Our Sonoma… where do we stand today?

The big question that we hear all the time these days in our community is, “What’s going on at La Luz, how is everyone doing?” The answers tend to be as complex and complicated as the issues facing all of us today: financial and physical... Continue

Getting the Hispanic community involved in environmental issues

The Sonoma Ecology Center is launching a program called Senderos Naturales -- “Pathways to Nature.” The goal of the program is to involve the Hispanic community in environmental issues. SEC staff commented, “We have always had the hope of interesting the Latino community in our... Continue

Not just nameless workers

On the cold morning of January 28, 1948, a United States Immigration Service plane carrying 28 Mexican citizens, one immigration guard, and three crew members departed from Oakland to transport these agricultural workers to the deportation center in El Centro. Beginning in 1942, tens of... Continue

Pure politics or purely the hunt?

Friends and readers, here I am once more, sharing my feelings in these turbulent times. Is this the moment to be fearful? Not at all. Even less is it a time to just be waiting for uncomfortable actions to be directed specifically at the Hispanic... Continue

Sweet Land of Liberty

Following the contentious Presidential campaign and stunning election result, family members and former friends may find themselves arguing their conflicting concepts of patriotism. Webster’s Dictionary defines a patriot as one who loves, supports, and defends one’s country. Interestingly, a second definition of Patriot is the... Continue

How Trump’s election is affecting the immigrant community

The morning of November 9 here in Sonoma you could breathe the air of uncertainty as people learned that Donald Trump had been elected to the presidency of the United States. It was unmistakably a harsh blow to the Hispanic community, who throughout the electoral... Continue

Conversations with La Curandera

I’ve been told that when I was a baby, I had large, luminous eyes that garnered admiration from family, friends, even strangers. People would look intently and comment. Then one day my eyes became watery, exuding a pus-like discharge. My alarmed mother made plans to... Continue

Indigenous justice is justice for all

I have been very moved by the current historical gathering of tribes in North Dakota. Thousands of Native Americans from more than 100 tribes and their non-native supporters have come together to peacefully protect the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s land and water from the Dakota... Continue

Where Are You, Cesar E. Chavez?

Where are you, Cesar E. Chavez, why aren’t you coming to finish the struggle you began? Where are you, that the farm workers’ groans don’t seem to matter to you? These days not many remember or care about what Cesar Chavez fought for. It seems... Continue

Our ancestral burden

By Edwin Reyes -- Argentinean Alfonsina Storni in her poem, Peso Ancestral (translated as “ancestral burden”) describes the pressure on Latino males to act like a man, showing no emotions, because that was how they were raised. For Latinos as a population, that ancestral burden... Continue

Voices Of The New Majority