COLUMNA de AZTLAN

Bozo the Clown

What will the U.S. do if it is drawn into another front?

By JULIE WATSON

MEXICO CITY - Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.

But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.

If death had a sound, this was it.

Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.

The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico's ruins.

Los Angeles' Hidden Oil, The Nation's Second Largest Reserves.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico Associated Press -- The first of 400,000 trees are being planted to form a "green wall" in protest of the fence the U. S. is building along the border with Mexico.

The treeline will eventually stretch for 512 kilometres along the border between the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas.

Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira Valdes says "our wall is of life, and it competes with shame and hate."

The U. S. government says the fence is critical to security. Critics say it fuels animosity between the two countries and raises environmental and private property concerns.

I think McCain did pretty good speaking to The National Association of Latino Elected Officials. First, Sen. McCain was interrupted 3 times by protesters. A fourth person tried but it appeared as though he had no microphone and could barely be heard causing little distraction.

AP Photo

According to CNN, the protestors were from CodePink.org

Sen. McCain touched on trade (NAFTA), Education, the Iraq war, health care and the war on drugs and the need to help Mexico fight its war against the drug cartels.

By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The battle for the Hispanic vote is on.

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama plan back-to-back appearances Saturday before the annual meeting of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. The non-partisan group represents more than 5,500 officeholders and the fastest-growing voting bloc in the nation.

In a report issued Thursday, the group, known as NALEO, predicted a record-breaking turnout of at least 9.2 million Hispanic voters this fall. They could be key to winning swing states such as New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.

LOS ANGELES (Map, News) - An attorney for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his wife were arrested on suspicion of accepting thousands of dollars from both legal and illegal immigrants in exchange for immigration benefits, authorities said.

ICE Assistant Chief Counsel Constantine Peter Kallas, 38, and wife Maria Kallas, 39, both of Alta Loma, were arrested Thursday at the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, where authorities believed they were accepting such a bribe, U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said in a statement.

A search warrant affidavit said the couple, using a pair of companies they had set up, filed false employment petitions with federal authorities for 45 illegal immigrants and two legal permanent residents.

LA PAZ, Bolivia: Coca growers in Bolivia's Chapare province said Wednesday that they will suspend projects financed by the U.S. government aid agency and instead seek funding from Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez.

Leaders in the key coca-growing region accused the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, of using its aid to undermine leftist President Evo Morales, who rose to prominence as leader of the coca growers union.

"We want USAID to go. If USAID leaves, we will have aid from Venezuela, which is unconditioned and in solidarity," Chapare coca leader Julio Salazar told The Associated Press by telephone. Venezuela already is a major financial backer of Bolivia.

USAID gave US$87 million in aid to Bolivia in 2007, including US$11.9 million to Chapare, mostly for road building and projects to help farmers to grow alternatives to coca.

By Lynn Brezosky
Express-News

HIDALGO -- In a sign of the times for a federal agency that routinely announces million-dollar cocaine and marijuana busts: Customs and Border Protection has issued a news release about a $400 fine because of an extra tank of fuel.

The fine was levied Sunday against a 22-year-old Edinburg man who crossed the border with an extra tank of diesel in the bed of his pickup.

Because of Mexican government subsidies, diesel fuel currently sells at about half the U.S. price across the border. Customs agents have noticed a sharp rise in the number of people trying to bring full containers back to the states.

While it’s not illegal to import fuel, anything that’s not hooked up to the vehicle’s fuel line must be declared and brought in through commercial lanes. In Hidalgo County, that would mean the Pharr International Bridge.

MCALLEN, Texas (Map, News) - A U.S. Supreme Court decision paving the way for a 670-mile federal fence along the U.S.-Mexico border drew swift criticism from environmentalists, who promised to make another legal stand in Texas.

The justices' turned down a plea Monday to hear a lawsuit opposing a two-mile section of the fence in Arizona brought by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife.

The section of fence in question in that case has already been built and even if the court had taken the case, oral arguments would not have been heard until October.

But Monday's decision could have the most immediate implications for Texas, where opposition has been most widespread and fence construction is expected to begin next month.

The highways of Aztlan do not need nativists or racists to clean their highways.

The Minutemen and the San Diego Minutemen openly discriminate against national origin. The minuteman mantra is that they have nothing agains "legal" immigration and that it is "illegal" immigration that they are against. However, it is easy to make this claim because immigration laws have always favored "white" Northern European people. And we all know that European people are immigrants to Aztlan.

Aztlan is the ancestral homeland of the "Meso-American."

It defies logic to believe that Europeans have the right to decide where Meso-Americans may live and do business. Meso-Americans have accepted the European invasion and have contributed to the European controlled economy of Aztlan.

Columna de Aztlan gives kudos to Cal Tarns for rethinking the criteria used to ggrant stretches of highway that they originally used to grant the San Diego nativist Minutemen group.

LA VOZ DE AZTLAN
Los Angeles, Alta California
June 23, 2008

Huge police response averts "food riot" in Milwaukee

Personnel at the county run Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center
in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin were shocked this morning when
over 2,500 hungry Americans started lining up in front of their building
for food vouchers. The public assistance center had made a media
announcement that they would be taking names for food vouchers
for people with flood damage to their homes. Word spread rapidly
among the city's homeless and destitute population that the center
would be giving out "free food vouchers" when in reality the event
was set up only to allow flood victims to apply for disaster Foodshare
Benefits.

The people in the line, which began forming at 5 am, started becoming
unruly when they learned that the vouchers were only for victims of
the disaster. The huge crowd eventually began to block traffic in the

By GEBE MARTINEZ

In a gutsy move, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain dared Democratic rival Barack Obama to a face-to-face meeting next month, at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights group.

Sure, it was a campaign gimmick. Both candidates already plan to speak at separate sessions, and both will address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference next week.

But if Obama called McCain’s bluff and agreed to share the stage, it would be McCain, longtime friend and advocate of the Latino community, who would face the tougher questioning against Obama, whose record on Hispanic issues is comparatively shallow.