Carlos Arguello shows a John Deere tractor at the recent Farm Progress Show in Boone.

Carlos Arguello is blending his rural Iowa upbringing with a rich Latino lineage to help an icon of American agriculture move further into emerging markets.

Arguello, 24, a 2002 Carroll High School graduate who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa, has been a highly successful John Deere sales representative for about a year.

A native of Nicaragua, Arguello, grew up in agriculturally dominated western Iowa. He speaks the cultural tongue of this region of the nation as well as the actual language of his homeland, Spanish.

“Anyone who knows a second language, regardless of whatever that second language is, has a whole new world of opportunities,” Arguello said.

At the recent Farm Progress Show in Boone, Arguello  showed Deere tractor features to Iowa farmers, using the colloquialisms of the area. Just moments later he was speaking with South Americans in fluent Spanish about the same machines.

It’s a skill that has earned Arguello attention from Deere officials.

“Having people like Carlos who can speak a second language is a big advantage,” said Eduardo Alfaro, a marketing representative for a Mexican division of Deere.

Alfaro, who was in Boone for the Farm Progress Show, said Arguello was instrumental in working with customers there who flew in from Argentina.

“It’s necessary to have people who speak Spanish to give better service to them,” Alfaro said.

Marketing representative Charlie Anderson, a Waterloo-area farmer who has worked with the company for nearly 40 years, said Arguello is helping the company with a goal of maintaining strong domestic sales and growing internationally.

The two men team up for sales programs, and it works well, says Anderson.

“John Deere builds and sells products worldwide,” Anderson said. “There are no walls.”

Anderson said Deere believes Arguello is someone to watch with the company.

“He might be president of John Deere someday,” Anderson said.

Arguello, now based in Lenexa, Kan., has traveled extensively in the United States for John Deere. And he was in Canada in recent weeks. Arguello said it is likely he’ll be in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking nations soon.

He said John Deere understands fully that it is in an international marketplace.

“I think John Deere is a very diversity-driven company, no matter if it is toward the Hispanic community, the African-American culture, the Asian culture,” Arguello said.

Arguello is one of those young people seemingly perfectly suited for an emerging new era in Iowa, the intersection of business and demographic shifts.

Having come to the United States at age 7 he is a fully acculturated American, with a degree in marketing and real estate from UNI. He maintains a deep understanding, and love, of his Spanish culture. It’s a powerful one-two punch for a self-described entrepreneur.

At age 14, Arguello started his own translation business, Caal Translation Services, that he continued to run at UNI and still maintains to this day.

His father, Juan Carlos Arguello, is a surgeon in Nicaragua and his mother, Lorena Lopez of Carroll, is the founding editor of La Prensa, a western Iowa Spanish-language newspaper. Carlos helped his mother establish the newspaper while he was in college and takes great pride in its growing reputation as an advocate for the Latino community.

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin says he’s an unabashed supporter of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., as Barack Obama’s running mate. Meanwhile, Harkin, who ran for the presidency himself in 1992, says “realism” holds that Hillary Clinton has little chance of making the cut for vice presidential candidate as “latent” sexism and racism would give such a ticket perhaps too steep a cultural hill to climb.

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois and the Democratic presidential candidate, has yet to make the vice presidential candidate decision, but with the Democratic National Convention starting in a week, the choice is imminent. Harkin elaborated on his pitch for Dodd during an interview with Iowa Independent over the weekend.

“Dodd is my No. 1 pick but I don’t know where it’s going,” Harkin said.

During the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines in late 2007, the Iowa Independent noticed the connection between Dodd and Obama and listed Dodd at the top of a running mate ranking story.

Harkin said veteran legislator Dodd knows how to move bills through Congress, which will be important to an Obama administration facing international issues.

“He’s going to need a vice president that can help him get his legislative package through the Congress,” Harkin said. “And I can’t think of anyone who can do it better than Chris Dodd.”

Another big consideration, Harkin said, is that Dodd is well-liked by Republicans and Democrats.

“He knows how to work across party lines as evidenced by the fact that he just got this big foreclosure bill done,” Harkin said.

Harkin said Dodd also would be a major asset for the Obama campaign in the Latino-rich Southwest — a region many analysts believe will be decisive in the presidential race.

“He (Dodd) speaks fluent Spanish,” Harkin said. “The Hispanic community loves him. That would be a great outreach for Barack Obama.”

