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Roberto Lovato Profile picture
Roberto Lovato
@robvato
Author of Unforgetting https://t.co/SP9pAAQTxj, called a Groundbreaking memoir by the NY Times. Creative Writing Professor @UNLV. He/him. rlovatoauthor@gmail
Aug 7, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
🧵 re: textbook example of media erasure: @caitlinhd's "secret history" of Trump POLICY of separating 1000s of Central American children fr their parents forgets to even mention the Obama PRACTICE of separating 1000s of Central American children from their parents. The @TheAtlantic article follows the well-established pattern of neglecting to mention that Obama separated 1000s of Central American children, a PRACTICE documented as early as 2011 by @RaceForward: bit.ly/2N2RH43
Feb 12, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Thread: Since he's trending, important to remember that Colin Powell was 1 of th leading generals arming,training & protecting th Salvadoran military & death squads responsible for slaughtering 75-80,000. He did so throughout the war. Duarte was the bloodiest of Salvadoran Pres. As Reagan's Natl Security Adv, Powell was among th leading voices advocating the "counterinsurgency" strategy tht targeted the civilians who suffered the brunt of the war.He evn supported Cristiani, prez elected as member of th ARENA party founded x death squad leader D'aubisson.
Oct 23, 2020 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Lots of people talking & being quoted re the separation, caging & othr abuses of Central American migrants,following th #Debate2020. 0 of those quoted are Central American. I just wrote a book based on decades of experience w these & other matters, but nobody's asking. Here's why The first and most important reason is because the Democrats and their allies in media knew that actually existing Central Americans would have to share a difficult truth: the caging & separation of 1000s of Central American kids like the 1 in this pic began w Obama & Jeh Johnson
Jul 17, 2020 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Thread on RED ALERT: Paramilitary men like these anonymous federal officers in #Portland tried to pick me up years ago, in wartime El Salvador. Those men were paramilitary death squads operating out of US-trained & funded elite battalions. I see this& remember my 2008 prediction: That the U.S. government would use immigrants to introduce dangerous new military and paramilitary forces within the borders of the country, as a way to circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting deployment of military personnel within the country's borders.
Feb 8, 2020 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
THREAD re some of what #DignidadLiteraria just accomplished:
-bringing Macmillan, 1 of the most powerful publishing powers on earth to unprecedented negotiation of measurable outcomes w a long-ignored community of almost 60 million. 2) -expose & challenge other Publishing Powers—@Oprah, literary critics, other Big Publishers, agents, editors, bookstores—to reconsider their outdated notions of the "literary," & to do so in ways that include us
Jan 19, 2020 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Thread on #AmericanDirt fr a reader/ journalist who's scurried different parts of th migrant trail for 30 years. Where you see "profound achievement" the me who 1rst saw Salvadoran refugees bombed in the 80s & 90s sees profound ignorance & shallow opportunism. (pic I took in 91) Where you find #AmericanDirt "thrilling and devastating," the part of me pursued by death squads on both sides of the border sees a cartoon, a simplistic, silly cartoon. lat.ms/2qNPQa0
Sep 13, 2019 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
@JoeBiden said "Barack Obama didn't put children in cages." Proof of lie #1: Obama's Homeland Ubermeister, Jeh Johnson, touring the cages he innovated & built so kids could draw themselves in them. Lie #2 by Biden: Obama didn't separate children fr parents. Proof: reports by @RaceForward & Lutheran immigration services showing that, as early as 2011, Obama separated at last 5000 kids in 1 year alone: bit.ly/2N2RH43
Lutheran report: bit.ly/2FSugZq
Aug 4, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Trump's normalizing anti- immigrant rhetoric is important to note bf dehumanizing murder like #ElPasoTerroristAttack. But it's also important to look at the body, how BOTH Republicans & Democrats have devalued the immigrant body to the point of jailing, separating, dehydrating, beating, deporting & exposing refugee child bodies to rape. If the bodies of refugees & migrants could speak for themselves, the picture & talk of government sanctioned white supremacist violence would implicate not just Trump, but Obama, Clinton & all those Democrats & their
Aug 4, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD: Important to understand the undercurrent of the history bubbling beneath the #ElPasoTerroristAttack. You can see the workings of the genocidal culture--institutionally-sanctioned mass murder+white supremacy+devalued Mexican life--3 hours s of EP, in the town of Porvenir, TX. Porvenir was the site of a massacre perpetrated by Texas Rangers at a time where 100s, possibly 1000s of Mexicans were being ethnically cleansed , displaced fr land in the region. A century after it occurred, I tried to interview a defendant of one bit.ly/2GLl8X0
Jul 3, 2019 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
THREAD: I issue a public challenge to @salon writer @AmandaMarcotte to explain how the end of Obama Adm. marked what u call "the end of the treat-migrants-like-people era", when many of us documented things like the following: @NoMoreDeaths 2011 report documenting 30,000 cases of rape, sexual abuse, beating & other abuses prepetrated against child & adult migrants during the early Obama years. 30,000. bit.ly/2smZIbb
Jun 10, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD It was the Obama Adm that trained & promoted Brazil's corrupt, right wing justice minister, Sergio Moro, who was just exposed. Moro benefited fr Obama destabilization programs that weaponized justice systems across the Americas, turning judges, brasilwire.com/dont-call-it-b… prosecutors & others into instruments of US national security. Obama operatives like Thomas Shannon,William Brownfield & others helped then Sec. State Clinton push program as a way to push back the pink tide that the US national security establishment.
