference ends, and I'm unchanged, unrepentant, bereft. Even when the cake comes, a monstrous pastel de tres leches topped with cream, kiwis, pineapples and strawberries spelling out "Gigante." The press and preachers descend on it, swallowing cake like they did Gigante's claims of injustice. Pringle shovels a generously sized empanada into his mouth. Waters is suddenly everyone's mother, urging attendees to take food home. And they do, pocketing the produce. A union worker cradles two mangos the size of babies; Lopez stuffs his suit pockets with chocolate suckers.

Waters approaches me, politely offering a slice of cake, which I equally politely refuse. She insists. I finally relent and take the chance to ask her about the media's response to her story of Little Gigante and the Racists of Anaheim.
"I don't have to do a lot of explaining to them, except to you," she tells me. "Everyone gets it except the Weekly."

origins In City of the Gods, war was a way of life New discoveries reveal Mexico's Teotihuacan was not peaceful pastoral culture experts long thought. 11.12.02   Thomas H. Maugh II L.A. Times A series of discoveries by a Japanese archeologist is shattering the long-held belief that the inhabitants of Mexico's mysterious Teotihuacan, the City of the Gods, were a peaceful people who managed to build a metropolis without having a warlike despot typically associated with vast empires. Instead, excavations of several structures have shown that the people of Teotihuacan (pronounced TAY-oh-TEE-wa-CON), whose origin & ultimate fate are unknown, were as warlike as their Mayan contemporaries, and the Aztec and Inca who came after them. Digging inside the massive edifices of the city, archeologist Saburo Sugiyama has unearthed the bodies of hundreds of bound captives, indicating that the city's rulers were well-versed in mayhem. Last month inside the Pyramid of the Moon, Sugiyama found the first burial site for high-level officials ever discovered in the city. It was not the grave of a king, but certainly that of priests or other administrators. "Nobody has ever found anything like this" at Teotihuacan, he said, adding that the discoveries may change forever how the city is viewed. Through the centuries, Teotihuacan has remained one of the most impenetrable mysteries of Mesoamerica. At its peak, the city about 30 miles north of Mexico City covered at least 8 sq mi, making it larger than Imperial Rome. Its estimated population of 150,000 exceeded that of Washington, D.C. during Abraham Lincoln's presidency about 1,300 years later. It was the largest city in the New World during its ascendancy and one of the largest in the world. Yet remarkably little is known about it. Archeologists cannot read the Teotihuacanos' writings, and are not even sure whether the inscriptions they have seen are, in fact, writings. They don't know who built the city, what they called themselves, how they spread their control over much of Mesoamerica, or why they abruptly disappeared in the 7th century, 800 years after the city's birth. The abandoned city and its monuments were given their current names by the Aztecs, who discovered the remnants when they moved into the region in the late 1400s and were convinced the city had a supernatural origin. Sugiyama's recent discoveries have begun to unveil a tiny piece of the city's culture. In addition to the bodies of three officials, the tomb contained jade objects from as far away as the Motagua Valley of Guatemala carved in Mayan style, including a spectacular jade statuette of a person with relatively realistic features and big eyes. Such objects were typically used as a symbol of rulers or royal family members in Mayan society. "The offerings strongly suggest a direct relation between the Teotihuacan ruling group and the Mayan royal families," Sugiyama said. "For the first time, we have data indicating a Mayan royal class connection at Teotihuacan, from the heart of one of the city's major monuments." Scientists previously found evidence of Teotihuacan influence in Mayan and other cultures, but this discovery marks the first evidence that cultural influence moved in the opposite direction. "The archeological evidence appears to point toward Teotihuacanos intervening in Mayan politics," said archeologist George Cowgill of Arizona State Univ., one of the foremost experts on the city. "But many people still dispute that there was really any significant influence because they were two distinctly different cultures. Dr. Sugiyama's discovery makes it all more complicated by adding some big new pieces to the puzzle. It certainly makes it harder to see the Maya as not much influenced by Teotihuacan." What has long puzzled archeologists are the widespread pictures of plants, animals, commoners and gods on monuments in the city. The images have led many researchers to speculate that it was a peaceful, pastoral culture, ruled not by mighty kings but by the collective will of the people, a kind of Athens of Mesoamerica. The lack of inscriptions on the monuments, it has been suggested, reflects the absence of strong leaders driven by a need to glorify their reigns. "It is a mystery," says archeologist Ruben Cabrera of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. "Why didn't they depict rulers?" Historian