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Though rusty from not playing daily, Santana still shows signs of brilliance as a smooth-fielding shortstop. His knee injury plagues him when he jogs. Young Latin players with injuries are replaced quickly in the American minor league system with other, even younger, recruits.

Lost in New York: Baseball’s Latin Ghetto

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas NEW YORK – They are discards and runaways, lost souls and drug dealers, day laborers and illegal immigrants, and to a man, old before their time. José Santana, 24, waits for a snack at

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton February 22, 1997
A schoolgirl photograph of Shirley Ann Davidson at age 15, in 1967.

Integration’s Victims: When Virginia Slammed the School Doors Shut

Six-year-old Shirley Ann Davidson had looked forward to starting school for a long time. Her mother had prepared her well, giving her the basics of arithmetic and reading from a Dick-and-Jane book to teach her the alphabet. During the summer before Shirley was

Don Baker February 7, 1997
Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru, has agreed to work with the president of Bolivia to remove coca from a United Nations blacklist. Photo by AP/Wide World

The Dialogue of the Deaf Over Coca

Quillabamba, Peru – The decrepit old theater, filled with hand-lettered signs and women in bowler hats passing out coca leaves, seemed worlds away from the high living associated with the illegal drug trade. So did the calls for all-out war on “el narcotráfico.”

Corinne Schmidt February 7, 1997
If there is no more army, who needs the military boots? They are for sale on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

Does Haitian Justice Have to be an Oxymoron?

It was in a US military helicopter going from Port-au-Prince to Hinche that I first met a representative of the Haitian justice after the return of the exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was made possible by the soft-entry invasion of US troops in Haiti

Anna Husarska February 4, 1997
An aerial view of part of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley shows ravaged patches of jungle which have been cleared by peasants for the illegal cultivation of coca bushes. Use of the pesticide Spike over the area, which is at the experimental stage, could further damage the ecosystem, according to environmental advocates. Photo by AP/Wide World Photos.

The Lure of a Criminal Cash Crop

TINGO MARIA, Peru. – On her farm in a hollow in Peru’s high jungle, one woman’s pride are her tropical fruit trees. But she acknowledges that fruit doesn’t bring in money in. Nor does the coffee and cacao she and her husband grow.

Corinne Schmidt February 4, 1997
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Is the Government Losing its Memory?

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. Captions for those pictures appear in italics. Scholars of antiquity and the Middle Ages often complain of insufficient information with which to piece together the historical

Alexander Stille January 26, 1997
American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. He signed right out of high school with the team for $1.3 million in 1993.

The Imports

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas There was a time when America’s game was played by only three kinds of people: White Americans, black Americans and Latins. American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton October 26, 1996
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Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Early U.S. Policy in Yugoslavia

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. The small group of American diplomats were gathered in the secure room of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, debating what was holding Yugoslavia together and what

Maud Beelman October 26, 1996
These orphaned Russian siblings comb the streets and bazaars in Dushanbe, in Tajikistan, in search of food and small change. Shoeless and infested with scabies, these children are among the thousands of orphaned children of Tajikistan, the miserable spoils of the civil war.

Report From Tajikistan

Story by Andrew Meier with photos by Mia Foster TAJIKISTAN – It had been a lovely afternoon drive through the mountain passes of this small Central Asian state. As we made our way along the craggy reaches of northeastern Tajikistan, the greatest threat

Andrew Meier October 26, 1996
The office of fugitive Mayan Indians called Community of Population in Resistance (CPR) has mixed influences: the filing system is Western-style, but the names and categories seem copied from a Politburo manual.

The Mayan Apparatchiks

When the Guatemalan president-elect Alvaro Arzú promised on January 7 that his government “will be one of total and absolute respect for human rights,” the announcement had a novel ring to it that on second thought was rather chilling. Mr. Arzú led his

Anna Husarska July 26, 1996
The music school in Ilidza, a Serb suburb, burns the day before the official handover on March 12.

Pitfalls of Peace in Bosnia

The woman piled her books and magazines on the grass in front of her apartment building in the Sarajevo suburb and set them alight. In the crazy logic of her world-turned-upside-down, this meant Serb thugs wouldn’t need to torch her apartment, as they

Maud Beelman July 26, 1996
Betty Jo Dulaney has been running the Tunica County Literacy Center since 1985.

Gamblers’ Needs Focus a Town on its Reading Failures

TUNICA, MS. June, 1996 – A teacher stands before a blackboard in an otherwise barren room. Eleven faces stare back passively. Most are in their twenties, a few in their forties. They are newly hired cashiers at the Sheraton Casino. On Monday, they

Laura Parker June 30, 1996
"When you're at this level, nobody can do anything for you because you are nobody," said José Paulino, 19, a new recruit from the Dominican Republic at his first major league spring training camp. "This is the profession I chose and I don't know how to do anything else. And they are the ones who decide whether you are going to today, tomorrow or the next day."

The Dream: Trying to Make it in the Major Leagues

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas La Victoria, Dominican Republic – It is after dark on a humid and still March night – the last night before 11 young men would fly to America on a trip that could forever

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton May 26, 1996
Haitians still arrive in South Florida the hard way: smuggled in from the Bahamas on leaky boats. Occasionally crafts are swamped before they reach shore. There have been 70 confirmed drownings of Haitian immigrants in Florida waters since 1980. Rescue workers try CPR on one Haitian whose boat capsized. Photo by Greg Lovett, The Palm Beach Post

Delray Beach, Florida: Little Haiti’s Little Sister

Note: Many of the Pictures used in the original APF Reporter issue are copyrighted and could not be used in the web eddition Daniella Henry remembers her first visit to Delray Beach. Driving up from Miami one night in 1990, she exited brightly-lit

Joel Millman May 26, 1996
Prague's old Jewish cemetery, contains 100,000 bodies, buried on top of the other, 12 layers deep. The oldest grave is that of poet Avrigdor Kara. His eyewitness elegy to the 1389 pogram, where 3,000 Jews were killed, still is recited every year in the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement services. The cemetery is now a tourist attraction, part of the "Jewish Prague" tour.

Traces of the Past

Text and photos by Jill Freedman APF fellow Jill Freedman traveled to eastern Europe to document the remnants of Jewish life in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. These residents of the Jewish home for the aged in Szeged, Hungary listen during a concert of

Jill Freedman May 26, 1996
Corey Whitman, 11, is physically healthy, but is one of thousands of children coping inside a family ravaged by AIDS. His mother and sister have died and his father and other sister are infected. He is shown here with his favorite sister, Megan, who has since died. When she began to have difficulty walking, Corey was the first to put her in the stoller and take care of her. At age 11, Corey attempts to fill an adult role and helps his mother care for Megan.

The Others who Suffer from AIDS

Here is the dream that kept coming back to Corey Whitman in the fall of 1991, a few weeks after he turned eleven: He and his parents and his four brothers and sisters are camping out in the woods in a motorhome, a

Doug Root and Randy Olson May 15, 1996