Born in Redwood City to Mexican parents from the state of Jalisco, Antonio Rentería is the owner of Gladiators Boxing Gym, a gym that trains both boys and girls with problems, amateurs and professionals of boxing, such as Mariana González and Alexis Gómez, who pre-qualified for the U.S. team's qualifying rounds for the 2020 Olympic Games.
Peninsula 360 Press
Redwood City. Gladiators Boxing Gym is a training center for boxers that was created by Eloy Ramirez in Redwood City during the 1990s. Currently this center, which trains from children to professional boxers, is owned by Antonio Rentería.
Born in Redwood City and the son of Mexican immigrants from Jalisco, Renteria joined Gladiators Boxing Gym in 1994 at the age of 14. In 2004 he competed in the renowned "Golden Gloves" tournament and made it to the semifinals, "but then I had a family and went to work, but I never stopped all the boxing, I never left Gladiators Boxing Gym," Rentería said. In 2017, Ramírez retired and Rentería took over the gym.
Gladiators Boxing Gym works with San Mateo County and provides training to children who have been victims of bullying, low self-esteem and other emotional problems. "We've had girls come in who have cut their bodies or tried to kill themselves. These are children who have no social life or society rejects them because of the way they communicate or act," Renteria said.
According to Rentería, "Boxing takes away the courage these kids bring to themselves and allows them to open up, communicate with other kids and even find friends, and this allows them to rebuild their self-esteem.
In addition to amateur training, Gladiators Boxing Gym has also trained national champions. Currently, this gym trains Mariana Gonzalez and Alexis Gomez, two professional boxers who pre-qualified for the U.S. team's playoffs for the 2020 Olympic Games to be held in Japan, but were suspended due to the pandemic by the COVID-19.
Glatiators Boxing Gym has adapted to the health and safety measures demanded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Training, which costs one hundred dollars a month, continues, but for the moment it is only private.
For more information visit the Gladiators Boxing Gym website
https://www.gladiatorsboxinggym.com
By Verenice Ramírez Hernán / Península 360 Press
On November 3, 2020, at the same time as the presidential election, Redwood City, the county seat of San Mateo County, will elect councilmembers for this city of more than 86,000 people.
This video is part of a series of interviews by Peninsula 360 Press to each and every one of the candidates. The interview consists of the same 9 questions for each and every one of them.
This time, we interviewed Isabella Chu, candidate for Redwood City Council District 3.
By Eli Bartra, courtesy of Peninsula 360 Press
April 2020. A very dear friend of mine who lives in Paris tells me an anecdote about her daily life in the middle of the pandemic. She goes out to the supermarket near her house to buy the essential groceries for survival, as fast as she can, according to her. It turns out that she can't go very fast. She stands in line for 40 or 50 minutes on the street, since very few people must be inside at the same time. Finally she enters and finds the little old ladies strolling down the aisles with all the calm in the world and studying every shelf, every product, as if it were the Louvre Museum. They gloat, enjoy themselves, in front of the cans of peas as if they were works of art. The more time they can spend there the less they will be in their solitary confinement in a small, and perhaps dark, Parisian apartment. They should regulate the time they spend in the store, thinks my friend, who has already reached her seventh decade, just like me! But the old ladies are the others.
The life of lonely and old women in the midst of the covid-19 contingency in Europe is sad. As sad as the whole situation is. Those who are not in nursing homes - where the situation is perhaps worse since they are dying like flies - lead a difficult existence. Everything is complicated, going out to shop is a risk, not going out, too. Loneliness and limited mobility are taking their toll. Old women are absolutely disposable in our societies, they are only good for being grandmothers, if they are doing well.
I am in Barcelona where I decided to spend my sabbatical. Since the pandemic started in Spain, which came out of the blue, without really being expected even though it was in China, and without knowing what it meant - because Italy and Spain were the first places in the old continent where it took on horrifying dimensions very quickly - from the moment it started, it was clear that it was a disease that was going to affect, first and foremost, the elderly population.
Women live longer than men and, therefore, there are more elderly women than elderly men; furthermore, more men die from the virus, which means that the female population, in this age group, is at lower risk in terms of gender. Where does this lead us? Well, it is above all the elderly women.
