An Especially Good Week to be Hispanic
I’m not, but I think it’s fair to assume
This past Sunday, Guillermo del Toro won the Oscar for Best Director for The Shape of Water. This marked the fourth time in the past five years that a Mexican national took the prestigious top prize for cinematic helmsmanship.
I haven’t seen the movie and so I won’t comment on it. There are plenty of reviews of it, including this funny send-up by fellow Medium writer Tracy Moore. But Guillermo’s acceptance speech was memorable:
I am an immigrant, like Alfonso and Alejandro, my compadres … and like many many of you … the greatest thing our art does, and our industry does is erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that, when the world tells us to make them deeper.
Shortly after, on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Richard Carranza will become the new chancellor of NYC schools.
Carranza is the grandson of Mexican immigrants. He began public school in Arizona speaking only Spanish. He rose to become a principal of an area school, then superintendent of the schools of San Francisco, and then of Houston.
I’m a teacher. I was a decade in the classroom. I know what it’s like to do a lesson plan and have it go south the first two minutes you walk into the classroom.
— he said upon assuming the Houston post.
He is also a mariachi musician, inducted into the Mariachi Hall of Fame some two years back.
His salary? $345,000 — more than $100,000 higher than that of the outgoing chancellor. Apparently this is exactly what he was making in Houston.
Not too shabby.
Then, on Tuesday, news emerged from Texas that two Latina women, Democrats both, declared victory in U.S. congressional primaries. Former El Paso county judge Veronica Escobar is running to replace Dem. U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke, who hopefully will become a household name himself in his bid to replace Ted Cruz in the Senate. Meanwhile, in Houston, state Senator Sylvia Garcia won her bid to replace Dem. U.S. Representative Gene Green, who endorsed her campaign.
Well done, all. And the week’s barely half-way through …