Esther Pasztory of Columbia University in New York suggests Teotihuacan was an egalitarian republic markedly different from contemporaneous civilizations. Her 1997 book, "Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living," argues that the people of Teotihuacan refrained from glorifying rulers because they wished to create the image of an integrated community. Pasztory says researchers such as Sugiyama & Cowgill are trying to force the city into a single-ruler model that is more comfortable for them. "The model is something like ancient Egypt, but Teotihuacan is not Egypt. It is a very special place," she said. But Sugiyama and others argue that the absence of textual inscriptions is a reflection of the cosmopolitan nature of the city. In recent years, archeologists have shown that the city's residents included Pacific Coast Zapotecs, Mayans and other nationalities, as well as the indigenous population. "In a cosmopolitan city, one language isn't going to be understood by everyone, so symbolic images are easier to understand," Sugiyama said. Sugiyama's Japanese ancestry might seem to make him an unlikely candidate to decipher a Mexican city's past. When he first came to Mexico in 1979, he didn't speak any Spanish and his only knowledge of the country came from books. But those books had triggered an intense interest in Mexican history and culture, esp. that of Teotihuacan, and he has been working there ever since, either as an associate with Mexico's National Institute, as a professor at Arizona State or in his current position at Aichi Prefectural University in Japan. He made his first major discovery in 1983, while digging around the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, a smaller structure a little more than a mile south of the Pyramid of the Moon. He unearthed a massive burial site containing 18 sacrificed men, the first evidence of such ruthless behavior. The men were dressed as soldiers and buried with obsidian-tipped spears and other weapons. In an effort to discover why the men were sacrificed, perhaps as an offering to a god, or maybe to commemorate the death of a ruler, Sugiyama, Cowgill and Cabrera in 1988 began tunneling into the temple. They immediately found the remains of about 200 more warriors, most buried with their hands behind their backs as though they were bound. Continuing their excavation toward the center of the temple, the team was shocked to intersect a jagged tunnel. Following it to the center, they found the remains of 20 more sacrificed soldiers. Disappointingly, they also found three large pits that had apparently been emptied by looters. "There might have been one or two tombs of rulers," Cowgill said. "We don't know. I suspect that's what it was, but we don't have the hard evidence." Ten years later, convinced that the pyramids must have been burial sites for royalty, Sugiyama and Cabrera turned to the Pyramid of the Moon, a massive structure 450' x 420' wide at the base and more than 120' tall. Because the pyramid was built in as many as 7 successive stages, its interior is filled with a mixture of boulders, rocks and loose soil. The possibility of collapse makes the tunneling slow going; the team is lucky if it can dig and reinforce a yard of tunnel in a day. But the same conditions may very well have kept out looters. In 1999, the pair discovered a burial chamber with a wealth of artifacts, including greenstone statuettes, figurines fashioned from obsidian, obsidian knives, mirrors, 2 jaguars in a wooden cage and 7 large birds. The chamber held only one body, and the team initially thought it had finally found a ruler. But when the skeleton was fully excavated, it was found to have been buried with its hands behind its back, as though bound. The body was also unadorned. The team had more luck this year. Digging in a level dating from about AD 350, corresponding to the construction of the sixth stage of the pyramid, Sugiyama and Cabrera found another burial chamber, this one with 3 bodies. "Unlike the earlier burials we've discovered in the Pyramid of the Moon, these 3 bodies didn't have their hands tied," Sugiyama said. "In addition, they were found in a cross-legged seated position, which is very rarely, if ever, found in burials here. The position can, however, be seen in images in murals, sculptures or figurines of priests, gods and warriors in Teotihuacan and other related sites." Similar body positioning has been found in burials of Mayan elite. The 3 bodies are all male and are estimated to have been about 50 at the time of burial. All 3 bodies were lavishly adorned. "They have the richest ornaments ever found in a burial at Teotihuacan after more than a century of research," Sugiyama said. The bodies were also surrounded by offerings of very high quality. "If we had found only one of these bodies, we would suspect that he had been a ruler or at least a royal family member, but we discovered three," Sugiyama said. "That leaves us with critical questions of identification that still need to be resolved." Sugiyama thinks the presence of the bodies suggests there is a royal tomb nearby. But that discovery, if it is there, will have to wait until next year. In mid-October, he had to close the site and return to his teaching job for the fall semester.