Dodd developed his Spanish-language skills during a stint in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic as a young man. During one campaign stop in Carroll as a presidential candidate last fall, Dodd conducted a video-taped bilingual interview with the Daily Times Herald and La Prensa, a Carroll-based Western Iowa Spanish-language newspaper.

In terms of other candidates thought to be in the Obama veepstakes, Harkin said he strongly doubts U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton will be the vice presidential selection.

“It’s realism,” Harkin said. “I know full well that if Hillary had gotten the nomination she would never have picked Obama, and if he gets it, he’s not going to pick her for a very simple reason: there’s a lot of latent racism and sexism in this country. It’s hard enough for a woman to win. Then if you add an African American on the ticket, or vice versa, if you have an African-American running and you add a woman on, you add racism and sexism together. That’s a pretty steep hill to climb.”

Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, from June 9 through July 13, 2008.

DENISON — Several frightened Hispanics, some crying with kids clearly in the background, made frantic telephone calls to a western Iowa Spanish-language paper over the last two days seeking information on what they mistakenly believed to be the start of a Postville-style raid in Denison, a community with a burgeoning Hispanic population and heavy packing-house presence.La Prensa, based in Carroll and with its most concentrated distribution in nearby Denison and Storm Lake, received the first call early Wednesday from a Spanish-speaking employee of a packing house in Denison who said he saw other workers being carted off in handcuffs. That event apparently sparked a rumor and something of a phone tree in the Hispanic community there.

Shortly after the initial call to La Prensa a Denison woman, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed through tears her belief that a raid may be under way. La Prensa received the last two calls — to this point — on Thursday from concerned employees.

Tim Counts, a Midwest spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Iowa Independent that the Sioux City field office — which has jurisdiction over Denison — and the Omaha, Neb., office were not involved in any special investigations or raids in Denison.

“We’re not conducting any sort of large-scale work site operation,” Counts said when told about reports from Denison.

He said the reaction in Denison is not surprising considering the Postville raid is still very much in many people’s minds.

“It is quite common for rumors to run rampant after we conduct an operation such as the one we ran in Postville,” Counts said.

Counts was quick to point out that it is very possible that individual immigration officers are pursuing specific cases in Denison. The fact that there is not presently a large raid under way doesn’t mean ICE isn’t maintaining an ongoing presence in Denison.

Another possibility is that Denison employers, fearful of being targeted, are stepping up their own document verification efforts. One major packing house official in Denison who was reached by phone declined to comment on the record but gave no indication that any raid was under way.

(Editor’s Note: Lorena Lopez is the editor of La Prensa. Douglas Burns is a fellow with Iowa Independent.)

“It’s difficult to predict the future, but it’s going to be a long summer,” said JoAnn Barten.

Speaking at a forum sponsored by La Prensa, a western Iowa Spanish-language newspaper, Barten noted that both Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama of  Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York, are likely to place moratoriums on the sorts of raids that traumatized the Latin community in Postville, where Barten visited to assist those affected in days after the sweep.

“For this reason, expect more raids,” Barten said.

Should some heavily Latino community communities in western Iowa prepare for similar raids by immigration officials?

“I think so, absolutely,” Barten said. “I truly believe that (Postville) is not the only community they’re going to hit.”

In an interview with Iowa Independent, Barten said the raids are largely political events.

“I think the raids are used for creating headlines and fear,” she said.

She said the scene was a troubling one in the Postville Latin community.

“Almost every person I spoke to was crying,” Barten said. “They were just exhibiting symptoms of psychological and emotional distress.”

She warned Iowans against viewing the hateful messages on blogs and in newspaper Web sites as indicative of the state’s view as a whole on immigration.

“I do believe that it is a vocal minority that is cheering the raids,” Barten said. “I believe many people are ambivalent.”

Back at the forum, Barten told those in attendance that they have the right to remain silent, that they don’t have to move into a line of illegal or undocumented people in a raid if government officials ask for such a division.

“Many of the folks there (Postville) voluntarily gave the information against themselves to the government,” Barten said. “You have the right not to tell them about yourselves.”

(Note: Iowa Independent’s Douglas Burns and La Prensa editor Lorena Lopez collaborated on a story on the Postville raid for La Prensa. It is published there in Spanish.)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On NBC’s coverage of the Run for the Roses you see high-hatting swells in the between-the-spires seats, the celebrities with mint julep drinks.

The cocktail-and-croquet set is intriguing, to be sure.

