“El Respeto al Derecho Ajeno es la Paz”

Lic Benito Juarez

Texas’ Oldest Hispanic Owned Newspaper

Week of April 13 thru April 19, 2017 www.eleditor.com Lubbock-Midland/Odessa Region

Casualties of War in

Iraq 4,802Afghan 3,504 as of April 13, 2017

VOL. XXXX No. 22

El EditorCelebrating 40 Years of Publishing

Miguel Levario Announces U.S.

House Campaign

Latinos are the hidden force turbocharging the US economyIt's been nearly 10 years since

this country was hit with a reces-sion, the likes of which we hadn't seen for decades. Businesses across the country were closing their doors and unemployment soared. This bleak situation was sharply magnified among Latinos, which reported a 66 percent drop in wealth and a 13 percent unem-ployment rate.

Yet during this bleak period, Latino entrepreneurs created new businesses at a startling rate, increasing from 2.3 million in 2007 to approximately 4.1 mil-lion today. As we come out on the other side of these shifts, we should take stock of our economic environment.

Shining some much-needed light on the current state of Latino entrepreneurship in the United States, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Latino Entrepreneur-ship Initiative released a study on the nation's Latino business landscape.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to tap the brakes Wednesday on what appeared a free fall in relations between Washington and Moscow, but daylong talks between their top diplomats failed to bridge disputes over last week’s poison gas attack in Syria and other key issues.

Although the Kremlin earlier this week said Putin would not greet U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on his first official trip to Moscow, the Russian leader met the U.S. envoy for more than two hours in what appeared a determined effort to repair the growing breach.

Little concrete appeared to emerge from the meeting, although Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said later that “we understand each other better” and he saw “many prospects for co-operation,” including a possible resumption of arms control talks.

Lavrov said Moscow would put “back in force” a telephone hotline used to keep U.S. and Russian warplanes from collid-ing or accidentally firing at one another in the crowded skies over Syria. Russian officials said last week they would suspend the hotline.

The high-level meetings in Moscow came as Trump contin-ued a week of flip-flops in which he has jettisoned large chunks of the foreign policy — and signifi-cant pieces of economic policy — that he espoused as he ran for the presidency.

Trump, who repeatedly praised Putin during last year’s campaign, told a White House news conference it would be “a fantastic thing if we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia.”

“Right now we’re not getting along with Russia at all,” Trump added. “We may be at an all-time low in terms of relationship with Russia. This has built for a long period of time. But we’re going to see what happens.”

Putin also warned of worsening ties in a TV interview in Moscow.

"You can say that the level of trust on a working level, espe-cially on the military side, has not improved but most likely worsened" since last week’s U.S. airstrike in Syria, Putin said, ac-cording to a transcript released by the Kremlin.

Syrian President Assad faces international pressure to step

down, but in Damascus there is a mood of defiance

Syrian President Assad faces in-ternational pressure to step down, but in Damascus there is a mood of defiance

In a day of fast-moving diplomacy, Russia vetoed a U.S.-backed motion at the United Na-tions Security Council that would have required Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government to cooperate with U.N. investiga-tors looking into the April 4 nerve gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held vil-lage in Syria.

Visible shifts in Trump’s foreign policy began last Thursday with his decision to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syr-ian military airfield, an airstrike that countered Trump’s position that the U.S. should not intervene overseas except to directly defend its own interests.

Trump’s explanation for why he ordered the strike — the pain-ful images of children killed by a nerve gas attack that the U.S. blamed on Syrian government forces — had more in common with liberal internationalism than with his “America first” slogans.

At the same news conference, Trump declared that NATO, which he had repeatedly dispar-aged before he took office, was “no longer obsolete.” For 70 years, “the NATO alliance has been the bulwark of international peace and security,” he said.

He praised China, which he had consistently criticized during his campaign. And in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he confirmed that his administration would not label China a “curren-cy manipulator” — something he had pledged to do “on Day One.”

On the domestic policy side, he said in the interview that he would support continued opera-tion of the Export-Import Bank, which he had opposed, and would consider reappointing Janet L. Yellen as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve when her term expires next year.

