Women and the U.S. - Mexico Border

Adios

Today will be my last post for this blog for my journalism class. I hope this blog has proved to be informative and thought-provoking on the subject of women and the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Though this class is ending, I have developed a passion for these issues, and I see myself continuing to write about and be involved with social justice issues in the future. 

The issue of the murdered women in Juarez is still very near to my heart, and I hope there will be more effort toward fixing this problem by both the United States and Mexican governments. 

After a long semester of being a student in Border Beat, I find myself coming to the end of my time both in this class, and in college. Looking back, I have learned so much and grown in so many ways. I have found this class to be valuable in developing my mulitimedia skills which I now know is vital to getting a job in this tough market.

All of my other articles can be found on www.borderbeat.net

My (almost) Mexico experience

This past semester I have covered topics related to women and the U.S. - Mexico border. The knowledge and experience I’ve gained from it have been valuable not only to my education, but have allowed me to relate better to the Southern Arizona community.

This past weekend, I traveled to Nogales, Ariz., as part of my “special project” for my capstone journalism class. The place that I needed to film was anticlimactically located in a marsh a few miles away from the border.

But after driving an over an hour to get there, I was really craving an authentic Mexican taco.  I figured that after being in the “Border Beat” class all semester, I owed it to myself to actually go to the border. So my friend and I headed toward downtown Nogales.

The I-19 takes you right along the border wall. All the landscape is is full of rolling hills and when you drive up them you can see the border wall snaking along the desert and the shanty-town of Nogales, Sonora on the other side.

Well, we weren’t really watching where we were driving, and I got kind of twisted around and lost which direction the wall was.  I made a right turn and I’m suddenly staring at the gate to Mexico only a few feet in front of me. There is this small sign on the list of the road that politely informed me that this was the “last U-turn before Mexico.”

So I dove across three lanes of traffic and made the turn only a few feet from the entryway to Mexico.

I was amazed at how terrified I was that I almost drove through the border. I realized the things I have been studying and learning about this semester, such as the feminicidios and drug wars, have made me scared of even setting foot across the line.

That was a sad thought to me, because there are so many beautiful and wonderful things about the border that I enjoy. I have emerged from this class with a newfound appreciation of both the horrors and the amazing culture that stems from our neighbor in the South.

We ended up getting a taco, from an adorable restaurant about a block away from our almost-crossing experience. This class has made me hope for a time when I can safely enjoy a taco from the other side.

Women’s groups protest Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Relations

As the murders in Ciudad Juárez are estimated to reach about 130 this year alone, some women’s rights groups are taking a stand. 

Several women’s groups, are protesting Foreign Relations Commission of the Mexican Senate asking them to reconsider the recent appointment of Mexico’s ambassador to Canada, Francisco Barrio Terrazas. 

He was governor of the state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez is located, in the 1990’s when the killings began and continued. Rights groups are now saying he failed to adequately investigate “femicides” and protect the women of Juárez and should not serve as a representative of Mexico. 

Hundreds of women have died over the years since 1993, and human rights groups are saying the murders have remained largely unresolved and overlooked by Mexico’s local and federal government. Many of the women were tortured, raped or multitude before they were killed. 

Terrazas allegedly once said the female victims should not have worn miniskirts or been alone in dark places. These claims hinting that the women more or less deserved what they got, are one of many gripes these groups have with him, though it cannot be proved he did say such things. 

The protests are gaining worldwide attention, but Tarrazas has told the press he was “never insensitive” towards the murders and he did what he could to stop them. 

Sources: NYT, Embassy Magazine

A family recipe - Arroz Dulce

Earlier this week I went over to my friends house for dinner and they shared with me thier Mexican recipe for Arroz Dulce or “Sweet Rice.”

“It’s fast, cheap and delicious,” Ashlee Gonzales said. Food and big family meals have always been an important part of the Gonzales’ life.

She said Sweet Rice was inspired by the mexican rice drink Horchata. The Gonzales family makes this simple recipe often and it has been a family favorite for a couple generations.

Now, I’m not a very good cook, but even I was able to keep up with this one. It was very simple and fun to make. I think I poured in a little too much sugar, but I like to think I was just adding my own flair.

Arroz Dulce - recipe

• 2 cups of Long Grained White Rice
• 1/2 cup of Water
• 1/3 cup of Sugar
• Milk
• Cinnamon

First we cooked the rice in a pot until all water is absorbed and rice is soft.

Then we stirred in the 1/3-cup of sugar.

We let it cool on the counter and then served in small bowls to the rest of the family.

Each family member poured in thier own milk to thier liking. Some (like me) liked to eat it a little more viscous and sugary, but others (like Ashlee) made it more milky.

