I was nominated for The New Americano Award in the second annual Social Revolución at South by Southwest Interactive. The award is meant to honor:
These individuals and/or organizations are trendsetters impacting the Hispanic market online.
You can vote here.
From TechCrunch on December 25, 2012:
Google has been used for many ends, but in the hands ofresearcher Viridiana Rios, the search engine has become a tool to fight Mexican drug cartels and help the government organize to prevent violence. Rios is a researcher at Harvard University who recently published a paper about a tool she created to track publicly available cartel data and how it can inform Mexican security officials’ work.
Rios is one of a number of Mexicans applying technology in different ways to combat narco violence and insecurity in their country. TechCrunch spoke to Rios, as well as data scientist Diego Valle-Jones and the co-founders of a crowdsourced safety app,Ret.io. Each is working on projects that may not end the drug war but will illuminate and aid parties caught in the middle of it, said University of Texas at El Paso political science professor Tony Payan.
There are three basic ways that people in Mexico are using technology as a result of the drug war and resulting insecurity, Payan tells TechCrunch…
From TechCrunch on December 25, 2012:
Three years ago Mario Romero Zavala and José Antonio Bolio decided to create a Twitter account in Mexico City to alert people to cumbersome police checkpoints that too often resulted in various forms of harassment to locals. This was the beginning of Ret.io, which has since changed tremendously.
Ret.io’s Twitter presence has grown across multiple accounts in every Mexican state to 27,000 followers. Its website has more than 100,000 monthly visitors, and its iPhone app has been in the top 10 in the App Store within the navigation category.
For the first year Ret.io was just one Twitter account that tracked and tweeted mentions and tips. The iPhone app was released in February of this year, albeit Romero Zavala admits that the core functionality still lies with Twitter…
From Latinopia December 17, 2012:
The Newtown gun massacre is, without a doubt a tremendous tragedy, and consequently politicians are already calling for tighter gun control laws. This, of course, was not on the policy agenda coming out of the 2012 presidential election.
But now that all eyes are focused upon the senseless murder of 20 children at the hands of a man with a semiautomatic assault rifle, whether countless thousands of children will have the chance to live a secure life as a result of immigration reform may be moved to the back burner. At least, that’s what some are saying.
Immigration reform in this country is an iffy subject anyway, and whether the next four years would yield any tangible legal results was, despite promises from the president and other politicos, far from certain. Now that there’s a more black-and-white legislative issue that’s hopped in front of immigration reform that’s been wallowing in legislative limbo for decades, it would be politically easy to just ignore it…
From Latinopia on December 3, 2012:
I don’t have a lot of money. But, with the money that I do have, I try to make a point to give back where I can. After Hurricane Sandy I donated to the Red Cross, for example. Before the end of the year I want to donate to my public radio station. I donate occasionally to my alma mater when they call asking for money and I’m going to donate to an animal organization in the name of the deceased mother of a friend of mine.
I’m not talking huge donations here, but $20 will do, the point is that you’re participating in promoting the things that you think are important. Recent presidential elections have highlighted the important role that small donors can play, but the more important transaction that occurs when you make a donation to an organization you support is that you feel ownership in it…
From Latinopia November 18, 2012:
Okay, big deal, Latino voters were super important in this year’s election — now what? The important thing to think about when we talk about “Latino voters” is not what they have done, but what they will do; in other words, when I vote I’m thinking about what the world will be like for my children, and their children, and so should you.
Turns out, coming out once every four years isn’t the pinnacle of power in this country. What Latino voters in this country need to do in the next four years is get involved. How do you get “involved”? That’s a good question, luckily, there are many answers. The saying that “all politics is local” turns out to be a truism when we take a closer look at how “the Latino vote” played out in this election. It wasn’t that Latino voters put President Barack Obama over the top in the general election, but rather, that in individual states Latino voters gave the president just enough of an edge to beat Mitt Romney…
From Latinopia November 11, 2012:
Everywhere you turn these days people are hyperventilating to “the Latino vote” and how pivotal it was during this election. Latino voters accounted for 10% of the electorate during this election, which is no small number, but one of the downsides is the fetishizing of Latinos as a consequences — both in politics and especially in the media.
The truth is, Latino voters as a bloc helped President Barack Obama win Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Virginia and several other states, according to political science professors who study Latino voters. And Latinos voted for President Barack Obama in margins upwards of 70%. So, the facts are that Latinos not only voted for the president, but they voted for Democrats and their agenda, which is to say that both the Democrats and Republicans understand now more than ever the importance of pandering to this group.
What does that mean for us, Latinos who voted and will continue to vote and advocate for our community to vote in greater numbers?
From Latinopia November 4, 2012:
As the 2012 election approaches, all this buzz about “the Latino vote” is starting to amp up. I remember a similar buzz about this voting bloc in 2010. In that election the narrative was that Latino voters in Nevada helped keep Harry Reid in his seat, giving Dems an advantage in the Senate, thus we can say definitively that getting Latinos to the polls matters.
So, I wanted to share my personal reasons for voting.
I voted for president the first time that I could in 2004. I remember being sad that I missed the 2000 election and felt proud to be able to contribute to my country with such an important act. Which is why I do not understand why so many people voluntarily give it up…
From Latinopia October 8, 2012:
I’ve been obsessed with immigration as an issue for a long time. Back when I was in college, I used to bombard the Latino email list with stories about immigration, so much so that others complained and I was warned by the list admin about it. Of course this was before social media, and also before the “border wall” was constructed. Nonetheless, the issue of immigration was as important then as it is now.
Immigration is my favorite part of Americana. To me, immigration is an issue that is more American than either apple pie or baseball. Immigration is the lens through which we see ourselves, a way we can measure where we are in our evolution — even when it is ugly.
I’ve interviewed congressmen and activists and academics, and they all point to the same trend: when we talk about immigration these days, it’s really a cloak for talking about Latinos. Which is to say, all the anger and hatred about the masses destroying this country, means that my fellow Americans think me and my family are something akin to cockroaches…
