In the wake of revelations discovered through a lawsuit filed by Hispanic farmers, we now know that what we surmised years ago is true: The United States Department of Agriculture has systematically discriminated against Hispanics across the country.
In the lawsuit filed more than a decade ago, Hispanic farmers charged that the administrators of the USDA farm loan and disaster relief program have actively discouraged minorities from applying for government assistance, rejected their applications outright or put them through severe delays in receiving promised funds.
The program’s acknowledged history of discrimination against minority farmers has earned it the nickname as “the last plantation.”
After a settlement was reached, at last count the the Claims Administrator for the Hispanic and Women Farmers and Ranchers Claims Resolution Process, as of January 2016, had scheduled payments to more than 3,000 claimants.
For many years, Cameron County has been receiving colonia improvement funds either though the Texas Water Board or the state’s Community Development agencies. Some of these funds were earmarked for infrastructure such as water or sewer extensions to the colonias. Some are restricted to pay only for the mains and not for the connections to the individual homes.
To help colonia dwellers hook up to the sewer lines along the county right-of-way, planners decided to have them apply for low-interest long-term loans from the USDA’s Rural Development program operated out of San Benito. Under the Single-Family Housing Repair Loan program, very low-income families could receive up to $20,000 paid at one percent over 20 years for home improvements.
That office routinely gave local farmers loans and disaster relief for their crops. The rural development funds were issued to cover some of the farmers’ expenses from a variety of improvements, including drainage and erosion.
The average cost to extend the lines to the individual homes was about $2,500. USDA Rural Development loans would more than cover the cost of the hookups.
County administrators soon learned that it was going to be difficult getting the local USDA personnel to take the colonia dwellers’ applications. First they claimed that they did not have the necessary personnel to take the applications, much less to help the people fill in the required information, some of it quite technical in nature.
The county then bent over backwards to help the local USDA office and employed a clerk – at county expense – to help with the applications. After a time, planners and administrators went back to the clerk to inquire about how things were working out and to gauge the number of colonia dwellers that had been helped by the USDA.
To their surprise, and anger, they found out that not only had the clerk not filled out any applications of colonia dwellers, but that the staff there had put her to do some of their work.
They quickly set her right about her duties and functions and wrote the USDA administrators that she was there to help colonia.
After a few months, they finally gave up.
Not only had not one colonia dweller received any help from the USDA office, but there had been no response to their applications.
In the national lawsuit, attorneys for the plaintiffs said that the system the USDA had in place "gave full vent to regional and local prejudices. And even in largely Hispanic communities like the Rio Grande Valley, the local committee approving the loans were usually dominated by white males."
Even an internal USDA audit performed in 1994 found that the county-level committees charged with reviewing loan (and grant) applications were overwhelmingly dominated by Anglos. A full 94 percent had no female or minority representation.
In the Cameron County case, county officials closed the slot and sought funds elsewhere. The masters at the plantation have kept the door firmly closed.
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From Sunday's Austin American-Statesman, statesman.com, an article about problem doctors:
Dr. Faiz Ahmed, who has practiced in Brownsville, the Dallas area and Houston in his 25-year medical career, is one of the doctors who got a second chance from the medical board, only to land back in trouble again.
From 1993 to 2002, Ahmed, a neurologist, was accused of fondling the breasts of 11 patients, including two 15-year-olds, board records show. Three of the women said he also groped their buttocks or touched their genital area. Charged with assault in Hidalgo County and sued by the patients, he prevailed in both civil and criminal courts and was found not guilty.
The medical board weighed the same accusations and issued an agreed order in 2003 that barred Ahmed from treating women for 10 years, ordered him to see a psychiatrist and publicly censured him.
“The acquittal of a physician by a criminal court makes the pending board case much more difficult to prosecute,” Schneider said, in response to the Statesman’s questions about the board’s action. “The board agreed to an order prohibiting the physician from interacting with female patients for 10 years rather than risk losing the case at trial and leaving female patients with no protection at all.”
Ahmed, who told the board that the women who complained about him were misinterpreting his neurological exams, later provided reports from the psychiatrist, who concluded that he wasn’t a sexual predator. So in 2008 — halfway through the 10-year duration of the board’s order — the board lifted its prohibition on him treating women.
Two months later, his privileges were suspended at Dallas Regional Medical Center amid complaints from two patients — one of whom suffered from seizures and said he groped her breasts and genital area three times in a “sexual and inappropriate manner,” according to medical board records.
The board also received a complaint from a technician at Ahmed’s office who said he rubbed up against her when she was bent down.
Though the board found he had engaged in sexual contact with a patient, inappropriate behavior toward a patient and abusive/assaultive behavior toward patients and employees, it let him keep his medical license and stipulated that a female chaperone be present when he treated women. He was also required to take a boundaries course. Those four-year restrictions expired in early 2015.
Ahmed couldn’t be reached for comment, and his lawyer declined to comment.
El cantante Mejicano Juan Gabriel ha muerto. Fuentes de informacion dicen que murio esta manana en Los Angeles. Tenia 66 veranos en este pinche mundo cruel.
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