The dreadful decisions that health personnel must make are a moral issue of the first order. If necessary, saving the life of a 30-year-old is privileged over that of an 89-year-old. In principle, because one has many more years to live than the other. By virtue of what is one worth more than the other, the number of years to live? Is age the only important thing? There is little social significance in the experience of one or the other or in the service to humanity that they can render.
In Barcelona, the confinement can be very heavy for old women who have to do the shopping, because, in general, they are in charge of these tasks. Often, it is a young family member who does this task. It is said that older people will have privileges in terms of buying groceries, for example, over the Internet. "Let them stay at home". Hollow words, because we older people have much more trouble shopping on the Internet. We do not manage like fish in water as young people do. And some are frankly cybernauts. Lucky those of us who have help from young people, but what about those who don't? How do they shop online? I'm having a hard time getting food week to week and it's an additional source of anguish, in case another one is needed.
We must hope that no evil lasts a hundred years... with patience and... we will get out of this.
---
PhD in Feminist Studies, Master's Degree in Women's Studies and Research Area Women, Identity and Power of the Department of Politics and Culture, UAM-X.
Anna Lee Mraz Bartra / Peninsula 360 Press
Confinement has been hard for most, but it is clear that it is much harsher for those who already lived in worse social conditions: the poor, the elderly and for women in general, life has been complicated and for more than one reason.
After months of being enclosed, isolated from the world, we can already notice that the best and worst versions of ourselves have emerged, as indicated by the opaque reflection of the computer or cellular lithium crystal, which when it emits light, the electromagnetic waves are obfuscated, negative, contradictory. They make us witnesses of the tragedy that results from human meanness, on the one hand. In the best of cases, we find new ways of expressing affection at a distance.
Those who have no choice continue to leave the house, exposing themselves and their loved ones. They have no one to leave their children with who would normally be at school sheltered while their mothers and fathers work.
Older people are being overtaken by the technology on which daily life and the most essential tasks of our system now depend.
It is becoming clear to us that unprecedented changes in human endeavour will come. The house, for example, a place of rest par excellence, has become for some people an office, a school, a cinema, a restaurant and, in the best of cases, a gym and a discotheque. In the worst case, a nightmare you can't get out of.
Daily life, usually sustained by countless people around us, turns inward like a hastily torn sock and we find that these daily tasks are slower and more difficult to carry out. Even concentrating on work is more difficult. We have double or triple the responsibility in the home office, in addition to the housework and full-time parenting. When it's time to rest, the only thing that shows up as an uninvited guest is insomnia.
Another issue that has become - to say the least - a challenge is education. I believe that, in principle and in ordinary circumstances, raising new human beings should be a collective task. Now it has become an extraordinary and monumental task to try to resolve it within the same four walls that confine us. The size of the challenge will depend on many factors and also on the size of the child. A distinction must be made between those who have school-age and literate children and those who have pre-school children, who are illiterate, who do not read books alone, who do not write and who demand as much time as possible from their parents. We have become teachers, cooks, full-time animators of our sons and daughters. As if that were not enough, now the authorities in the schools are asking us to create a portfolio of evidence of what the children learn at home and to hand it over when they return.
Those of us who are teachers have become radio journalists. We talk for two hours running to a computer where we don't even see the students' faces because they have to turn off their cameras so the connection is not interrupted. The levels of surrealism are progressively increasing.
Our life revolves around the coronavirus, to the point that even a friend called the feline she found abandoned on the street and rescued it: Pandemic.
What days! What a year! All we have to do is resist and give the bad weather a good face.
Anna Lee Mraz Bartra is a doctor of sociology and a university professor. She lives in Redwood City.
Calapiz Stela. Peninsula 360 Press.
More than ten years ago, Casa Círculo Cultural emerged, a space made to bring Latin American culture to this part of the Bay Area. The sense of this project was -and still is- that our families have a place to belong and that their children and the new generations do not forget their mother tongue through art, theater, music, creative writing workshops, craft workshops, community living such as clubs, film debate, book club and radio programs.
Community work is done through volunteerism. At first, as you can see, this goal seemed distant and ambitious, but it was achieved with the effort of many people and with the tenacity of its director who has not given up, to date, to achieve the initial task.
This time I'll talk about how it started "The Creative Writing Workshop" and the benefits it has provided to the migrant family community living in this part of California. I will tell you how the idea of involving these women in writing came about: it came from the need to create a space for free expression by observing mothers waiting for their children to leave the workshops offered at The Cultural Circle HouseThe women began to form a group in which they talked spontaneously, a situation that led us to think that this socialization could be channeled into some benefit for this group. It was then that the project to start learning to write arose.