For a finishing touch, we sprinkled of cinnamon on top!

Mmmmmmm!

Hispanic women more likely to attend college then men

A recent study by California State University, Los Angles said there is a persistence among Hispanic Women to attend college, but there are contributing factors that determine their success.

Some of these factors are socioeconomic background, aspiration, language, sex role socialization, and availability of financial aid. 

I talked to Maricela Zamora, a mathematics freshman at the University of Arizona about her family background and how it shaped her into the college woman she is today.

The daughter of Mexican and Cuban immigrants, who grew up in Los Angles.

Her mother was born in Havana, Cuba, and had already had three kids before she decided to go to college. She pent time taking care of her sick father with her mother during the years after high school when she would be in college. 

“With my mom, education was a tough thing. My grandma only had a third grade education,” Zamora said.

Zamora’s grandmother had to drop out of school to take care of her sick father and eventually became a nanny for a very wealthy family.

“My grandma never got an education so my grandma really tried pushing my mom,” she said.

After high school, Zamora’s mother couldn’t go to college because she had to take care of sick family members.

“All her academic advisors were like ‘you’re poor, and you’re not that smart. You’re not going to get anywhere,” Zamora said. “So they never told her about college, they never told her about scholarships”

After having children and working several jobs, she decided to go back to college and eventually got her masters. Zamora said her mother tried to enorage her to go to college right away.

According to a UCLA study hispanic women have a self-motivating drive that is showing up in recent statistics that many more hispanic women are attending college then men. There is a widening gender gap between Hispanic male and female students, with 31% of college-aged women enrolled and only 21% of men.

Hispanic women are also more likely to pursue a medial or law degree. 

Dad was born on a ranch outside of Guadalajara, Mexico, has nine brothers and suffers from polio. Because of his disability he persued a career of the mind rather then psysical labor, and enforced strict acedemics with his children.

“He used to say ‘because you cant do physical labor you have to do mental labor and you have to be really good at it,”’ Zamora said.

She was raised catholic and attended both catholic school and public schools. Zamora said education was always made a priority with both of her parents.

“From their own experiences they learned that education is one of the most important things,” she said.

My mom doesn’t want me to get married or get engaged until I graduate. She wants things to go in the right order for me”

According to the UCLA study, the Hispanic daughters are more likely to attend college if their mother also attended college.

She said her parents were “very excited” that she’s chosen to persue  a degree in mathematics

“They’re very proud of me because I am able to do that” neither of them have that background,” Zamora said. 

Women 2.7 times more likely to die crossing then men

I recently read a recent study titled “Close encounters of the deadly kind: Gender, migration, and border (in)security,” by Anna Ochoa O’Leary, a University of Arizona professor who studies Mexican migrant women. It was published in by the journal Migration Letters. 

She discusses the humanitarian crisis of many immigrant Mexican women facing death while crossing the U.S. – Mexico border. O’Leary collected testimonials of repatriated Mexican women about their border crossing.

With women making up over half the total migrants in America, and O’Leary showed that many women are no longer crossing the border to join spouses. 

She said that research by the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona on recovered bodies  in the Tucson area shows that since the harsher border enforcement began in 1994, deaths have dramatically increased, and women are 2.7 times more likely to die then men.

They are more likely to be fatigued from their “double-burden”of domestic life, and some are traveling with children and run the risk of being left behind, O’Leary said. Women often have extra horrors to encounter at the border including sexual harassment and rape.

She discusses the “politics of problem-making” and calls to question the possibly social and xenophobic policies that lead to border deaths.

Hispanics: a growing population in the U.S.

It has been largely documented that the hispanic population is growing quickly in the United States. Hispanic women have one of the highest unmarried birthrates in the country.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage. This number drastically more then the rate 24 percent of white births, but still less then the 68 percent percentage of black out-of-wedlock births.

By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. If the trend continues, one in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, which is twice the current ratio.

Family is one of the most powerful Hispanic family values. They value a the tight-knit extended family, and there has been a recent cultural acceptance of women raising children on their own.  A single mother’s relatives, such as her own mother or sisters,  often step in to make up for the absence of the baby’s father.

Some research I’ve read points this trend at the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, where the dysfunction is multigenerational. Often the extended family members are single as well, and a generational line of single mothers emerges that doesn’t reinforce the value of marriage.

Many Hispanic women are immigrants who are often working low-wage jobs, and if they have many children, there is a higher likelihood they’ll end up on welfare or other social services.

Many of these women seek homeless shelters or other programs, causing some Americans to accuse them of abusing the system or using it as a crutch after multiple pregnancies.