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The racially inflammatory rhetoric circulating in the public sphere recently, and especially that which has emanated from the White House in the past two years, has outraged many Americans, including many Latinos/as. Recall that the current president, in fact, infamously announced his candidacy by declaring Mexican immigrants rapists, criminals, and drug dealers (Time 2015). Throughout his campaign and his time in office thus far, he has issued similarly offensive remarks—anti-Muslim tweets, misogynist attacks on women, the denigration of nonwhite nations, and many other slanders. He and several of his top aides have eagerly stoked nativist and xenophobic anxieties over the country’s changing demographics, culture, and future electorate by invoking the specters of Salvadoran gangs and undocumented felons as evidence of the dangers of illegal immigration (Paarlberg 2017). By now we should be familiar with this political strategy—this administration and its allies repeatedly create provocations meant to divert public attention away from their much more ominous economic agenda that promises to have devastating consequences for tens of millions of people. Indeed, the recent shock and awe campaign of separating Central American families seeking asylum at the border drew immediate moral condemnation from many and demanded enormous energy to mobilize in support of the victimized parents and their children. Apart from being a cruel deterrent tactic, however, it also appears to be a spectacle aimed at fanning the flames of the nation’s racial divisions and creating more political theater. Critics have vocally protested the insults, the hate mongering, and the brutality of the immigrant detention practices, yet all the while economic conservatives in power have been gradually dismantling the social safety net, workers’ rights, and the regulatory power and reach of the federal government. Many of us, as people of conscience, progressives, and activists, consume a regular diet of this administration’s rhetorical transgressions—the bigoted taunts, the sensational tweets, the casual racism—allowing ourselves to be baited by a calculated sideshow that redirects our gaze away from this greater threat. The president’s Twitter storms and so much of the noise filling the public sphere provide a smoke- screen for the fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party’s comprehensive plan—effecting a dramatic transfer of wealth in this nation from the middle class, the working poor, and the destitute to the wealthiest population in the world’s history (Krugman 2017a; Matthews 2017a). Recent and forthcoming economic policies promise to have far more dangerous consequences for millions of Latinos/as than any of the various verbal assaults the president or others have issued. While we were engrossed by the manufactured crisis at the border, for example, this administration and the Republican-controlled congress quietly laid out one of the most punitive economic proposals in recent history, calling for over $5.4 trillion in domestic spending cuts (Johnson 2018). Reports as of summer 2018 are showing that the recent corporate income tax cuts, down from 35% to 21%, have had an enormous impact on federal coffers, increasing the deficit even more than forecasters had predicted (Tankersley 2018; Tax Policy Center 2017). This and accompanying tax cuts on the wealthy have provided the pretext for congress to slash social spending and create ever-greater austerity for the working class and the poor (Johnson 2018). This means less funding for health care, education, and programs that benefit women, children, the disabled, and the elderly. In fact, House Republicans’ 2019 budget proposal underscores just how fully the right aims to dismantle the protections of the lower and middle classes and hoard even more capital for the upper classes (Krugman 2017b; Matthews 2017b; Stewart 2018a, b). In fact, the Twitter handle “Patriotic Millionaires” has called the proposed budget “morally bankrupt” (Johnson 2018). Senator Bernie Sanders called the Trump tax cuts “a disgrace” (Corbett 2018). This follows on the heels of the anti-union victory in the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case. By deciding that public service workers should not have to pay an administrative fee to the unions that bargain for their wages and represent them to management (because this ostensibly violates a worker’s freedom of speech, as Mark Janus’s lawyers argued), the conservative justices who ruled in the majority have ensured the continued erosion of labor unions’ power. This comes at a time when a growing number of union members are women, immigrants, and people of color (Figueroa and Motera 2018; Covert 2014). Like regressive tax policies and austerity budgets, attacking workers’ rights to unionize is in line with right-wing priorities that advance the interests of economic elites at the expense of ordinary people. Historian Nancy MacLean (2017) offers a brilliant and timely account of the deep-seated intellectual roots of such policies. Libertarian ideology, which embraces “individual liberty” and “economic freedom,” calls for shrinking government and dismantling its social welfare functions, essentially rejecting any notion of “the public good.” This philosophy gained currency in the last five decades through the dogged efforts of economist James McGill Buchanan and the financial backing of none other than the Koch brothers. The Kochs, Buchanan, and their allies believe that common citizens are unworthy of democracy and that only the upper class can and should govern. Their long-standing dream has been to recreate the oligarchy of the plantation South in which an elite minority ruled over the majority and exploited their labor. This is the gospel of “the makers” and “the takers,” as 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney let slip in public—the conviction that the rich produce the nation’s prosperity and that the rest of us simply sponge off them through a tax system that forces them to share their hard-earned fortunes with underserving people (Moorhead 2012). Romney and others insist that the wealthy are the “job creators” and therefore serving their economic interests (i.e., cutting their taxes) will lift all boats (Trumbull 2012). While the affluent do create jobs—they do, after all, open factories and businesses; they hire house cleaners, nannies, and landscapers; and they buy consumer goods that most of us cannot afford—it is also true that those who work for them produce wealth as well, either in their business places or by providing personal services and the reproductive labor of caring for elite families and their property.