The origin of these women was varied: one or two came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, different states of the Mexican Republic; as well as their schooling: there were women who barely counted elementary school, others had reached high school and one or two had a profession. It was a somewhat uneven group, but each one, at her own level, was able to start writing short stories, other texts, such as poetic prose, some verses, some songs. The compendium of the small writings was the publication of a book. Some even wrote their own book.
The work that was done did not try to teach everything that they needed, but how to achieve enthusiasm and create in these women: love and esteem for knowledge, reading and self-criticism, and also to work with their self-esteem when seeing their writings published. For some, this workshop was basically about learning new words and getting them to start reading.
Readers will wonder why write? I will tell them that writing is a craft that can be learned - although being a writer is another matter - but from there you can discover a writer, a woman who would never have realized it if she had not tried.
If you want to write, you can, but first you must know the techniques of a trade as old as man, for example, that of storyteller, and all these women had much to tell; because a story can take many forms: that of a letter, a story or a novel, that of a song, or a biography. Writing also is a cultural tool that facilitates cognitive development, rescues memory and privileges power. According to the cognitive conception, writing is a process that requires the active participation of the writer who must apply very complex mental operations: planning, writing and reviewing.
In conclusion, I will say that the purpose of this writing workshop was not to be a school for training writers, but rather a laboratory for literary creation. Spaces of relationship between people of the community, of dialogue, of help to the people who have just arrived to the United States, place of exchange where doubts are solved, insecurities are filed and one learns to move in this culture and to learn a new language.
I would like to tell you that during this time of confinement, in order to continue with the Project, the Book Club has been created virtually, a space where we have begun to read famous writers, of course little by little, and we have also read our own writings. "The Writing Workshop" or now "The Book Club" where more people of either sex are already attending, is the place where you finally meet people with common interests, with whom you can give your opinion, share your tastes and inclinations, but also your anxieties and obsessions, those of each and every one.
In this space you can not only share with people of sexual diversity, but also with people of different ages, older or younger than you, more or less wise, more or less capable, better or worse; just as it happens in your daily life. With these workshop partners, you will achieve belonging and closeness with like-minded people whom you will end up knowing very well. In this way we will learn to respect different opinions: they will not necessarily be complacent and flattering, but they will be critical and sometimes merciless when it comes to making judgments on the topics that are written or read.
To Finish: Here is this text by Gilles Deleuze:
"Literature is beside the formless, the unfinished... Writing is a matter with becoming, always unfinished, always in progress, and overflowing with any living or experienced matter."
Maritza Leal. Peninsula 360 Press.
Whenever elections are coming up, it is a challenge to reach out not only to our Hispanic community, but also to the skeptics who are already tired of so many unfulfilled promises by elected officials. But what should our reaction be to such circumstances?
Definitely not fainting. Because the right to vote is one of our rights under our Constitution; moreover, it is the way to raise our voice from our trenches and, consequently, send a message to the regime of government - whatever it may be - of our approval or disapproval, that we are watching them to bring about true democracy and the rule of law.
We only have to look at the past, at history, to realize that there were generations of women and the African-American community who dreamed of this right and who, unfortunately, never witnessed it become a reality.
Today we have that right and privilege at our fingertips.
Let us not be satisfied with a representative democracy; rather, let us make the exercise of an authentic participatory democracy a reality, where inclusion is a way of life with responsibility and respect.
Here in Redwood City, we have experienced gentrification, changes in the light industrial zone, changes in the school district, increases in homeless families and coupled with that, the catastrophic effects of the pandemic we are experiencing and heroically facing.
We will definitely not be the same in the immediate future, but it is in us - and only in us - that the definition of our future life lies. Because our future depends, in large part, on what is done or not done, for or against our community. Will we be witnesses to our dreams fading before our eyes, or will we be the protagonists of history? Setting a historical precedent and opening the way for future generations who lack a culture of voting.
If there is one thing I am convinced of, it is that we are sufficiently capable of correcting this imperfect democracy where agendas contrary to our interests have been imposed on us; people like me, who are known in the popular jargon as the ordinary citizen, as a person who does not hold a six-figure salary and who goes out every day to earn his living.