This is a big money event in a big money nation.

Thousands are spent on prime seats. Bettors wagered $115 million on the Kentucky Derby this year. The animals involved can be worth more than most people will make in a lifetime.

Big money.

You see the influence miles from The Downs in “corporate America’s Battle of Britain” with blimps and airplanes towing ad banners competing for coveted space above the track.

But there is another side to the Kentucky Derby: the backside.

Across the track from Millionaires Row and a sea of drunken humanity in the mostly mosh-pitted infield at Churchill Downs (combined official attendance Saturday was 157,770, the second-highest ever) is where the stables and the too-often invisible people of the track — the ones who make the horses go round and round — are located.

It’s actually like a little town, complete with a restaurant (where from the right table you feel like horses are going to careen off the track onto your fries).

Horse grooms, some living above the barns in which they work, rise in the early morning hours to tend to the horses. They clean the powerful animals thoroughly and prepare them for races. It’s not glamorous work.

On Derby day, many of the grooms and assistant trainers and hot-walkers and barn foremen and exercise riders and others involved in the day-to-day aspects of horse-racing gather on the backside with their families for the races. Some are dead serious at work, but this is the Derby and not every barn has a horse in the big race so the backside is a bizarre mix: part Game 7 locker-room seriousness and part carnival.

The ownership class on the backside step out of their Mercedes or Hummers with mixed drinks and navigate their way to Derby horse processions — the tradition of walking horses from the backside to the paddock on the front side.

Only feet away, one can see track workers climb down from the “apartments” above the horse stalls, and head to the Backside Rec Center, a squat of a building in which people screaming for $2 exacta bets (getting the first- and second-place finishers in order) are thinking about paying for a six-pack of beer or some diapers or McDonald’s, not bragging rights with their friends over a swanky dinner in this very restaurant-friendly, border-state city on the Ohio River.

It’s hard to write anything about the Kentucky Derby after the tragic death of the filly Eight Belles, the second-place finisher. But horse racing captures your heart. The animals do, with their grace and power, their courage and, yes, their fragility. As Larry Jones, Eight Belles’ trainer, said Saturday, “Our horses give us their lives every day.” He’s right, they do, both figuratively and literally.

The people in the industry, often a collection of characters that fiction writers would be hard-pressed to create, gain your love just as fully. And, none do this more so than the immigrants, most often from Mexico and Guatemala, who come to this country to do the kind of hard physical labor most people shun (and not necessarily without reason).

You can’t work in the racing industry unless you work hard, very hard, sometimes 16 hours a day and often every day of the week. Stable workers usually have to be in their barns by 4:30 a.m. and, at least every other day, they have to come back to feed horses in the late afternoon. Often they have to spend hours on horse trailers with their charges, going to a race away from the home stable, arriving early and watching their animals before preparing them for the day’s competition.

Backside workers tend to be immensely loyal to their families, both their relatives here in the States and at home. Every payday at Wagner’s Pharmacy across from Churchill Downs, you’ll see grooms and hot walkers standing in line to wire money back home to the family in Mexico or Guatemala. One groom who’s a good friend of mine, one of a family of 14 children from Mexico City, wires his entire paycheck, minus money for his food, back to his mom and dad every week. He also sends the money he gets from his second job delivering hay, oats and barley for the horses.

The Kentucky Derby tends to be a bacchanalian carnival every year, seeming like a multi-day drinking contest for out-of-towners who revel in the festivities and the race.

There’s revelry for the stable hands as well, but it tends to be a more family-oriented gathering of people than what you’ll find in either the infield at Churchill or under its storied Twin Spires. After finishing the day’s work, people at the barn get cleaned up, gather their children, and come up close to the track on Churchill Downs’ Backside, the area of the facility where the barns are. There are not a lot of seats and almost none of the eating and drinking amenities you get elsewhere on the track.
So people bring their own — beef, chicken, sausages, the best guacamole on the planet, refreshments — it’s all there, much of it cooked on grills the grooms and hot walkers haul from their rooms back at the barn.

And, of course, there’s some beer, a smattering of tequila. An observer would be surprised, though, how little Backside parties, with coworkers who seem really more like an extended family, resemble the frat-house inebriation levels that occur everywhere else at the track.

That’s not to say people don’t over-imbibe around the barns. Sure, some do, but these gatherings are more of a subdued celebration — of the day, the animals, and the people who make the horse industry possible in America.