The "Mexican paradox" 1.24.03   Barbara Solow N.Carolina Independent Carmen may not realize it, but she defies conventional wisdom about motherhood. She has lived in Durham NC for 6 years since immigrating from Mexico City. Last December she gave birth to her third child, Carlos. It wasn't until her second trimester of pregnancy that she signed up for prenatal care through govt-funded Baby Love program. Her husband was away on a construction job when she went into labor, so friends took her to Durham Regional Hospital, where she delivered her baby by cesarean section. Carlos was hardy at nearly 7 lbs when he was born; his mom made a smooth recovery. "Fue todo muy rapido," Carmen says, bouncing her wide-eyed son on her lap. Decades of scientific research have posited that low income & lack of access to early prenatal care are the best predictors of unhealthy births. But when it comes to immigrant Latinas, a surprising & mysterious phenomenon kicks in: Although they get less prenatal care and are more likely to be living in poverty, studies show first-generation Latinas, esp. those from Mexico, have healthy babies. Having fewer low birthweight & pre-term babies (those born before 37 weeks) means lower infant mortality. Nationally, the rate of infant deaths per 1,000 live births for Latinas is 5.6, compared to 5.7 for whites and 13.5 for African Americans. A report by a statewide task force to be unveiled early next month reveals that what's known as the "Mexican Paradox" is at work in N.Carolina. The report found that between 1996 & 2000, the rate of infant deaths per 1,000 live births to Mexican-born women was 6.1, compared to 6.6 for whites and 15 for African Americans. (For non-Mexican Latinas, it was 5 and for U.S.-born Latinas, 6.3.) This despite a greater proportion of Latinas in N.Carolina had annual incomes below $14,000 and started prenatal care after the first trimester. The paradox should be big news in a state that ranks 47th in infant mortality. But the figures on Latina births are likely to be overshadowed by larger issues in the task force report, such as the barriers Spanish-speaking newcomers face in getting health care. The numbers are no surprise to researchers who've been exploring the phenomenon for more than 2 decades, ever since data on ethnicity began to be included on U.S. birth certificates. That data revealed that immigrant Latinas, esp. Mexicans, have an advantage when it comes to births that outweighs other risks they face. Its source remains a mystery. "Numerous factors are intertwined," says N.Carolina's Birth Defects Monitoring Program dir Bob Meyer, who helped analyze statistics for the task force report. "There's diet & lifestyle issues, such as lower rates of smoking among Mexican women. Certain genetic factors come into play. But we're not any closer to understanding it." Health scientists have discounted the possibility that the paradox can be explained by the fact that new immigrants tend to be relatively healthy. You have to be tough to pick up and start life over in a new country, the theory goes. Besides behaviors such as low rates of smoking & drinking during pregnancy, researchers have identified threads in Latino culture that form a protective blanket for expectant moms. These include diet rich in protein & vitamins, extended family ties, strong religious beliefs and an up-on-a-pedestal approach to pregnant women. One 1995 study proposed that the Mexican religious symbol of the Virgin of Guadeloupe may encourage healthy births through its power as an icon for expectant mothers. Still, clear links between traditional culture & lower infant mortality have yet to be made. That's one reason why academic discussions of the paradox have been slow to translate into health policy. "It's all assumptions," says UNC-Chapel Hill Maternal & and Child Health Dept chair Pierre Buekens, leading researcher in the field. "We're still trying to understand the whys." "We look on pregnancy as an individual thing, that's our culture's instructions," says family planning physician Deborah Norton. "But that's not the reality for everybody. Latino culture really supports pregnant women. But in our culture, you don't get any breaks." For Latino leaders, the power of the paradox is that it shatters negative stereotypes of immigrant communities. "It helps us appreciate the fact that traditional culture can be good for your health," says advocacy group El Pueblo dir. Andrea Bazan Manson, which played a leading role on the task force. "We have here in N.Carolina the fastest- growing Latina community in the nation. It's a community that's underserved, but also has some strengths that we need to let people know about." But there's a paradox within the paradox: Those strengths disappear the longer Latinas live in this country. Nobody knows