Democracy means the power of the people - "dḗmos" and "krátos". Let's stop with krátos alone and start together on the path to the inclusion of "dḗmos" and thus have the satisfaction of having contributed to the path towards a real participatory democracy, learning more about our local politics, elected officials and future candidates.
Let us honor, then, the efforts of our forefathers; that many of them fought and paid in blood for civil rights, including the right to vote. Let us continue to build the profile of our community and choose who will be in charge of our government and include in their agendas the problems that afflict us a large majority and not a select group.
Maritza Leal is a Mexican migrant and activist. She lives in Redwood City.
Tastes like home 故乡的味道
Anna Lee Mraz Bartra. Peninsula 360 Press
It's no surprise that one of the seven deadly sins is gluttony. There are few things in life as delicious as the sensations generated by a good meal.
The sound of cork, popwhich lets out the acidic aroma of wood and earth, anticipates what's to come: glu glu sounds the reddish liquid that honors the name of its color when it escapes from the bottle to crash into the limits of the glass. It rises, falls and bubbles. The aroma, formerly subtle, envelops you. The first drink always generates an explosion of emotions from the palate. The burst runs through your body.
What do you feel first? It can be quiet, your lungs fill up with air as if the first bite, the first drink, gives you permission to do so after a day's work. It can be relief when your body cries out to fill that hole in your stomach, and you find yourself with something pleasant that surprises you favorably. You may feel a complete repulsion that, in front of others, you hide in a friendly smile. The possibilities are endless with an unknown dish in front of you. It is an adventure.
Almost every sound, aroma, colour and flavour from the kitchen links to the past, builds on the present or produces dreams of the future.
Recently, one morning in a rush to work, I walked into a breakfast and donut restaurant on Veterans Boulevard called Homeskillet. I waited patiently for my turn and while I was doing so, I heard the kitchen talking to each other in Spanish: "Ponlele queso cheddarthe order carries souvenir"I had spoken English with the person who was taking the order, but when I heard this I went over to ask in Spanish "What is the sandwich shown in the picture?" I pointed to the picture. A woman with a genuine smile and an epicanthal fold in her eyes kindly answered me in English.
The kitchen would be nothing without that clash and syncretism of cultures. The potatoes, which originally came from Peru, saved Europe from famine in the early 20th century. And that morning they accompanied my Omelette sandwich, avocado, bacon and cheese that I was spilling on the edges of the Sourdough bread, proudly produced in the San Francisco Bay Area.
About this, and more, I will write my column periodically.
I will write about the flavors that can be found in the Peninsula and who creates those flavors, I will write about the food that we migrants miss and what we do to reproduce it here, far from our land. Restaurants in the area, are under notice, here we will taste and scrutinize their dishes.
I am Anna Lee Mraz Bartra, a sociologist by training, a feminist by principle and a cook by love.
Cooking is an act of love.
Peninsula 360 Press editorial office
Redwood City. San Mateo County has the highest rate (72%) of self-reporting in the 2020 Census in California. According to journalist Pilar Marrero in an article for Ethnic Media Services, this was achieved "through their work with local organizations that know their communities very well.
According to Megan Gosh, a census management analyst with the San Mateo County Office of Community Affairs, the agency has been working since January 2018 on census self-reporting efforts.
"We had a lot of challenges: 13 of San Mateo's 20 cities have a combination of factors, having a census history that is classified as 'hard to count', as well as having unincorporated areas throughout the county," Gosh told Ethnic Media Services.
But the campaigns haven't stopped. "There are areas in Redwood City that have very low participation. We want to increase the participation of our Latino community in these areas," said Connie Guerrero, director of We Vote Redwood City, an organization that has done intensive work in person and on social networks to promote census self-reporting in this city.
So on Sunday, September 12, a group of Latinas from Casa Circulo Cultural and We Vote Redwood City, accompanied by Redwood City Councilwoman Giselle Hale, took to the streets in a last-ditch attempt to "promote the census and, as Guerrero said, encourage people in these areas to get counted before September 30.
"As you know, in the census we all count. No matter your legal status, being counted means that your voice and your community will be represented," Guerrero said.
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, at the same time as the presidential election, in Redwood City, California, the seat of San Mateo County, the councilmen of this city with more than 86,000 inhabitants will be elected.
Learn about their proposals through this infographic developed by the organization We Vote Redwood City and Peninsula 360 Press.
Click on the image to view it in full