Feb 25, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD: After marching for "freedom," "democracy" & "humanitrian aid", legislator & member of @jguaido's right wing @VoluntadPopular party, @freddysuperlano & an aid were POISONED while relaxing in a motel in Cucuta, site of this weekend's conflicts. The aid DIED. Immediately,accusations tht Superano & aid were "murdered by the Maduro regime" startd flying.Joining the fray, @marcorubio, who,in addition 2 his bloody Ghaddafi tweet,tweeted this statement linking the poisoning 2 the "grave situation" in at the border. bit.ly/2TeJMqA
Feb 17, 2019 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD: As I teach my students at UCLA, you can't really blame Trump for the criminalization of immigrants bc the assumption-- immigrant=criminal--has been in the law since 1996, when Clinton started us on the path to what scholars call "crimmigration." The pattern continued & expanded in the early 2000s, when Dems & Republicans introduced "comprehensive immigration reform" (CIR) proposals that were & still r about 10% legalization proposals & 90% punitive proposals that, again, assume immigrant criminality. Bush & 9-11 started US on the path to what
Feb 13, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD: Astonishing discussion between @AlvaroUribeVel & @LORENT_SALEH. They briefly talk about "democracy & freedom in Venezuela", as Uribe calls Saleh a "hero" who acts with "honor." Viewed from the perspective of documented fact & recent history, Saleh's acts include: being caught on tape plotting acts that, in a US context, would would be considered "terrorist acts. he admits to the following on this tape:
-plotting sniper attacks
-plotting bombings with c4 explosives
-plotting assassinations of Chavistas

bit.ly/2WN5T6t
Feb 8, 2019 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. If we lived in a more serious media moment, news outlets would deploy investigative journalists to look into a) the history of terrorist bombings, sniper attacks, assassinations & other activities of the more extreme & violent segment of the Venezuelan opposition. B) The links-- personal, political, clandestine-- links between the violent extremist segment & @jguaido & others who participated in the violent guarimbas, some of which resulted in beheading cyclists,shooting & killing govt & pro govt people & blowing up child care facilities
Feb 7, 2019 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
MUST SEE TO BELIEVE VENEZUELATHREAD: Textbook inversion turning the violent into the the victim. Venezuelan opposition leader @LORENT_SALEH surrounded by Mexican politicians as he chides the @lopezobrador_ govt for refusing to support Trump coupattempt iin bit.ly/2GsYDH2 Venezuela. Saleh denounces the Mexican govt for not opposing a Venezuelan govt he says "uses violence to control & submit the (Venezuelan) population." This sounds reasonable enough for global media to cover, until you see this clip of Saleh plotting bit.ly/2nKTFe2
Jan 29, 2019 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
Thread. Great analysis by @KenSilverstein1 of the optics and optical media illusions taking place around Venezuela.Helps us understand the high-powered, multi-million $$$ media & NGO operation supporting Venezuelan opposition leaders like @LeopoldoLopez. bit.ly/2RrAr9G To understand the media dynamics propping up the new face of the Venezuelan opposition embodied by darker, poorer @jguaido, the best example to study the media & social media (i.e. #SOSVenezuela) that of his mentor, Lopez, enjoyed w backing from @NEDemocracy & other US agencies
Jan 26, 2019 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Thread on those leading the charge on bringing democracy to Venezuela:

1.Jair Bolsonaro-1 month in2 his Admin, Brazil prez Bolsonaro & his entire family r alredy drowning in a titanic scandal involving big $$$ laundering & direct links to death squads
2. Elliott Abrams - convicted felon in Iran Contra & Trump's point person on Venezuela was one of the key architects & operational hands of the US support for militaries & death squads responsible for killing 200-250,000 mostly Mayan ppl in Guatemala, 80,000 in El Salvador &
Jan 4, 2019 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
(Thread) The history bhind those bald Latino @CBP set pieces @realDonaldTrump's press conference yesterday is the same history that turned a lot of our families into extensions of the Homeland Security state. It started w "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove in the early 2000s. I predicted the ascent of precisely the hard right wing politic those bald @cbp set pieces embody in this piece documenting how Rove envisioned using security agencies (DHS, CBP, ICE, police, etc) as entities of political acculturation here: bit.ly/2QkVI4l
Nov 30, 2018 • 8 tweets • 6 min read
@mollymotoole @latimes As a native Californian, I welcome u back to California @mollymotoole. As journalist with 30 years covering & working on immigration & in light of ur request that we "Challenge" you, I respectfully offer the following journalistic challenges: @mollymotoole @latimes 1. Avoid the deeply-rooted commitment of too many "immgr journalists" who frame immigration as a "national security" issue.Such a frame has turned too many journos in2 stenographers for politicians & multi-billion $ interests who profit fr national securitization of the issue.
Nov 28, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
You know you're a walking dead journalist when
- U write in ways that imply Obama's ripping children from their moms was somehow more caring than Trump's policy.
-U delete Central American experts & replace them with Obama operatives who tell you how differently their policies separated refugeee children from moms, jailed kids & deported millions.
- U report Trump's abuses as some sort of Deux ex machina coming down Nazi-like out of nowhere to ruin the goog ole immigration days under Obama.
-U jaw locks when the temptation to say "Obama laid the policy