In Moscow, testy public statements confirmed that U.S.-Russian relations remain at a discordant level. In their news conference, Tillerson and Lavrov spoke in unusually blunt terms and publicly sparred over Syria

U.S. and Russia remain far apart on Syria after Tillerson meets with Putin and other officials

Based on findings garnered from surveying 4,900 companies around the country, it is clear that the Latino business community is proliferating, and at a far faster rate than non-Latino companies. To be more precise, the number of Latino-owned businesses has grown an astounding 300 percent faster than the national average over the last decade.

Common misconceptionsThis begs the question: Where

do these businesses come from? Twenty-nine percent of these busi-ness owners and entrepreneurs are immigrants (if we add companies created by children of these im-migrants, the percentage balloons to 61 percent). When we con-sider only those businesses with revenues surpassing $1 million or having more than 50 employ-ees, 40 percent to 50 percent are Latino immigrant-owned.

It is a common misconception that Latino-owned business exist only in Latino neighborhoods, primarily servicing Latinos. The

SLEI findings present a different view. Even though 60 percent of all Latino businesses are located

in California, Texas, New York and Florida, the truth of the matter is Latino businesses are located across the U.S. Seventy-five percent are in neighborhoods with a non-Latino majority, serving mostly non-Latino customers and proving to be a vital, even critical, part of the nation's economy.

While the Latino business community has made significant strides, much remains to be done to encourage and solidify growth.

Lubbock, TX - Miguel Levario, associate professor of U. S. History at Texas Tech University, will for-mally announce his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives District 19 seat at the Charles Adams Gallery, 602 Avenue J in Lubbock at 6:00 p.m. on April 17.

Levario, 39, is a Democrat who believes the vot-ers of District 19 deserve a real choice when they go to the polls on November 8, 2018 - not just a default congressman picked in the Republican primary.

According to Levario, “I am convinced that the times we are living in require true leadership that takes into account the needs of all the people in District 19. Too many of our neighbors are living on the edge thanks to ill-conceived Republican policies that fail our farmers, fail our wage earners and fail our young people. We need responsible government and equality of opportunity.”

A life-long Texan, Levario grew up in El Paso. He is a graduate the University of Notre Dame University, Stanford University, and the University of Texas in Austin. He authored the book, Militarizing the Bor-der: When Mexicans Became the Enemy (TAMU Press, 2012). He and his wife Susie are the parents of two, and have resided in Lubbock for the last 10 years.

Miguel Levario, profesor asociado de Historia de Estados Unidos en la Universidad de Texas Tech, anunciará formalmente su candidatura para Representante del Distrito 19 de la Cámara de Representantes de los Es-tados Unidos. El anuncio se llevara acabo en el Charles Adams Gallery, 602 Avenida J en Lubbock a las 6:00 PM el 17 de Abril.

The best way the Latino commu-nity can assure a positive impact on the economic well-being of

this country is by leveraging its entrepreneurial success to increase its income and wealth and trigger the cycle leading to improved schools, better housing, lower crime rates, more jobs, and so on.

The study out of Stanford found that more than half of Latino business owners were millennials, ages 18 to 35, half of which held a four-year degree. This reflects twice of what is seen on the national level. We are see-ing more Latino students going to college and harnessing their ambi-tion to grow a thriving business.

This is also made evident when analyzing how these companies are getting started; three-quarters of Latino owners report ini-

tially founding their businesses by themselves with over 60 percent of them using their own funds. Of the firms that received external funding, bank loans were the most common at both the start-up and growth stages. However, most striking in the analysis of funding sources was the small numbers of Latino owners, less than 10 percent, who received angel or venture money at either of the two stages.

To help these, and all business-es, scale successfully, we need to see stronger educational programs and offer support for emerging entrepreneurs. Currently, through a collaboration between the Latino Business Action Network and the Stanford Business School, we have organized an intensive online program for Latino entre-preneurs and business owners to teach them how to overcome the challenges preventing them from scaling their businesses. We pro-vide experienced mentors, teach about available types of capital

funding and introduce them to investors. Most importantly, we develop a more interconnected network where entrepreneurs can create opportunities with each other and promote business with one another.

