La Diaspora Digital Magazine: Actualidad-Analisis e Informacion Digital

A project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Diaspora: The Global Trafficking of Culture By Jorge Yeshayahu Gonzales-Lara |La Diaspora Peruana           Long Island Al Día Translated by Chris Brandt In these last days of Passover, with its themes of exodus and exile, an article published in Spanish last month in Long Island Al Día about how diasporas work offered some relevant food for thought. Although the writer, Jorge Yeshayahu Gonzales-Lara, focuses his attention on the Peruvian diaspora, much of what he says also applies to other immigrant groups: Diasporas, seen as transnational phenomena, do not remain pure or completely faithful to their places of origin; rather their cultures contain elements of both places, the original and the [new] home, from which mixture a hybridization results. That is to say the subjects of the diasporas characterize themselves as cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and national hybrids and

Celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo is celebrated across the United States as a tradition of Mexican origin. And it is during late April and May that Mexican beer and tequila companies make a killing as hundreds of colorful events commemorate the 1862 victory of Mexican troops over the mighty French Army at the Battle of Puebla. But in Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is but one of a long series of festive events and victory commemorations throughout the year. For decades, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and non-Mexicans have tried to resolve the big question: why is Cinco de Mayo celebrated with much fanfare in the U.S., when in Mexico itself it is just another patriotic date without much contemporary relevance? The answer was recently presented by a professor of medicine at UCLA, Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, who is also a scholar of " dynamics and processes of the health of the Latino population using both quantitative data sets and qualitative observations."