Hector Luis Alamo

CHICAGO—It’s May 2015, which means the start of the 2016 presidential campaign season is only a blink away. Already hopefuls are throwing their hats into the ring. So far only one person has mounted a challenge to Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee—though why Bernie Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist and the independent junior senator […]

Most people don’t care about Honduras: even historically-conscious Latinos and keen observers of Latin American happenings. Big-name countries like Mexico, Brazil and Cuba hog all the limelight, because they either have substantial economies, a storied relationship with the United States or a strong emigrant presence in America. (In the case of Mexico, it’s all three.) […]

During his appearance on a Sunday morning political program last weekend, Senator Marco Rubio insisted that, should President Obama somehow succeed in closing the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and should Senator Rubio somehow win the presidency in 2016, he would “absolutely” reopen it. “We no longer—on an ongoing basis—detain terrorists, and so […]

I know I’m still a young man, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a debate moderator personally attacking a candidate. If Phil Ponce’s questions were to come from anyone, you’d think they would be Mayor Rahm Emanuel or one of his supporters—and it still would’ve crossed the line. It was arguably […]

Central America is in trouble. Correction: Central America has been in trouble. The region—south of Mexico, north of Colombia—has withstood blood-thirsty conquistadores bearing rifles and disease, rapacious business interests which ruled over banana republics, and the occasional invasion, civil war or golpe. In the past few years alone, at least 50,000 people were killed in the […]

Those who ignore history are doomed to look ridiculous. First, I’d like to give props to the Associated Press’ Matt Lee for showing how journalists can still serve the indispensable role of keeping a society, if not free, then at least accurate. When State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told him something blatantly untrue during a […]

So, Conan went to Cuba. Seems fitting considering that, once upon a time, Conan was my generation’s Johnny Carson. And if you’ve seen any of the surveys published in the past five years, you’ll know Millennials are the most open to opening relations between the United States and its closest, non-bordering neighbor. After all, we’re too […]

When Jesús “Chuy” García entered Chicago’s mayoral race last fall, I immediately believed he would be the next mayor of the city. I was even more sure of it after I interviewed him in December. It’s not because he was Latino. I’m not the type to get excited over someone just because we come from […]

I read the news today, oh boy… Seems Sean Penn went all Sean Penn at the Oscars last night. Before announcing Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman as this year’s Best Picture, Penn asked, “Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?” Iñárritu had already won for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The joke wasn’t particularly […]

When the White House recently announced it was entering into a period of détente with Havana, I had just finished Fidel’s 2007 autobiography. I remember putting the book down and wondering when Cuba was going to release Alan Gross, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Washington still maintains Gross was never a spy but was […]

Just when I was getting to like Pope Francis, he shows himself to be a real man of the Church after all. I guess the signs were always there. Jorge, meek and mild—who washed the feet of convicted female prisoners after becoming the infallible Vicar of Christ—is the same guy who said he wouldn’t consider […]

You’d be hard-pressed to argue against the famous maxim which states that “all politics is local.” The average citizen is less interested in what’s occurring at the national level than what’s occurring in their city, and likewise less interested about what’s happening in their city than what’s happening in their neighborhood, and so on. For […]

Enrique Peña Nieto is president of a North American country whose police officers have become the targets of public outcry for their role in the awful deaths of guiltless people. No, he isn’t president of the United States, of course. Yet critics seem to believe President Obama possesses even the narrowest sliver of ground from which condemn his […]

It’s one of those simple phrases ubiquitous in the Spanish language which contain a lot of meaning in so little verbiage: Ya me cansé. When spoken by a protester, it’s more sigh than words, more gesture than actual speech. The phrase became a slogan for protesters in Mexico as soon as the exasperated attorney general […]

For the Latinos who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, believing he would alleviate the suffering caused by a broken immigration system (they re-elected him in 2012 for the same reason) tonight’s expected announcement of an executive order shielding millions of immigrant families from deportation is too little, too late. Immigrants and their advocates had expected […]

There is one nation the U.S. government fears more than any other. It’s controlled by a single party, the Communist Party, that has established a dictatorship (not of proletarians, but of bureaucrats) after defeating a U.S.-backed tyrant with the help of countryside peasants over half a century ago. Its relations with the United States have been […]

It was a rough week for Democrats… Let me rephrase that: It’s been a rough week for progressives. The thing they’ve been saying could happen this year actually happened, and after what will have been eight long, impotent years, the Republicans are set to regain control of Congress. Not your father’s Republican Party, mind you. […]

The 2008 presidential election was my generation’s 1992 or 1960. It was a moment brimming with hope and what many believed would be an equal amount of change in the country. The United States had just elected its first African American president, making everything else seem immediately possible. So when the new president promised to […]

Mikhail Bakunin is believed to have said, “If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.” The influential anarchist thinker was merely articulating a distinction between his anti-statist brand of libertarian socialism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” prescription by Karl […]

Last month The Federalist published an article by Mike Gonzalez, vice president of communications for The Heritage Foundation, in which he does a fairly decent job of summarizing the origins of the term “Latino” as it is used today. “The Spanish-language term Latino America,” he writes, “from which Latino derives, was in fact created by […]

Scarcely do I remember the day a Census worker came to the apartment I shared with my then-girlfriend and future wife a few years back. I fail to recall what the weather was like, nor do I even remember if the worker was male or female. What I do remember, however, is the look on […]