“I need to get the concerns of all the communities in Los Angeles and some communities have more problem communicating with me than others,” Beck said.

He will also maintain Special Order 40, which prevents LAPD officers from inquiring about people’s immigration status.

“Special Order 40 is part of the core values of LAPD and that will continue as is,” noted Beck, who has also designated Michoacan, Mexico-born captain Rigo Romero to be his Special Agent for the Latino Community.

“Rigo is not just a Spanish speaker. Rigo’s personal history ties him deeply to the immigrant community. He and I are going to work very closely making sure that the police message goes out just as clearly in Spanish as it does in English,” Beck said.

“Rigo knows me, he knows my philosophy. He can tell you what it is that I think because he and I have that kind of relationship,” he said.

-- Francisco Castro/Hoy

To read the full story in Spanish, visit http://www.vivelohoy.com/losangeles

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The U.N. said:

Some 79,000 people have been murdered in the region over the past six years, but despite these heightened levels of violence, solving the problem of insecurity is possible within the framework of democracy, according to the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) Report on Human Development in Central America 2009-2010.

The full report is available here in Spanish.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Native Spanish speakers break the code of the written word with help from an L.A. adult-education center, writes Hector Tobar.

In her one-bedroom apartment in the Pico-Union district, garment worker Julia Rodriguez lives surrounded by young readers.

Her oldest child, 10-year-old Santos, is giving Harry Potter a try. Nine-year-old Wendy devours girl-detective stories. Even her youngest, 6-year-old Marlyn, zips through early reader books.

"Tim spins," Marlyn reads from her book. "Tim spins his hat."

Julia listens to her daughter and beams. Until recently, the 34-year-old mother of three couldn't read the simplest sentence in any language. Having been illiterate most of her life, she feels deep, bittersweet emotions watching her children master reading.

Earlier this year, in the classrooms of the nonprofit Centro Latino for Literacy, Julia finally started learning to read and write herself.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Julia Rodriguez, 34, says her children, Santos, left, Marlyn and Wendy, inspired her to learn to read. "Before, there was no sun for me. Now I feel" more awake, Julia says. She recently bought her first book. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

With Latinos accounting for 15% of the NBA’s U.S. fan base of 120 million, according to Simmons Market Research, the new campaign aims to engage these fans and reach new ones.

“It will allow us to further grow the game of basketball throughout the Hispanic market,” said Saskia Sorrosa, NBA senior director of U.S. Hispanic marketing.

It’s the league’s first comprehensive, multi-platform promotion catering to Latino fans and will include:

-- Television, radio and online advertising

-- TV spots featuring the Phoenix Suns' Leandro Barbosa and other pro players that will run on Latino networks such as Telemundo, Univision, Telefutura, Discovery en Espanol, CNN en Espanol and MTV3, among other channels

-- Content on Spanish-language social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and MiPagina

-- éne-bé-a-branded merchandise

-- Grass-roots programs such as Es Tu Cancha ("It's Your Court"), an initiative to improve and renovate basketball courts in Latino neighborhoods throughout the country

-- éne-bé-a en forma, part of the NBA's physical fitness initiative NBA Fit, which will target local Latino communities and promote healthy lifestyles

-- "Lee Para Aprender," a year-round literacy program in which Latino NBA players will host reading sessions in Spanish-speaking communities throughout the season

-- A Spanish-language website (www.nba.com/enebea), which will include webisodes featuring Latino NBA players 

 “We pride ourselves on our diversity and our inclusiveness as a league,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern. “We want to engage our current fans, develop new fans and to deliver the excitement of the world’s most dynamic game in a way that celebrates both our game and the cultural identify of our fans.”

The NBA has six U.S.-born Latino players and 19 players from Spain and Latin America currently on 2009-10 preseason rosters. The league has played 25 preseason games and one regular-season game in Latin America. 

“Throughout my years, I’ve obviously seen a big change in the league. I’ve seen a lot of players come and go and luckily I’ve been a part of many Hispanic players coming into the league,” said New Jersey Nets forward Eduardo Najera. “I’m just happy that we’re now reaching out to all of the fans we have out there.”

The league partnered with Bromley Communications, a Latino advertising agency, for the campaign.  The television component debuts today on both English- and Spanish-language outlets across the country. The league already has a deal in place with ESPN Deportes to telecast weekly NBA games in Spanish, which will include the Eastern Conference finals this season, and 11 NBA teams already feature live Spanish-language radio broadcasts of games.