Workers on the Backside want to share the day with the friends, relatives and most especially their children — the laughs and the humor are more the fuel for these festivities, rather than distilled spirits. After all, 4:30 the next morning is awfully early.

At just after 6 p.m., the so-very-different worlds here at Churchill Downs have a common focus. Nearly 160,000 people, ears perked, eyes trained, from the perch of royalty on the front side (the queen was here last year) or atop a dirt-stained cooler on the Backside, want to know the same things: Who broke well? Who is making a move?
We stood along the fence on the backside. We heard “My Old Kentucky Home,” and the roar of the crowd as the horses hit the gate, followed by the raucous cheering as the race started.

Through the years, along with learning to read a racing form, we’ve picked up the ear for “start of the race” cheering as compared to “in the gate” crowd noise.
After seeing the horses thunder past on the Backside, we sprinted to a nearby outdoor screen to confirm that Big Brown dominated the field and soon learned the tragedy of a brave and beautiful filly we watched make her way from the stable to the track only an hour earlier.

As always, when this race is over, when we can see an end to the first Saturday in May, we are reminded of John Steinbeck’s description after seeing Needles win the race in 1956:

“This Kentucky Derby, whatever it is — a race, an emotion, a turbulence, an explosion — is one of the most beautiful and violent and satisfying things I have ever experienced. And I suspect that, as with other wonders, the people one by one have taken from it exactly as much good or evil as they brought to it. What an experience. I am glad I have seen and felt it at last.”

(Editor’s Note: Douglas Burns is a columnist and writer for Iowa Independent.com and the Carroll (Iowa) Daily Times Herald. His longtime friend from college days at Northwestern University, Paul Rutherford, is an assistant county attorney in Louisville, who is also on the staff of the 2007 Derby-winning Churchill Downs barn run by trainers Carl Nafzger and Ian Wilkes.)

Bill Richardson took questions in both English and Spanish during a stop in heavily Hispanic West Liberty Saturday.

“I’m the only Hispanic candidate,” Richardson told the crowd of about 50 at El Torito Restaurant, “but I gotta tell people because of the name Richardson.”  He offered only a couple lines of the main speech in Spanish (such as “Sign a pledge card, por favor.  We need you”), but answered one whole question in Spanish.

“What I’m saying in Spanish I already said in English,” he advised the mixed-language audience, before restating positions on the Iraq war that he’d discussed in the main speech.  (Or so I was told; with my extremely limited knowledge I picked up “la Guerra” and “billions of dollars.”)  In a handshake-length “interview,” Richardson told me Spanish questions are uncommon on the Iowa campaign trail.

Richardson also repeated his goal of finishing in the top three in Iowa.  “We’re going to pull off an upset here,” he said.  “Right now we are viable in most every precinct.  I’ve been to 99 counties, I’ve been to counties whose name I can’t even pronounce.”  He also raised the bar on himself from a top three finish in the first three states to “top two” in Nevada.The campaign, Richardson said, “shouldn’t be about who’s got the most money, or is part of a dynasty, he most glamorous, or a rock star,” naming no names.  “I’m the rock star candidate.”

“I’m glad the people of Iowa are deciding this, not the national press,” he said, teasing Sarah Ames, the ABC reporter embedded with his campaign.  Later Ames said the ribbing is part of every Richardson speech.

Richardson gave English answers to the two other Spanish questions, telling a questioner who asked about discrimination against legal immigrants, “I wouldn’t tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender (applause) or sexual orientation.  There’s just no room for that in this country.”

The bulk of Richardson’s prepared remarks focused on his foreign policy credentials.  “I’m the only candidate who took a strong position” on Pakistan in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, he said, repeating his call for President Musharraf to step down. 

“We need to stand with the Pakistani people and not with a dictator,” he said.  “The rest of the candidates said wait and see.  They were on the side of the dictator, they were on the side of the Bush administration”

Other audience questions focused on choice (”I will appoint justices who believe Roe vs. Wade is settled law”), NAFTA (he called for renegotiation of side agreements on environment, job safety, and wage parity), and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (”I’d be a pres that would personally engage to be an honest broker between Israel and Palestine” in a two state solution, he said, but he would not cut off funding to Israel.)

