A closer look at Maria Hinojosa

We've got friends everywhere, and some have made mention of journalist Maria Hinojosa, who they said, "is on PBS".

photo credit: futuro media group

Honestly, the consensus around here is that PBS is a bit of a snoozer.  We didn't want to do it.

Nevertheless, Gracie (our brilliant canine office administrator) exclaimed, "It's like it's raining men on the blog!  What's up with that?  Write about a woman!"

So, OK then!

"Maria Hinojosa is on PBS."

What an understatement that turned out to be!  Similar to Jorge Ramos, Maria Hinojosa is as American as Donald Trump, and as it turns out-- is so much more accomplished than we were aware of.

We're going to start with a short promo featuring Maria Hinojosa "broadcast journalist" because it really captures her personality and her point of view: from LinkTV:

Maria de Lourdes Hinojosa, journalist.

Born: July 2, 1961, Mexico City, Mexico
Citizenship: American
Residence: Harlem, NY

When Maria was just one year old, her father, Dr. Raul Hinojosa, moved the family to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago when he was appointed to the surgical faculty at the University of Chicago.

While there is not a lot of information about her childhood and life prior to college, Maria shared her feelings about motherhood and her Mexican heritage in a memoir, Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son (1999) In it she discusses her frequent trips to Mexico to visit relatives, commenting, "I can't let go of Mexico.  It is part of who I am."

Ms Hinojosa attended Barnard College, graduating in January 1985 with a BA in Latin American Studies with minors in Political Science and Women's Studies.

Here is a summary of her early career from the blog Barnard Archives and Special Collections:

"Hinojosa’s career in broadcast journalism began immediately after college, when she took a position as a production assistant for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. In 1987, she joined the staff of WCBS Radio and produced shows such as “Where We Stand” with Walter Cronkite,” “The Osgood File", and “Newsbreak.” From 1988 to 1989, she was a producer and researcher for CBS’s “This Morning.” Then, from 1990 to 1997, she worked for NPR and WNYC Radio as a general assignment correspondent, covering issues in the New York area and throughout the country."

In 1992, Maria put her mark on the national radio stage with NPR's "LatinoUSA" radio program, which continues to the present day.

Trying to fill out the rest of Maria Hinojosa's achievements is daunting.  Books, TV, documentary films, appearances on numerous news programs, charity work, and also the recipient of numerous prestigious journalism awards.

We have however, picked out a few that seemed particularly interesting, relevant, or curious.

ICE Director Thomas Homan

As our readers may know, we wrote a post (this blog makes no pretense of objectivity) about the aggressive, Trump-inspired attitude permeating ICE and DHS regarding non-criminal undocumented immigrants being arrested and sent to detention centers.

This is generally where the stories end.  We wonder, what then?  What is life like in a detention center?  As it happens, Maria Hinojosa produced and wrote a full epidsode of the PBS investigative series "Frontline" exactly on that topic.

Here we have to point out that the introduction from the PBS page devoted to the program "Lost in Detention" is chilling in light of who currently occupies the White House:

"More than one million immigrants have been deported since President Obama took office. Under his administration, deportations and detentions have reached record levels. The get-tough policy has brought complaints of abuse and harsh treatment, including charges that families have been unfairly separated after being caught in the nationwide dragnet . . ."

Perhaps rank-and-file ICE agents really are straining at the leash.  Perhaps they enjoy rounding up non-criminal immigrants, including minor children, and sending them into indefinite incarceration, also known as "detention".

We are certain, however, that the Obama Administration would never actually encourage these operations, as Trump and his bureaucratic lackeys currently do.

Here is a 5-minute promo on the film:

We mentioned the interesting and the curious.  To be specific, we're talking about Maria Hinojosa: One on One, her interview series.  In it she covers stories nobody else does.  In particular, she traveled to Cuba to interview a couple, part of the "rockero" subculture, who deliberately injected themselves with the AIDs virus in order to be committed to a sanitarium, where they would be housed, fed, and allowed to dress as they pleased without fear of recrimination.

Here Maria discusses interviews that most affected her:

In reading about all of Maria's accomplishments, we couldn't help but notice what seems to be her "baby", her own production company, Futuro Media Group.  The website has lots of information on their activities.

Now we'll conclude this post with a video that expresses the enthusiasm and dedication Maria still brings to her endeavors: The Push-up Challenge:

. . .and check out her very entertaining podcast In the Thick!