There are two truths that must be acknowledged by all those in position to create and develop economic policy. One is simply that the Latino population is grow-ing rapidly — not just in Florida, Texas or California but nationally. In fact, it will nearly double by 2060 to claim 30 percent of the U.S. population. Secondly, poli-cymakers also need to realize that the number of Latino-owned busi-nesses continues to grow rapidly, providing jobs for the American labor force, which will only lead to them playing a much larger role in our economy.

The reality is that by giving back to the Latino community and helping Latino entrepreneurs de-velop and grow, we are strength-ening the whole country.

and Ukraine.They shook hands for the cam-

eras as they met but did not smile and appeared unhappy with one another.

“There is a low level of trust” between Washington and Mos-cow, Tillerson warned. “The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship.”

“We need to attempt to put an end to this steady degradation, which is do-ing nothing to restore the trust between our two countries

or to make progress on the issues of greatest importance to both of us,” he added.

But both diplomats said they saw ways to stop the slide.

Lavrov said the two govern-ments had agreed to appoint special envoys to conduct what he called “a pragmatic conversation about the irritants, so to speak, that have piled up in our relation-ship under the Obama administra-tion.”

The Obama administration imposed economic sanctions on Moscow in 2014 after it an-nexed the Crimean peninsula and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. Obama approved ad-ditional sanctions in December after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had used hacking and other tactics to inter-fere in the 2016 presidential race.

“I for one would like to say that I do not think that Russia and the U.S. have so great a distance that it cannot be bridged on many issues of the international agenda, both with Syria and Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “It’s not impossible.”

Russia has been Assad's great-est ally — as it was to his father before him

Russia has been Assad's great-est ally — as it was to his father before him

Tillerson said they did not dis-cuss easing sanctions, noting that anger in Congress over Russian meddling in last year’s election “is serious enough to attract ad-ditional sanctions.”

Lavrov quickly responded, saying the U.S. envoy “did not threaten me with sanctions; didn’t threaten me with anything, actu-ally.”

They argued over U.S. charges that Assad’s forces carried out the chemical weapons attack last week that killed more than 80 people and injured hundreds more. Russian military forces support Assad in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, and Lavrov in-sisted he had seen “no confirma-tion” that Syrian forces had used nerve gas.

Lavrov instead took Tillerson to task for what he called the “illegitimate” U.S. cruise missile attack that followed, and the U.S. opposition to Assad’s continued rule.

He said the U.S. has a long his-tory of toppling dictators, includ-ing Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Moammar Kadafi and others in wars that he called a “blatant violation of international law.”

Earlier, as he stepped into a long session with Lavrov, Tillerson said he hoped to find “areas of common interest — even where our tactical approaches may be different — and further clarify areas of sharp difference.”

Lavrov said Moscow wanted to understand the Trump's adminis-tration's "real intentions."

It is customary for new U.S. secretaries of State to meet with Russian presidents on their first trips to Moscow, a tradition that goes back to before World War II.

So the Kremlin statement on Monday that Putin would not receive Tillerson had seemed another sign of the nosedive in relations — especially since Putin had personally bestowed one of Russia's highest honors, the Order of Friendship, on Tillerson just four years ago, when he was chief executive of Exxon Mobil.

Putin, in the TV interview, lashed out at U.S. allies in NATO for their unanimous support for the U.S. retaliatory strike in Syria.

"Everyone is nodding, like bobbing-head dolls, without analyzing anything that is hap-pening," Putin said. "Where is the proof the Syrian military used chemical weapons? None. And there is a violation of international law. That's an obvious fact."

Trump had studiously avoided criticizing Putin, but finally ad-dressed the matter in an interview with Fox Business Network.

"Frankly, Putin is backing a person that's truly an evil person," Trump said, referring to Assad. "I think it's very bad for Russia. I think it's very bad for mankind."