Rationing insulin. Skipping meals. One woman’s struggle to survive on minimum wage Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, USA TODAY
MIAMI – Elsa Romero eyes the $3.38 vanilla pound cake. A tiny bite could save her life. She s not sure she can afford it.
Romero, 57, looks around the discount grocery in her Liberty City neighborhood, the cacophony of Spanish and Haitian Creole voices competing for her attention as she tries to do the math.
There s $90 in her bank account, and her next paycheck arrives in 10 days. As a janitor making minimum wage, she can t afford $110 for her weekly insulin, but a forkful of the dessert whenever her blood sugar drops could keep her out of the emergency room.
Political Officer Nathaniel Rettenmayer
Avenida La Paz, Tegucigalpa M.D.C., Honduras
Ongoing action to ensure justice in the case of the murder of indigenous human rights and environmental defender Berta Cáceres
Dear Secretary of State Blinken,
The undersigned civil society and academic organizations and defenders urgently implore the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Honduras to continue to press for accountability in the case of the murder of indigenous and environmental defender Berta Cáceres. We appreciate the ongoing efforts of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras to closely monitor the criminal investigations and proceedings related to this crime and to push for accountability. We ask that those efforts continue with regards to the forthcoming trial of David Castillo, and that the U.S. government increases its efforts to urge accountability for all of those who ordered and financed Berta’s murder.
Marvin B. Figueroa serves as the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs (IEA) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS
, you discussed how Catholicism has influenced some of your earlier projects. Do you see a common thread in how catholic visual culture manifests across your work?
A lot of my work has to do with looking at the world and wanting to talk about beauty and more difficult things through art but kind of not knowing how. I grew up in Honduras, and I came [to the U.S.] for college and got an engineering degree. Even though I didn’t go to art school, I was able to take some studio courses and some liberal arts classes, and I just fell in love with it. I figured it would be easier to stay here if I pursued a technical degree, so I worked as an engineer for about a year. It was later in life when I realized [art] is what I want to do… and that’s become an undertone in a lot of my work.