-- Yvonne Villarreal

Photo: Screen grab of the éne-bé-a website component. Credit: NBA

He's referring to a debate currently raging here in Mexico about whether a planned movie based on Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's book "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" would glorify the sexual exploitation of children.

As the Huffington Post reports, the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Oct. 5.

The complaint does not specifically name Garcia Marquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution."

Coalition Director Teresa Ulloa told the Associated Press that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote pedophilia and be accessible to a wider audience.

Read the full column from Oppenheimer here and go here for more from the Huffington Post.

[Updated at 11:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post said the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean had filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office today. It was filed Oct. 5.]

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Farther south, inhabitants of the Andean mountains of Peru are also being hurt. Al Jazeera reports on how rising temperatures caused by climate change mean that diseases originally only seen in tropical areas are spreading to the mountains.

Watch the video, from Al Jazeera, for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Dole had sued filmmaker Fredrik Gertten for showing the documentary "Bananas!" despite a court ruling that the case on which the film was based had been part of a massive extortion plot against the company.

The documentary shows the alleged plight of Nicaraguan workers who say they were made sterile by a pesticide used at Dole banana plantations during the 1970s.

Dole's lawsuit sparked protests in Sweden, where critics said the food company was trying to interfere with freedom of speech.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

That radical idea is one of the recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel of scholars, diplomats and other experts that spent most of the year searching for “a new vision” in dealing with cross-border issues as diverse as migration, security and water.  

“It’s time to do something different, even if it is provocative and controversial,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister of Mexico and co-chair of the so-called Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border.

The task force was put together by the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council for International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. It presented its findings at a conference in a Mexico City hotel Tuesday night.  

Recommendations included an urgent, comprehensive reform of immigration laws in the U.S.; creation of a binational border-development administration; establishment by Mexico of a federal police force for the border; and the easing of monopolies in Mexico to spur competition and private investment.    

But the point that really got the room buzzing was a recommendation to “cross-deputize” Mexican and U.S. border police for joint operations.  

Rozental and fellow co-chair Robert C. Bonner, former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, were quick to explain that did not mean Mexican police would be enforcing U.S. laws, or vice versa. They would patrol together and share information, Bonner said -- seemingly simple tasks that both sides have traditionally resisted.  

The task force suggested that changes in both nations’ capitals may have opened an opportunity. The Mexican government, it said, has “moved beyond a reflexive preoccupation with sovereignty” that thwarted cooperation on law enforcement, while a new administration in Washington has bluntly acknowledged its shared responsibility for the trafficking of drugs and weapons.  

“Both governments seem ready to replace nationalist finger-pointing with a 21st century approach to border management that benefits both sides,” the group’s report concluded.  

You can read more about the task force and its report here, or in Spanish here.

-- Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Luz Maria Diaz knew what happened to illegal immigrants at the Wake County jail. But her teenage daughters didn't.

So when the girls were arrested after fighting on their high school campus in September, they freely admitted that they were born in Mexico. Detention officers at the jail checked their immigration status and promptly handed them over to federal authorities.

Now Diana, 16, and her sister, Yolanda, 18, are battling to stay in the country.

"I never thought this could happen ... for a simple fight," their mother said. "I was in shock."

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.

Photo: Luz Maria Diaz, 35, worries about what will happen to daughters Yolanda, 18, left, and Diana, 16, right. The two were arrested after a fight on their school campus, then processed for possible deportation under a program known as 287(g). The program has drawn criticism after reported civil-rights violations, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has called for an end to it. In July, the Obama administration announced that participating agencies must focus their efforts primarily on serious and violent criminals. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

There is a neighborhood in L.A. where you can hear people converse in the language spoken by the Aztec emperors Montezuma and Cuauhtémoc.

In Los Angeles, Julia found a job as a garment worker and eventually realized that bettering her future depended on learning to read and write. So did Juan Contreras, a cook at a downtown restaurant, who didn't go to school as a child because his peasant father "rented" him out as a farmhand starting when he was 10 years old.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Nearly nine-in-10 (89%) Latino young adults ages 16 to 25 say that a college education is important for success in life, yet only about half that number -- 48% -- say that they themselves plan to get a college degree, according to a new national survey of 2,012 Latinos ages 16 and older by the Pew Hispanic Center conducted from Aug. 5 to Sept. 16.

The biggest reason for the gap between the high value Latinos place on education and their more modest aspirations to finish college appears to come from financial pressure to support a family, the survey finds.

