Word: cruz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alberto Bautista, 30, is a rarity in Santa Cruz Mixtepec: a young adult male. Most of the sons, husbands and brothers from this poor remote hamlet of Mixtec Indians, tucked in the sierras of southern Oaxaca state, are migrant workers in the U.S. Some 60% of Santa Cruz's population of 3,000 live illegally al otro lado - on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border - sending back almost $1 million last year...
...Bautista is back - working for his uncle in a new carpentry business financed by a microcredit bank that the wives in Santa Cruz founded recently with all that remittance cash. Bautista made $6 an hour picking strawberries in Arizona, more than many laborers in Mexico earn in a day. But he's hopeful that he can comfortably support his wife and new baby by crafting doors, cabinets and coffins, products that people in Santa Cruz and surrounding villages once had to travel miles to buy. "I didn't want to start a family al otro lado," Bautista says, as wood...
...Felipe Calderon calls his country's "open wound" - was a top agenda item during his recent meeting with President George W. Bush. But if Bush was serious when he said "the working poor of Latin America need change," then many feel the U.S. should start helping burgs like Santa Cruz build the kind of small enterprises that can jump-start more viable local economies. "There is too much entrepreneurial ambition in this country that never sees one peso of encouragement," says Roberto Hernandez, 29, whose metal-window-frames business was financed by the Santa Cruz microbank, which is called...
...Such plans are especially urgent in places like Oaxaca. The Mixtecs send more undocumented workers across the border than any other of the 56 indigenous groups in Mexico, such as the Maya and the Zapotecs. It's easy to see why in Santa Cruz, where farmers still till the soil with oxen and wooden plows. But about five years ago, villagers like Olivia Mendoza, Bautista's aunt, decided to invest remittances in something more productive than pickup trucks and wide-screen TVs. "It was time to use that treasure to find ways to bring our families back together," says Mendoza...
Doing good can become a habit. Cruz, a high school swimmer who works part-time at the Bronx Zoo, has been in the Young Heroes program for three years. He joined in middle school and despite his busy schedule asked to continue as a Young Hero until City Year gets its planned high school program, City Heroes, under way. He says his favorite service day so far has been visiting a local nursing home, where he played cards with the elderly residents, listened to their stories and even gave a few of them manicures...