Brown in the Windy City is the first history to examine the migration and settlement of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in postwar Chicago. Lilia Fernández reveals how the two populations arrived in Chicago in the midst of tremendous social and economic change and, in spite of declining industrial employment and massive urban renewal projects, managed to carve out a geographic and racial place in one of America's great cities. Through their experiences in the city's central neighborhoods over the course of these three decades, Fernández demonstrates how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans collectively articulated a distinct racial position in Chicago, one that was flexible and fluid, neither black nor white.

In this collection, local experts use personal narratives and empirical data to explore the history of Mexican American and Puerto Rican education in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. The essays focus on three themes: the historical context of segregated and inferior schooling for Latina/o/x students; the changing purposes and meanings of education for Latina/o/x students from the 1950s through today; and Latina/o/x resistance to educational reforms grounded in neoliberalism. Contributors look at stories of student strength and resistance, the oppressive systems forced on Mexican American women, the criminalization of Puerto Ricans fighting for liberatory education, and other topics of educational significance. As they show, many harmful past practices remain the norm--or have become worse. Yet Latina/o/x communities and students persistently engage in transformative practices shaping new approaches to education that promise to reverberate not only in the city but nationwide. Insightful and enlightening, Latina/o/x Education in Chicago brings to light the ongoing struggle for educational equity in the Chicago Public Schools.

The structure of power underlying the hegemonic control Chichen Itza held over the Northern Maya Lowlands has been debated for decades. In this article, we present the idea of a dominant discourse on masculinities, which played a fundamental role in both practice and on a symbolic level among the strategies designed to support this emblematic pre-Columbian capital. Our discussion of archaeological evidence will focus on spaces where men are represented, where they would meet and carry out rituals. We contend that gallery-patios such as Structure 2D6 served as instruction and socialization locales for groups of warriors. The architectural configuration of this building is very similar to a series of venues at Chichen Itza and other Mesoamerican cities. In these spaces, associated iconography depicts male individuals in processions and ritual practice, including sacrifice and self-sacrifice. We argue that the gallery of Structure 2D6 was a semi-public, performative space, whose theatricality combined the central alignment of a sacrificial stone and a throne or altar with the presence of several patolli boards carved into the building's plaster floor. Chemical analyses of plastered surfaces testify to intense activities taking place around all three of these features.