Read more here on the Pew Hispanic Center website.

Since July 2008, when Los Angeles County began implementing tougher federal verification rules, Rincon and his colleagues have gone back to check the documents of more than 100,000 recipients of Medi-Cal, the public healthcare program for low-income residents, reports Teresa Watanabe.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Global Post reports that Stewie Griffin, one of the characters in the show, caused outrage by singing a ditty lauding marijuana’s restorative properties.

"The Venezuelan government highlighted the clip as an example of how the U.S. government promotes pot smoking and the legalization of drugs. Venezuela resented a recent U.S. Congress report that said a fourfold increase in cocaine smuggling through Venezuela has been aided by police corruption and a refusal to work with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration."

Read more about it here.

"Family Guy" is not the first cartoon to ruffle officials' feathers in Venezuela. Last year, "The Simpsons" was banned from broadcast television after it was ruled “unsuitable” for children. 

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

They say things like "Antes de la break" and "Mira que cute." One is a clownish, Puerto Rican-born 28-year-old who ditched studying engineering to pursue a career in entertainment, another is an outspoken SoCal native who once had a penchant for crashing cars. The Spanglish? It just comes naturally, reports Yvonne Villarreal.

They're a new generation of Latino television personalities: attractive, plugged in and conversant not only in Spanglish argot but in a complex, shifting culture. Their employers believe they are offering young viewers a cool, and marketable, connection to this culture. Don Francisco, cuidado.

Read more here.

Photo: Yasmin Deliz, Yarel Ramos and Melissa "Crash" Barrera dish out programming that bridges a cultural gap. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history.

Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming "In the Shadow of the Raid," a documentary film showing at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. A 15-minute edit of the film was recently broadcast on PBS "Frontline's" website.

"In the Shadow of the Raid" delves into the consequences of the ICE raid for Postville and for some of the the migrants who were arrested and deported back to their homes in two rural villages in Guatemala.

Following the closure of the meatpacking plant, Postville businesses failed and livelihoods were destroyed.

In Guatemala, migrant Willian Toj returned to his wife and parents. Awaiting him was a massive debt that he accrued from his trip to the U.S. He had been working in the Postville plant for 20 minutes before the ICE raid.

Toj can barely earn enough to pay the monthly interest on the $7,000 debt, let alone get the funds to treat his mother's worsening cancer.

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as "Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain." The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Watch the video for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.

Video: An interview with Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan, directors of "In the Shadow of the Raid." All non-interview material courtesy of Szymaszek and Brosnan. Video interview by Deborah Bonello.

It isn't easy making a movie in the Dominican Republic. When Michael Mann tried shooting part of "Miami Vice" there in 2005, a gunfight broke out near the film set, prompting costar Jamie Foxx to leave the country and forcing further filming to Miami.

The filmmakers who made "La Soga," which recently earned several standing ovations at the Toronto International Film Festival, managed to finish their movie without anyone being killed, though they do have colorful stories, which include hiring a machete fighter to handle security. As "La Soga" director Josh Crook put it: "Our motto when we wrapped each day was, 'We didn't die!' "

As it turns out, "La Soga" isn't just the best film from the Dominican Republic ever to play in Toronto. Apparently, it's also the only Dominican film ever to play there. I'd say it was worth the wait. Even though the Dominican Republic is best known for spawning baseball players, judging from "La Soga," the country could be a potential goldmine for actors and filmmakers as well, writes Patrick Goldstein.

Read more here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they'd move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Half of those who said they'd migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

President Felipe Calderon's military-led campaign against the country's drug lords and organized-crime networks is "overwhelmingly endorsed" by the majority of Mexicans, although large majorities describe crime (81%) and illegal drugs (73%) as very big problems, according to the study.

Calderon's offensive against organized crime is now in its third year amid rising drug-related violence, but the Pew project reports that most Mexicans believe those anti-crime efforts are effective.

A hefty majority, 66%, say the army is making progress against the traffickers, while only 15% think it is losing ground. Calderon also is well regarded.

The popularity of the tough stance against drug gangs seems to be bolstering support for Calderon. Roughly two-thirds (68%) have a favorable opinion of the president, while only 29% express an unfavorable view.

You can read the report in its entirety on the project's website or download it.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,000 adults in Mexico between May 26 and June 2, 2009, for the Pew report.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mexico City's central plaza, or Zocalo. Credit: Deborah Bonello / For The Times