exactly why or when that happens. But national studies show that as Latinas become Americanized, their infant mortality rates begin to rise. Further, the paradox's protective umbrella doesn't shelter all Latinas. Puerto Rican women, for example, don't have the healthy birthweight babies common to those from Mexico, Central and South America. Spanish-speaking migrant farmworkers have infant mortality rates that are 25% above national average. Latinas have higher rates of children with certain birth defects, incl neural tube defects and Down syndrome. Given such complexities, it's no surprise that health & social-service workers are still searching for ways to put the lessons of the paradox to practical use. But with that promise dimming as Latinas adopt American culture, community advocates warn this is no time to sit back. "It's very difficult to get funding for programs for populations that have healthy babies," says family medicine asst prof. Pamela Frasier. "My concern is that we're being shortsighted. We have an opportunity to intervene now to prevent that third generation from going downhill." Latinas aren't the only ones who have a stake in staving off that slide. Some health-care leaders believe that if better understood, the paradox could energize efforts to roll back the double-digit death rates of African-American infants. Nationally, blacks have twice the infant mortality of whites, 14.3 infant deaths per live births compared to 6 for whites, according to the U.S. Health & Human Services Dept. In trying to explain these disparities, past research has turned to familiar benchmarks: more poverty & less prenatal care for African-American women, adding up to more low-weight & pre-term babies. But officials at federal Ctrs for Disease Control & Prevention have begun calling for a new approach that takes into account what a recent article in "Maternal & Child Health Journal" called the "social & political impact of being an African American woman in U.S., racism, and the combined effects of gender, racism, and relative social position" on pregnancy & birth. Existence of the Mexican Paradox bolsters the idea that access to resources alone can't explain why some women have healthy babies and others don't. But whether Latinas could provide a model for reducing infant mortality in other communities is a sensitive subject. "It's never a good idea to present one community as healthier than another," says Andrea Bazan Manson. "I hesitate to say we could be a model for African Americans. If you look at the harsh statistics, you see tremendous disparities between African Americans & whites. Then there's this Latina group that doesn't quite fit in anywhere." On the other hand, she says, some Latino traditions echo those of African Americans. "The kinship networks, the support for pregnant women are very similar," Bazan Manson says. "But more research needs to happen." Ida Dawson is a physician's assistant & Perinatal Periods of Risk team member, national group that's exploring ways to prevent black infant deaths. She's seen the paradox at work in the healthy babies her Latina clients routinely deliver. But African American Dawson wonders how quickly the positives they bring with them will fade from exposure to the negatives of their adopted culture, incl racism & discrimination her community has known for generations. "Down the road, that's the worry," she says. "Right now, these Spanish-speaking people are still new, and still inside their communities. We've got to change the way we do things now, so we can protect the good nutritional habits and the other things they're doing right." Maternity care coordinator for the Baby Love program Elisabeth Palmer tries to reinforce healthy behaviors she sees in her Latina clients. At the same time, she's constantly bumping up against the weightier problems they face, such as lack of health insurance, decent housing, or even adequate food. Funded with state Medicaid dollars, Baby Love was launched in 1987 with the specific aim of reducing infant deaths among low-income people. The program offers a range of services for new and expectant moms for up to 60 days after the birth of a child, everything from helping families sign up for food stamps to arranging donations of baby clothes, to giving advice on breastfeeding. Palmer works with 50 families at a time and all of her clients are Spanish-speaking. The 2 most obvious reasons she cites for the healthy babies she sees are that few of the women smoke or drink alcohol during pregnancy and they eat well-balanced, home-cooked meals. "Whenever I get a donation to get a family some groceries, I'll look at the list of things they've asked for and it's always whole food, nothing processed," says Palmer. "All these women know how to cook. Even 14 & 15-year-olds know how to cook."