The aim of this study was to conduct a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study to investigate the effects of D-004, a lipid extract of the Roystonea regia fruit that prevents testosterone- and phenylepinephrine-induced prostate hyperplasia in rodents, on plasma oxidative markers in healthy men. We enrolled male volunteers (20-55 years) in good health and without lower urinary tract symptoms. Thirty-four eligible participants were randomized to placebo or D-004 (320 mg) capsules administered daily for 6 weeks. An interim check-up and a final visit were conducted after 3 and 6 weeks of therapy, respectively. Physical examinations were performed at each visit, and laboratory tests were performed at baseline and at treatment completion. Oxidative variables included plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), total hydroxyperoxides (TOH), sulphydryl (SH) groups and total antioxidant status (TAS). We assessed treatment compliance and addressed adverse experiences (AEs) at weeks 3 and 6. At week 6, with D-004, the mean reductions of plasma MDA (26.7%), TOH (18.8%) and SH groups (31.6%), and the mean increase of TAS (35.3%) were significantly different from those of placebo (P<0.001 for plasma TAS, P<0.0001 for all other comparisons). D-004 did not differ from the placebo in safety indicators. There were two withdrawals (both in the D-004 group), with one due to dyspepsia (the only AE during the trial). In conclusion, D-004 displayed antioxidant effects on plasma oxidative markers in healthy men, which was consistent with findings from laboratory experimental studies.

Fernandez examines the simultaneous state-sponsored labor migration of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans as a process that reproduced their distinct politico-juridical statuses but also brought into relief their shared racial subordination and assigned them a mutual class location. Accordingly, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans both served as viable labor pools to fill American economic needs in the mid-twentieth century, but they were tapped through contradictory and competing policies.

Background: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), a common urological disease in aging men, frequently produces lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). Clinical studies have shown that terazosin relaxes the smooth muscle of the prostate and bladder, facilitates bladder emptying, improves LUTS, increases maximum urinary flow, and reduces the residual volume of urine. D-004, a lipid extract of the fruit of the Cuban royal palm (Roystonea regia), presents a similar efficacy to Saw palmetto. Clinical studies have demonstrated its efficacy and safety in short- and medium-term trials in patients with BPH. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and tolerability of D-004 with terazosin for 6 months on LUTS in patients with BPH. Methods: The present phase III study had an open, randomized, comparative design, with two parallel groups who received D-004 (320 mg/day) or terazosin (5 mg/day) for 6 months. The study included men at least 50 years of age, with evidence of the LUTS of moderate intensity according to the International Symptoms of the Prostate (IPSS). The effects on the IPSS Scale was the primary efficacy variable. The effects on the size of the prostate and the residual volume were secondary variables. The subjective self-perception of symptom relief at trial completion was a collateral outcome. Analysis was done by intention-to-treat. Results: The study included 100 men with a diagnosis of BPH, confirmed by digital rectal examination and ultrasonography, and moderate LUTS (IPSS score >7, <19). Baseline characteristics were similar in both groups. Nine patients did not continue the study: one from group D-004 (due to protocol violation) and eight from the terazosin group (six due to adverse events and two due to protocol violation; p < 0.01). D-004 and terazosin significantly reduced the IPSS scores at the end of the 6 months of therapy by 74.2% and 66.1%, respectively, with respect to baseline values. Comparisons between groups performed showed that, at the end of the treatment, D-004 was more effective (p < 0.05) than terazosin in reducing the IPSS score. Although the average size of the prostate was reduced in both groups, this reduction reached statistical significance only for D-004. On the other hand, postvoid residual volume was significantly and similarly reduced in both groups. Both treatments were safe, while D-004 was better tolerated than terazosin. Conclusions: D-004 administered at a dose of 320 mg/day for 6 months showed comparable efficacy with terazosin (5 mg/day) in reducing the LUTS (IPSS score), producing a significant decrease in prostate volume and postvoid residual volume. Both treatments were safe, with better tolerability for D-004 as compared with terazosin.

