04/11/2018 Dallas News
High school students in Texas will likely soon be able to take a state-approved Mexican-American studies course — but it won’t be called that.
The state’s board of education gave preliminary approval Wednesday for the creation of the course, the culmination of a four-year fight by advocates and educators to add it as an elective. A final vote will happen Friday.
“This should have happened four years ago, but we’re pleased to see the board move forward on this today,” said Kathy Miller, the president of the left-leaning nonprofit Texas Freedom Network. “It’s important for students to learn that the story of Texas and our nation includes the experiences and contributions of Mexican Americans and other people from diverse backgrounds.”
Millions of Mexican citizens will go to the polls on July 1 to elect a new president, just as they have done, like clockwork, every six years since 1934. If experience is any guide, the election will proceed without incident: polls will open on time, observers will pronounce the voting to have been “free and fair,” and the losers will congratulate the winner, even if they also pledge to “continue the fight.” But all is not well with Mexican democracy. Public support for democratic institutions is low, and faith in the democratic process is waning. The current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has logged some of the worst public approval ratings ever recorded in Mexico—as low as 12 percent, according to one poll from January 2017. His administration is widely blamed for failing to solve Mexico’s most vexing problems: civil-war-like levels of violence, high crime rates, blatant corruption and impunity at the highest levels of government, a continuously impoverished countryside, and a long-term failure to extend the provision of public goods across the whole of Mexican territory.
Germany has returned two 3,000-year-old pre-Hispanic wooden statues from the Olmec civilisation to the Mexican authorities.
Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar victories for best director and best picture for “The Shape of Water” have set off an outpouring of national pride and triggered celebrations in his Mexican homeland.
MEXICO CITY
On a cloudy morning last October, Agustin Poblete Ortega stopped by his wife’s house to tell her he was leaving again. Rosa Icela Nava, then 27, didn’t want him to go. Her whole life she had been surrounded by men who had gone north, and sometimes never returned. And while her relationship with Poblete had been rocky over the last year — she had moved out of his family’s house because of his drinking — he was a good father to their two young daughters. She wanted to ask him to stay, to tell him about the sick feeling in her stomach. But Nava kept her feelings inside, as was her habit. “I can’t stop you,” she told him. “Take care of the kids,” he said.