Film Noir on the border

Friday A & E handed in late:

Criminals escaping and the people tracking them down, a simple concept makes for a trove of fascinating film noir plots.  Our favorites, including one that is actually set in New Mexico, but has all the elements of a great film noir set in Mexico, and Jesika loves Robert Montgomery.

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

We like this review from The Criterion Collection.  It starts out:

Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism . . .

Expressive fatalism, that's what you want in a great film noir.

Next, we have sort of a sleeper film noir, but definitely, we love it.  The plot is reminiscent of the great Double Indemnity, where an insurance investigator is actually investigating his own crime, but that's all the spoiler we have to offer.  We particularly love Felicia Farr as the devoted, unsuspecting wife and Jack Klugman as small-time hood Frankie Page.

Time Table (1956)

Third, we have:

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

We feel the quality of this film can be attributed to the fact that it is directed by Ida Lupino.  The very bad guy is William Talman, who later played Hamilton Burger on the Perry Mason TV show, which we feel is a waste of some really scary looking psycho eyes.

Last for now (we know we missed lots of great ones in this post), it's the wonderful, notorious:

Borderline (1950)

Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor get top billing in this classic film noir, but we really love Raymond Burr in his white suit, being oh so cold and evil. Raymond Burr played numerous film noir antagonists that sometimes it's hard to believe he later became our beloved good guys Perry Mason and Chief Robert Ironside.

'Til next time!

La Raza! Chicano Power!

Fist in the air!

All that scary stuff that struck terror in the hearts of whites back in the early '70s.  Specifically, in

Southern California and Texas, but undoubtedly most of the nation was familiar with La Raza, as something like Mexican Black Panthers.  We suppose your average middle-class white family who stared at "radical" political activism on their TV sets each evening were perfectly glad they lived someplace other than populous cities in Texas or Southern California.

But who were they, really?  What exactly is "La Raza"?  As with all our post topics, the "journey of discovery" applies to the writer as much as it does the reader.

We found a story much more complex than the familiar angry, scary people who want to turn half of (or maybe all of!) the United States into Mexico.  They carried a Mexican flag to a march!

Turns out the truth is much deeper than the modern day activist group.

The roots of "la raza" actually date back at least from 1925, with a book titled, "The Cosmic Race" by Mexican author José Vasconcelos.  From website Inside Mexico:

"The term La Raza originated in the 1925 book, La Raza Cósmica, The Cosmic Race, by the Mexican writer José Vasconcelos. He explained la Raza Cósmica as the product of continuous racial mixing that was already underway in the Latin world. Vasconcelos thought that ultimately all of the people within the former Spanish Empire would be thoroughly blended into a new race."

So, as we understand it, this book was a coming-to-terms with the idea that hundreds of years after the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, the population was now consisting of people who were descendants of the Spanish, and the indigenous people of Mexico, without a modern day understanding of genetics, the term "race" was applied with arbitrary definitions.

It was meant to give Mexican people an identity of their own.  

Now we fast forward to Texas, 1970.  We see the founding of a new political party, who borrowed the term and called their party "La Raza Unida".  This is the mother of the infamous "La Raza" we still talk about today.

The group was founded by two men-- José Angel Gutiérrez, not exactly a hair-on-fire bomb-thrower type:

"Gutiérrez is a 1962 graduate of Crystal City High School in Crystal City, Texas and served in the US Army.  He has also earned degrees from Texas A&M University--Kingsville (B.A. 1966), St. Mary's University in San Antonio, the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D. 1976) and the University of Houston Law Center (J.D. 1988). He has done postdoctoral work at Stanford University, Colegio de México, University of Washington, and Centro de Estudios Económicos y Sociales del Tercer Mundo in Mexico City, Mexico."

and Mario Compean, MA.  We weren't able to find a lot of information about Mr. Compean, other than that he worked for Washington State University as a project director, and this very recent interview:

Civil Rights in Black & Brown Oral History Project

The La Raza Unida party operated within the bounds of any fledgling political party, promoting and campaigning for candidates with a like-minded viewpoint, staging demonstrations, etc.  They never promoted violence, anarchy, or the reconquistador philosophy.

That certainly doesn't mean everyone associated with La Raza was a warm and fuzzy huggy-bunny.  La Raza tapped into a lot of simmering anger, especially among young people in an intense reform era, where all sorts of oppressed groups decided not to shut up anymore, and their message wasn't always dressed up in niceties.  

Where is La Raza today?  Does it still exist?