Policosanol is a cholesterol-lowering drug with concomitant antiplatelet effects. The present study was undertaken to compare the effects of policosanol and ticlopidine in patients with moderately severe intermittent claudication (IC). The study had a 4-week baseline step, followed by a 20-week double-blinded, randomized treatment period. Twenty-eight eligible patients were randomized to policosanol 10 mg or ticlopidine 250 mg tablets twice daily (bid). Walking distances in a treadmill (constant speed 3.2 km/hr, slope 10°, temperature 25°C) were assessed before and after 20 weeks of treatment. Both groups were similar at baseline. Compared with baseline, policosanol significantly increased (p<0.01) mean values of initial (ICD) and absolute (ACD) claudication distances from 162.1 to 273.2 m and from 255.8 to 401.0 m, respectively. Ticlopidine also raised significantly (p<0.01) ICD (166.2 to 266.3 m) and ACD (252.9 to 386.4 m). Comparisons between groups did not show significant differences. Policosanol, but not ticlopidine, significantly (p<0.05), but modestly, increased the ankle/arm pressure ratio. After 10 weeks, policosanol significantly (p<0.001) lowered low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol (TC) (p<0.01), and TC/HDL-C and raised (p<0.05) high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C). At study completion, policosanol lowered (p<0.001) LDL-C (30.2%), TC (16.9%), and TC/HDL-C (33.9%), increased (p<0.01) HDL-C (+31.7%), and left triglycerides unchanged. Ticlopidine did not affect the lipid profile variable. Policosanol induced modest, but significant, reductions (p<0.01) of fibrinogen levels compared with baseline and ticlopidine. Treatments were well tolerated and did not impair safety indicators. Three ticlopidine patients (21.4%) withdrew from the trial, only 1 owing to a serious adverse experience (AE) (unstable angina). Three other ticlopidine patients experienced mild AE (headache, diarrhea, and acidity). It is concluded that policosanol (10 mg bid) can be as effective as ticlopidine (250 mg bid) for improving walking distances of claudicant patients, and it could be advantageous for the global risk of these individuals owing to its cholesterol-lowering effects. This study is, however, just a pilot comparison, so that further studies in larger sample sizes are needed for definitive conclusions of the comparative effects of both drugs on patients with IC.

Policosanol is a cholesterol-lowering drug with concomitant antiplatelet effects. The present study was undertaken to compare the effects of policosanol and lovastatin on patients with moderately severe intermittent claudication. The study had a 4-week baseline step, followed by a 20-week double blinded, randomized treatment period. Twenty-eight patients who met study entry criteria were randomized to policosanol 10 mg or lovastatin 20 mg tablets once daily. Walking distances in a treadmill (constant speed 3.2 km/hr, slope 10°, temperature 25°C) were assessed before and after 20 weeks of treatment. Both groups were similar at random ization. Compared with baseline, policosanol increased significantly (p<0.01) the initial claudi cation distance (ICD) from 160.39 ±15.82 m to 211.31 ±21.48 m (+33.7%) and the absolute claudication distance (ACD) (p<0.001) from 236.39 ±25.44 m to 288.09 ±28.47 m (+24.3%); meanwhile both variables remained unchanged after lovastatin therapy. Changes in ICD and ACD were significantly larger in the policosanol than in the lovastatin group (p<0.01). Policosanol, but not lovastatin, significantly increased (p < 0.05) the ankle/arm index, although between-group differences were not significant. The frequency of patients reporting improve ment on quality of life domains was greater in the policosanol than in the lovastatin group. Policosanol significantly (p< 0.00 1 ) lowered total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein- cholesterol (LDL-C) by 17.5% and 31.0%, respectively, and meanwhile increased (p<0.01) high- density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels by 31.5%. Lovastatin reduced (p<0.01) TC (18.0%), LDL-C (22.6%), and (p<0.05) triglycerides (9.8%). In addition, policosanol, but not lovastatin, moderately, but significantly, reduced (p < 0.05) fibrinogen levels, so that final values and percent changes in both groups were different (p<0.01). Treatments were well tolerated. Only 1 lovastatin patient withdrew from the study because of a nonfatal myocardial infarction. Five lovastatin patients, but none from the policosanol group, experienced 6 adverse events (AE) (p<0.01). The present results indicate that policosanol, but not lovastatin, is a suitable alternative to manage patients with intermittent claudication because of pleiotropic properties beyond its cholesterol-lowering effects.