Her observations are backed up by studies showing Mexican-born immigrants have higher intakes of nutrients important to pregnancy, protein, vitamins A, C, E and folic acid, and calcium. A 1995 study by leading paradox researcher Sylvia Guendelman at UCBerkeley found that while low incomes for non-Latinos correlated with less healthy diets, the reverse was true of first-generation Mexicans whose low incomes were associated with more healthy diets.

In her yellow-walled kitchen, Azucena prepares lunch of homemade corn tortillas, beans, cheese, salsa verde and salad. The air has a slight sting from the spicy chilies in the salsa. Every few minutes, she turns to flip tortillas warming on a stove-top griddle. In Mexico, when Azucena was carrying Jimena, now 6, she ate "everything natural, no hamburgers." But making healthy meals was more difficult when her daughter, Sharon, was born a year later. There were no relatives to help out while her husband and father-in-law were at work. She didn't know how to drive or even where to get fresh food.
"With the first child I ate lots of fruits & vegetables," says Azucena, who worked as a nurse in Mexico and would like to do the same here someday. "Pero aqui no." Traditional food was also the first thing Diana missed when she came to U.S. from Ecuador 3 years ago. "Our food is really different," says Diana, whose second child, Andres, was born in Sept.. "We don't like too much pre-cooked."

As soon as she gets home from her job as an administrative asst, "I start to cook," Diana says. "I'm always cooking rice, vegetables, chicken." Even more than the food, Diana misses the web of support that encircled her when Juan, her eldest, was born in Ecuador 9 years ago. Her parents & her two siblings, even her aunts & uncles, were there to lend a hand and give advice. "All the family," she says. "When one of us gets pregnant, all the family is considered, all the opinions."
Recently, she's arranged for an aunt to come live with them so she'll have help with the baby. It means their 2 bedroom apartment will be a little more crowded, but Diana doesn't mind. "In the old times, women didn't work outside the home," she says. "But I have to work and my husband has to work. I had my mom beside me when I had Juan Jose and she could tell me what to do. Now, I always call her."

While relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the effects on pregnancy of cultural forces like kinship networks & religious faith, many clinic workers rank them high on the list of reasons their Latina clients have healthy babies. Communal rituals like baptisms extended family under one roof create a welcoming climate for babies.
It's intangibles like these that seem most vulnerable to the pressures of modern-day American life. Once cultural supports are gone, health workers say, behaviors begin to change. For example, traditional practices like breastfeeding and periods of rest for pregnant women & new mothers are hard to sustain when you're holding down a low-wage manufacturing or service job.

The messages newcomers receive about mainstream culture can also work against good health. Diana was surprised when doctors asked her whether she would be breast or bottle-feeding her new baby. "In our country, it's always thought you will do breastfeeding," she says. "The doctors always try to do that. It's cheaper & easier." Studies show it boosts infant immune systems and speeds the mom's post-partum recovery.
"Breastfeeding's not seen as cool or American," notes nonprofit Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition head Laura Oberkircher. "A lot of the women become more hesitant about it." Messages come from other sources, as well. "People arrive here and see all the worst things advertised on TV," says Latino parent educator Mary DeCoster. "Pretty soon they're eating worse than most people here; they're actually eating Doritos for lunch."

Informal survey conducted last year by the Immigrant Health Initiative revealed that respondents were eating between 5 & 7 meals a week at fast food restaurants. Such findings lead UNC health researcher Pierre Buekens to this conclusion: "Acculturation is bad for babies," he says. "It's not bad for everything, but it's bad for babies."
Researchers & community leaders agree that if left unattended, the paradox could quickly disappear. Meaningful efforts to preserve it and improve health care generally for Latinos should take the culture of new immigrants into account by building "upon the strong family values & connections within the Latino community" the task force report states. Several of those approaches are detailed in the report's "best practices" section, with special attention given to grassroots efforts to train Spanish-speaking immigrants to become their own health educators & advocates.

When it comes to pregnancy, for example, "It's good to foster programs that continue to create networks amongst women," says El Centro interim exec. dir. Angelina Schiovane, who runs just such a lay health adviser program. "So maybe they don't have any longer their mother who can provide advice. But they have other friends of different ages & experiences to continue that support network."
Such programs are a start. But more needs to be done soon health-care leaders say, if the next generation of Latinas is to continue having healthy babies. "We need to do more learning about what are the strengths of Latinas and develop strategies to maintain them," says Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition Oberkircher. "Because once they're gone, it's hard to get them back."

Hilda, 18, came to U.S. from Guatemala 2 years ago with her boyfriend. Last month, she gave birth to her first child, Rafael. He was healthy, at 6 lbs 15 oz. But her present circumstances are a sobering reminder of what the future might hold. Hilda spends her days in a cinderblock apartment she shares with her boyfriend & 2 male cousins.
Towels act as makeshift curtains for the windows. Water pools outside the front door and trickles across kitchen linoleum inside. The concrete floor in the living room where she sits on an old cot cradling her son is bare & cold. When social workers referred her to Baby Love, Hilda was hesitant about getting help. She worried that if she signed up for the program, health officials might take custody of her baby or send her back to Guatemala.

Hilda plans to apply for food stamps & Medicaid for Rafael, whose tiny face is an echo of his mom's elfin features. She & Elisabeth Palmer of Baby Love discuss the services he's eligible to receive. But when Palmer asks, "What would help you most right now?" Hilda fixes on something far less bureaucratic.
"To be with family," she replies.

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