It does.  Both literally and in the form of formal lobbying groups, most prominently the National Council of La Raza, now known as UnidosUS.  The president of UnidosUS, Janet Murguía, recently wrote this article for Huffpost addressing the issue of La Raza and violence.

Violence is Never the Answer

La Raza has a Facebook Page

. . .and an address in San Fernando, California.  We checked Streetview, and the area doesn't look like a business district, so maybe it is incorrect.

As we wind things up, we want to point out that misinformation about La Raza abounds.  A large part of this problem is the existence of "The La Raza Gang", which is involved in criminal activities and We feel certain this gang is not sanctioned by anyone connected with the original La Raza Unida party.

update to add: here is an example of such misinformation.  Most of it comes from (usually right-wing) bloggers.  You will see "pundit" Jim Kouri associate the criminal gang with a quote from José Angel Gutiérrez

La Raza Unida Leader Sentenced to Life in Prison for Racketeering

Friday Fluff-- I mean, Arts & Entertainment Day

Somehow, it just doesn't seem right to call these artists "fluff"-- but we've got some great arts and entertainment links for today . . .

First, one of the funniest movies you will ever see, guaranteed, unless there's something wrong with you.

But, really-- can a comedy with Jonathan Winters and Peter Ustinov not be funny?

It's Viva Max!

Here's a summary from imdb:

"When his girlfriend tells him that his men wouldn't follow him to a house of ill-repute, Max, a general in the Mexican army, decides to  perform some great act of heroism.  He takes his men over the border into Texas and recaptures the Alamo.  This upsets the Texans greatly.  The Texas National Guard is sent in to retake the mission.  Normally this would be easy as Max's men have left all their ammunition back in Mexico, but the State Department insists that no one be killed and so the National Guard also goes in with unloaded weapons."

Max even has his own march by Al Hirt and Hugo Montenegro!

Next we have Hey Señorita by The Penguins (of 'Earth Angel' fame), because it's doo-wop and it's called Hey Señorita-- and we're nostalgic for '45s' . . .

Last but not least we have Linda Ronstadt in one of the lovely videos from her 1987 LP "Canciones de Mi Padre".  In this one she describes some of  her talented relatives from Sonora, Mexico and the musical heritage that infused her life since she was a little girl.

Happy Weekend!

Trump's SS: DHS and ICE

We don't really want to write this post.  We'd rather post pretty pictures, in fact.  But there's a growing reality out there we can't avoid.

"We're not about breaking up families."-- George W. Bush

Donald Trump is about breaking up families.

It's under the radar in the US media, but it's not under the radar in Latino, or even US-based Latino subsidiaries.

DHS and ICE agents are becoming the gestapo in the eyes of a vast swath of our Latino population, along with the ensuing constant, consuming fear that occurs anytime a population is under threat by law enforcement with an inhumane agenda.

Yes, we'll go as far as to say kristallnacht differs only as a matter of degree.

The personal anecdotes are everywhere.  They even made it to Spanish language religious television, where frightened children are taught to turn to God to comfort them.  They're afraid their parents will be taken away.

These are the kids derisively called "anchor babies" by the staunch, hugely ignorant nativists that Trump attracts.

We believe logic will tell you that with a US Latino population of 56.6 million, for every one of these stories that makes it to print, there are thousands out there that don't.

We've written about one such case already, Dennis Rivera Sarmiento.

In that case, we were actually shocked to hear that ICE in Houston threatened retaliation against local institutions if they didn't proceed to hand Dennis over for deportation, but this DHS/ICE attitude has only been confirmed upon further investigation.

The reality is if nobody had intervened on his behalf, Dennis would be in Honduras right now, life as he knew it and a bright future torn away by vindictive DHS/ICE people expressing the hostility that infuses their "leader".

Before we proceed further, we want to say that we know there are good agents out there, working hard, day in and day out.  We're not talking about them.  We're talking about a proactively angry culture being created by those "higher-ups" with enough influence to do so.

The main force behind the Nazi shit is none other than Trump's current White House Chief-of-Staff, John Kelly.  Well, he certainly appears to be good at knocking heads together, figuratively, and probably literally.  The news always contains "fun" surprises about Trump's inner circle.

We're going to recount several more current events that, we can be sure are the tip of the iceberg, and will be so until the menace currently occupying the White House is gone.

All of it points to the completely farcical nature of Donald Trump's comment during the campaign regarding keeping "the good ones".  Presumably, those that aren't rapists and murderers.