Adalberto Solis, the owner of El Torito, said the Richardson campaign contacted him to set up the event after Solis signed a pledge card.  He’s an enthusiastic Richardson supporter, but most of his campaigning has been one on one outside of work.  “I don’t mix my business with politics,” said Solis.  Perhaps hoping El Torito could become West Liberty’s version of the Hamburg Inn, he said he’d welcome any candidate. 

“I was talking with the Latino people here, and nobody likes Bush,” he said.  “Latino people, we come to work but didn’t care much who was the president, and I’m explaining to them why it’s important to vote.”

Solis came to the U.S. in 1986 and became a permanent resident in 1988 and a citizen in 2003.  This is his first active caucus cycle.  “The first time I participated, I didn’t know as much.  I voted but didn’t caucus.  This time I got more information about the candidates.”

Solis also likes Hillary Clinton, but said, “I think Richardson is better for the country and for Latinos.”  “I asked how many votes they need to win here in West Liberty,” he added, “and they said 30,”

Unlike many Hispanic communities in Iowa dominated by recent arrivals, West Liberty’s Spanish-speaking community goes back several generations, though it’s grown in recent years.  Gustavo Garcia has lived in West Liberty since 1966.  Richardson is near the top of his list.  “He’s got the credentials, he’s got it all.”  Garcia is also considering Barack Obama, but worries that his war plan is not specific enough.

Helen Van Hoozer of Muscatine, a county Richardson leader, isn’t sure how her candidate’s heritage will help in Hispanic parts of the county, but thinks “it would be a model for Hispanic children to have him as president.”  She said if Richardson were not viable in her precinct, she would go uncommitted, in the hope that she could help Richardson later in the nomination process.

Dave Bradley of West Liberty says Richardson is his second choice behind John Edwards.  “We have an embarrassment of riches,” said Bradley.  “I think (Richardson’s) going to do really well here.”

DENISON — This is some video of Catholic Hispanics in Denison celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of heavily Catholic Mexico and a key figure for immigrants in this area of that faith.

The event in the relatively new Denison Catholic church, in which the Rev. Paul Kelly holds Masses in both Spanish and English, involves spectacularly colorful costumes and these Aztec dances with historical meaning to the parishioners.

The video here was shot by La Prensa editor Lorena Lopez and Iowa Independent fellow Douglas Burns. It was edited by Jon Sampson.

DENISON – Faith and pageantry walked hand in hand through St. Rosa of Lima Parish last weekend as more than 300 Hispanic Roman Catholics celebrated the feast of Guadalupe – a signature event in their culture.

Today, Dec. 12, is the official feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but the Rev. Paul Kelly, pastor of St. Rose of Lima, said the Denison ceremony occurs on the nearest Sunday on the calendar. Guadalupe is the patron saint of heavily Catholic Mexico and is a key figure for immigrants in this area of that faith.

The event in the relatively new Denison Catholic church, in which Kelly holds Masses in both Spanish and English, involves spectacularly colorful costumes and dances with historical meaning to the parishioners – many of whom brought camcorders to archive their families’ roles in the two-hour program.

“They show up in the early morning hours to sing to the Virgin Mary very popular songs from the tradition,” Kelly said. “It commemorates the apparition of the Virgin Mary to an Indian named Juan Diego in 1531.”

The icon had a unifying effect in Mexico and helped bring people into the church, Kelly said.

“When the Christians first came and the Spanish first came, they were having difficulty converting the Indians (in Mexico and Central America),” Kelly said. “They did not want to convert. The Spanish had been in Mexico for 10 years before the apparition occurred with very little success.”

After the apparition, millions converted to Catholicism, he said.

On Sunday the parishioners, largely young families with many children, some of them attired in ancient costumes, arrived in the church before 5 a.m. Later, in a reception area, hundreds remained to eat breads, drink punches and coffee and continue in song and prayer. As this happened, several boys played an impromptu soccer game in the hallway outside.

Kelly said there is no connection with the ceremony and Christmas other than that in the image, Mary is pregnant. What’s more, the festive nature of the event blends well the seasonal mood.

“It’s really an exciting day for everyone because it represents such a joy and a fervor people have for Guadalupe and the message she brought,” he said.
St. Rose of Lima has about 500 English-speaking households and 300 Spanish-speaking.

He has been in Denison for 18 months and says he enjoys working in the culturally rich parish.

Kelly spent four months in Mexico and started taking Spanish in Coon Rapids. After Carroll County, Kelly spent seven years in Sioux City, where he also developed the Spanish-speaking skills he now uses at St. Rose of Lima.