Every one of these stories involves deliberate targeting of "the good ones".

To begin, we have:

Father of three, in the US since 2004 with no criminal record calls police to report a trespasser.

The trespasser (who was, in fact, trespassing) is not arrested.  The man who called for help, however, is arrested and taken to a detention center.

Traumatized kids and law-abiding people now afraid to report a crime.  Good job!

Immigrant faces deportation after calling police for help

Next-- Let's send middle-aged parents back to hell!  They've been here since Hurricane Mitch, and their son is a US citizen, but they've got to go!  (see the article link below for the details on this impending action against the parents of a 27 year-old man and his parents)

These two excerpts from the article say it all.  The article also contains a detailed description of the causes of the current violence in Honduras.

"Though previous administrations kept on extending beneficiaries' TPS status, the Trump administration has taken a different stance."

Yes, very different.  Different from any administration of either party as far back as we can remember.

"In November, DHS ended TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for 60,000 Haitians who arrived after the 2010 earthquake, giving them an 18-month period to leave. In November, the administration announced they would not extend TPS for Nicaraguans, saying the country was recovered from Hurricane Mitch and gave them 14 months to leave the U.S."

It's obvious from the article that things are so bad in Honduras that these people are actually refugees.  But then, the Trump Administration has demonized refugees, so it wouldn't matter what we called them, anyway.

Amid political unrest, violence in Honduras, TPS holders in U.S. worry about their fate

These actions just seem pointless.

Third up-- cuffing up the good ones and hauling them in.

No further explanation needed.

Deportation officers are increasingly arresting people with no criminal records

In depth, with the numbers.  From New York Times Magazine Daily Intelligencer:

Arrests of Undocumented Immigrants Without Criminal Records Skyrockets in 2017

The scariest part of the above article was an ICE Union official declaring how morale is really great among the agents now!

They care nothing about why an undocumented person is here.  They care nothing about the collateral emotional damage caused by their new Trump-inspired policies.

Just swing the cudgel and kick 'em out!

Our last example is the most heart-wrenching, and caused a somewhat larger blip in the Anglo media, simply because of the "how could you?" factor.

Well, they could, and they did, and we suppose, morale was through the roof back at the station that day.

Rosamaria Hernandez is a 10 year old undocumented girl with cerebral palsy . . .

. . .we'll let Esther Yu Hsi Lee of Think Progress continue (link to her article below the quote):

"On Tuesday, Rosa Maria Hernandez, a 10-year-old undocumented child living in Laredo, was taken by ambulance to receive emergency gallbladder surgery in Corpus Christi. At an interior checkpoint along the way, border agents flagged the young girl for living in the country illegally and followed the ambulance nearly 150 miles to Driscoll Children’s Hospital."

Of all the articles about Rosamaria (and there are many), this article is our favorite because it contains an interview with her mother:

Mother of detained 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy speaks out: 'This is like torture'

In the end, Rosamaria was released to her parents.

Because the ACLU got involved, apparently not quibbling over who was American or not.

That's what they do.  When the spotlight is turned on, they panic and skitter, and equivocate, almost as if they knew what they're doing is shameful, and not a matter of exultation.

We have to believe there are people involved in these increasingly common DHS/ICE operations who will be so bothered by what they're doing they'll speak up, but the culture of fear is contagious.  We're pretty sure they're afraid of repercussions, too.

Drugs

Drugs?

Yes, drugs.

We got the idea for this post when we overheard a babyboomer friend saying something like:

"Whatever happened to mescaline? Remember, back in the early 70s, that stuff was almost as popular as acid!  Now it's like nobody ever heard of it!"

We've never heard of mescaline.  We've heard of LSD, of course.  Why is it called mescaline, anyway?

We then started to realize how many drugs in the US are originally from Mexico, and have permeated US culture so thoroughly, you don't really notice them.  We're willing to bet that every Census Designated Place in America has at least some familiarity, with some drug, that comes from Mexico.

So we decided to delve into the topic...not from a criminal aspect, but an informative, cultural aspect.

As we speak, we know almost nothing about this topic either, so here we go . . .

We'll start with the relatively little known sage, Salvia Divinorum (sage of the diviners, yerba de la pastora)  This plant is native to Mexico, meaning botanists haven't been able to find a source outside Mexico.

It's native habitat is cloud forest in the isolated Sierra Mazateca, of Oaxaca, Mexico.  It is there known as the method in which "visions" are induced in the ritual ceremonies of Mazotec shamans.

via mexicofuckyeah.tumblr.com

salvia divinorum via sagewisdom.org

Scientists have not concluded how many thousands of years this plant has been ingested for it's hallucinogenic properties, but it has been suggested that it may have been used by the Aztecs, where it was referred to as "poyomatli".

At this point, we need to comment on what we've noticed regarding the US perspective on this.

By and large, US media has seized upon this plant that has been used for thousands of years by our neighbors to the south, in near hysterical fashion, as the latest scourge that will kill your children.

It's far beyond our ability to understand why this happens, so we'll defer to the sociologists, or whatever academic who studies that kind of thing for a living.

On a related note, we had originally planned to include the legal status of the drugs we'll be writing about, but it's just all over the place depending on jurisdiction, it's daunting and not really relevant anyway, so we'll avoid it altogether.

Next we have our first cactus-sourced mind-altering substance, Peyote.

Wikipedia says:

". . .peyote is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline."

So our babyboomer friend was dropping peyote.  Won't she be surprised.

While mescaline has dropped out of favor, here are some interesting facts via this exhaustive article:

The Third Wave: Peyote

Mescaline was first isolated in 1897 by German chemist Arthur Heffter, and synthesized by Austrian chemist Ernst Spath in 1919.

We mention this only because the US Navy eventually found out about the "Nazi Truth Serum" and decided they wanted to do some experiments, too, circa 1947-1953.  The US Military certainly was into the psychedelic experience during that era!

Also, in 1953, author Aldous Huxley ingested mescaline and wrote about it in The Doors of Perception

This seems to have been something of a fad among intellectual types of the day.  Go on a trip and write about it.  Timothy Leary probably the most well-known, but hardly alone.

What hasn't dropped out of favor is the far simpler method of peyote ingestion, the "buttons".  Like salvia divinorum, the buttons can be chewed and made into a tea, although not smoked, that we are aware of, for a less intense hallucinogenic effect than from mescaline.

To continue on with cute and fanciful names like "buttons" for psychoactive plant-based substances, we move on to the "magic mushroom", psilocybin.

This one goes back thousands of years, and there is no "maybe" about it.  Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Psilocybin 'shrooms are not native to Mexico, but historically, were weaved into the culture of the day, pissed off the Spanish conquistadors enough to impose a ban on it's use by the native people, and most likely is the source from which the drug is obtained today, so it's included on our list.

We've seen references to Guatemalan statuettes, stone engravings, and cave art that may possibly be depictions of the psilocybin mushroom, but unfortunately there are scant details, such as pictures, showing these artifacts.

We do know the Aztec name for the mushrooms, "teonanácatl".

Here's a good summation from a blog we found:

 Nothing But Lists

"Probably the most well-known of the native drugs, Peyote has appeared time and again in pop culture. Flowering in southern Texas and Mexico between March and May, this little cactus is world renown for its psychoactive properties. Archaeologists believe peyote use began thousands of years ago and gradually spread from Mexico to the SW United States where the Apache adopted its use. They in turn spread it to the Comanche and Kiowa. This drug was apparently so powerful that many tribes saw it as a portal into the world of the Gods. While traditionally used in ceremonies, peyote saw a spike in popularity during the Native American Church movement in the 1800’s. Today peyote is an illegal substance, but can still be bought illegally or found on reservations."

Isn't this a lovely cactus?

It's the blue agave.  It's major claim to fame is that it's the source for tequila, and as it turns out, several lesser known alcohol-containing beverages.

We here in the US don't think of alcohol (ethanol, ETOH) as a drug.  But we think if we shed the cultural viewpoint, alcohol is psychoactive and sedative at the very least, and it's history and use is very interesting, so we're going to write about it.

Agave tequilana.  Product of Jalisco, Mexico.

Rather than go into great deal of detail regarding the growing, harvesting, and manufacture of tequila, were going to refer you to this really wonderful blog devoted entirely to the subject:

In Search of the Blue Agave: Tequila and the Heart of Mexico

But here are some fun facts:

Forget about the worm, the blue agave flower is pollinated by a bat!

Tequila is produced by removing the heart (piña) of the plant in its 8th to 14th year.  Harvested piñas normally weigh 80–200 pounds.  That's impressive!

Tequila is not the only alcoholic beverage derived from the blue agave.  There is pulque, and there is mezcal, (not to be confused with mescaline, Wikipedia warns).

Neither one looks very appealing, but we discovered both have a following, and both are still available for sale today.

Mescalero men enjoying their pulque

We saved the most obvious cross-border drug for last.  Marijuana.  Mary Jane.  Clearly, like tequila, this stuff is everywhere in the United States.

It's known worldwide as marijuana, so it's got to be native to Mexico-- like salvia and blue agave, right?  No!

Research shows that marijuana actually can be traced to Turkey, where it's use spread throughout Europe, down to South America, through Central America, Mexico, and finally, the United States.

Giant weed plant growing wild in Great Britain 

Turns out, marijuana has only been called marijuana since 1910.  Prior to that, it was known by it's Latin name, cannabis.

Once again, we find there are people who are experts on everything, somewhere, if you look hard enough.

Marijuana and America have had a rocky relationship to say the least.  See this article from leafly.com for all the details:

Where did the word marijuana come from, anyway?

This concludes our whirlwind overview of cross-border drugs.

We've learned what you'll never hear in a DARE class or from your local TV news in the process of writing this post!

'Til next time!

Looks like paper bag mezcal

A closer look at: Jorge Ramos

Introductory notes:

1) The previously referred to complicated story is so goddamn complicated I felt forced to put it on the back burner

2) We tried to make this post focus exclusively on Mr. Ramos but some things are just too infuriating to ignore, so we won't.  We'll use italics for that.

Jorge Ramos, journalist.

His name briefly a headline in Anglo-America due to him having been publicly disrespected by Donald Trump back in 2015.

"Go back to Univision!", Trump had bellowed across a crowded room.

Kinda sounds like what he really meant was " Go back to Mexico! "

He'd then been pushed backward by Keith Schiller, Trump's Head Goon.  Why didn't you file assault charges, Jorge?

It's appalling that this "man" Trump was actually elected to the highest office in our country, and further, that the majority of mainstream media is completely OK, with that, never choking on the words "President Donald Trump".  Trump reminded us again-- when he said of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, " he's Mexican, we believe ". Trump is a racist motherfucker, and we're not willing to forget it.

Jorge Ramos may be more familiar to cable news viewers as the "go-to" Latino guy when breaking news has a Hispanic connection, as they see it.

We want to tell you, as best we can, more about who he really is.

Jorge Gilberto Ramos Avalos.

He is described as "Mexican-American", and it would be hard to find another person in whom that description is more fitting.

Born: Mexico City, March 16, 1958
Residence: Miami FL
Citizenship: American

He's as American as you, Trump! Did you know that? Of course not!  Because learning really isn't your thing, is it?

He grew up in Nauculpan, a now very large and diverse suburb adjacent to Mexico City.

Nauculpan, Mexico

He graduated from Universidad Iberomericana in Mexico City, then seems to have been quickly picked up by a major TV company in Mexico City, where he hosted their version of 60 Minutes.  Obviously, his talent was evident even in his early 20s.

However, we see early signs of his maverick attitude toward authority, when he up and quit that job at age 24. The reason for his doing so was that a show he produced that was critical of the Mexican government was censored.

He then moved to Los Angeles, and subsequently was hired by KMEX-TV.  Of his move to KMEX-- he said (per Wikipedia)

"To me it was a palace . . .the United States gave me opportunities that my country of origin could not: freedom of the press and complete freedom of expression."

A rundown building on Melrose Ave, a palace.  There begins Ramos' apparent love for the United States which ultimately led him to become a US citizen, after 25 years  of internal confliction.  A part of him would always be attached to his country of origin.

"You have to go through a mental and emotional process to recognize who you really are.  I finally recognized that I cannot be defined by one country.  I am from both countries.  It took me many years to make peace with that thought, and that I was never going back to Mexico."

In a way, Jorge Ramos never left KMEX, which ultimately became the Univision News of today.  He's still there, and his work output is so prolific, we couldn't begin to list each achievement.

We do want to make special mention of his recent documentary, Hate Rising.  His treatment at the hands of Trump and his goons prompted him to do something positive.  That's the kind of guy he is.  Here he is interviewed by Larry King:

The best place for a succinct summary is to see it on the Jorge Ramos website:

Jorge Ramos Bio in English

To sum up, Jorge Ramos is criticized in some circles for his "advocacy journalism".  He's "not objective".

Perhaps this excessive concern has resulted in the detached appearance of most prominent "anchor" people in the face of wholly unacceptable behavior?

Walter Cronkite was not "objective".  Neither was Edward R. Murrow.

Jorge Ramos is the real thing.