Rios was placed on paid administrative leave in late July, and able to return to work in late February – But, she was reassigned to a different school. “I don’t understand. For so long I was punished”, said Rios

Rios’ absence centered around a Facebook photo of her and her former McCollum High School dance team students. The picture was taken more than two years ago on the River Walk at Dick’s Last Resort restaurant.

“It was just our last summer together as a team, just me and the Seniors you know”, added Rios.

Rios went on to say the picture came to light in late July. “It was uploaded by one of the girls in the picture who had tagged me,” Rios said.

Rios told News 4 San Antonio she liked the Facebook photo and the next thing you know she’s meeting with school administrators.

“They said they had a concern from a parent. I can’t believe an anonymous claim can get someone in so much trouble”, said Rios.

Rios said she was told she was placed on leave for inappropriate Facebook uploading, “Yet I hadn’t uploaded the pictures”, she added.

For months Rios’ supporters rallied at school board meetings trying to get her back. Rios says there was never anything more, just the picture.

“Of course there’s people that are speculating, “well what else was there” you know. You have those doubters out there that wonder what more”, Rios said.

In late February, Rios said she received a call from the school district saying the investigation is over and she could go back to work. Rios says she decided to finish out the school year so she could

leave on good terms. Rios’ resigned, and the resignation will be effective at the end of the school year.

Rios addressed school board members during Tuesday night’s board meeting saying in part, “What should have been a minor reprimanded stemmed an unjustly act”, she added.

Rios went on to say she doesn’t understand why she was under investigation for so long. “There’s a lot of answers I’m never really going to get, and that’s something I need to accept”, she said.

Rios plans to continue her teaching career in her hometown of Laredo.

Harlandale ISD told News 4 the district can’t comment on personnel matters.

But if ever there was a reason for all Hispanics to come together behind their Puerto Rican brothers and sisters, it was to support their outrage against MillerCoors for using a semblance of that commonwealth’s flag to hawk beer at the upcoming New York City Puerto Rican Day Parade.

MillerCoors, one of the parade’s sponsors, had started circulating 20-ounce Coors Light cans on which the Puerto Rican flag appears along with the parade’s logo and the words “cerveza oficial” — official beer. On Thursday, MillerCoors apologized for the promotion and pulled the product from distribution.

As if the implied endorsement of all Puerto Ricans hadn’t been insulting enough, the theme for the June 9 parade is “Salud — Celebrating Your Health.” Salud is Spanish for “health,” and also a common toast to make when clinking glasses.

The bitter irony is that alcohol is a major threat to the health of Hispanics. Though, on average, they are less likely to drink than non-Hispanic whites, Latinos who do imbibe are more likely to binge drink and less likely to seek treatment, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Among Latinos, Puerto Rican men and women tend to drink the most, and across all Hispanic nationality groups, beer is the preferred beverage, followed by wine and then liquor, the NIH says. This translates into higher rates of physical dependence, drinking and driving, domestic violence and divorce, and job losses concentrated in the community.

To encourage Hispanics to drink more is not only indefensible but, from a corporate social responsibility perspective, was simply appalling.

According to the National Institute for Latino Policy, this wasn’t the first time MillerCoors has been the target of Puerto Rican ire. In 2011, MillerCoors was forced to discontinue its “Emboricuate” Coors Light Puerto Rican Day Parade advertising campaign after widespread community criticism.

“Emborícuate” is a made-up word, a play on the Spanish emborráchate, which means “get yourself drunk,” and borícua, a Puerto Rican term of endearment. Together they inadvertently call for Puerto Ricanizing yourself while getting drunk. Har-har.

But let’s not pretend that MillerCoors is the only corporation that co-opts culture to target Latinos for any number of unhealthy products.

We can thank liquor companies, in general, for making a mockery of Cinco de Mayo.

That drinking “holiday” basically means nothing to anyone outside of the Mexican state of Puebla. But the day now encourages marketers and otherwise culturally respectful drinkers to trot out the absolute worst and most denigrating Mexican stereotypes. It seems to specifically drive college students to dress in oversized sombreros and droopy mustaches, offending Latinos on campuses across the country.

This past Cinco de Mayo, the big cultural controversy roiling the Latino community was about the Disney Corporation’s plans to trademark the term Día de los Muertos, the name of the Latin American day honoring the dead, for an upcoming holiday-inspired animated movie.

So many Hispanics were disgusted by the brazen attempt to commandeer a spiritual holiday for corporate profit that Disney backed off.

I could go on and on with examples of how marketers of unhealthy products seek to capitalize on Latino consumers — it’s a long-standing practice.

As the NILP notes, Coors in 1984 had signed an agreement with six leading national Latino organizations in which they were to receive larger grants from the company if they increased the amount of Coors beer consumed by the Hispanic community. It was eventually scrapped after strong criticism from community leaders.

This is eerily similar to the criticisms recently leveled against the NAACP, the Hispanic Federation and other minority advocacy organizations for taking money from Big Soda in exchange for their support in opposing sugary drink regulations across the country.

The bottom line is that while some Hispanics revel in their trillion-dollar consumer market status, few see themselves as marketers do: Latino targets. But when it comes to being marketed to, Hispanics have to think of themselves as discerning customers who require respect.

In other words, we must set standards for how we’re willing to let brands talk to and about us. The only sure way to accomplish this is by using our wallets and voices to tell corporations trying to appropriate our heritage to keep their greedy mitts off other people’s culture.

Esther Cepeda is a syndicated columnist and an NBC Latino Contributor.

In three YouTube clips added Thursday by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, Richwine pours water on the idea that all races and ethnicities are equally likely to assimilate saying that blacks, Native Americans and Mexicans have shown an inability to do so. Unlike the Irish and Sicilians, who he says assimilated, some groups have no prospect of that happening, he says.

“We have blacks, we have American Indians and even early Mexican-Americans who have been living in the country for a long time and have not assimilated to the cultural mainstream as typified by white Americans,” he says.

RELATED: Heritage immigration study co-author: Hispanics will have low-IQ children and grandchildren

Richwine goes on to say black and white culture has diverged in the last 50 years, Native Americans are still on reservations and Mexicans who have been here for a long time also can not assimilate.

“They’ve been around since the Mexican-American war,” he says. “They’ve been here ever since and I don’t think that they have been defined as white, certainly not by Europeans and really not by themselves except in the cases where they’re trying to distinguish themselves from being black.”

NBC Latino repeatedly reached out to Richwine and The Heritage Foundation for comment but did not receive a response for this story.

He went on to propose a “thought experiment” in the video.

“Imagine if early immigrants in the 20th century — the Italians, the Pols, the Jews, the Irish. Imagine if we replaced all of them with, say, Australian-aborigines, Pakistanis and Cambodians. Imagine if they were the immigrants in the early part of the 20th century. Can we really say with any kind of rational argument that they today would be absolutely indistinguishable from the white majority?”

Richwine adds that while he doesn’t see race as insurmountable, it is a larger barrier today “simply because they are not from Europe.”

In a blog post, The Heritage Foundation sought to separate itself from Richwine’s comments and a 2009 disseration where he said Hispanic immigrants have low IQs and are destined to have children and grandchildren with low IQs as well. They said the dissertation was “not a work product of The Heritage Foundation” and “its findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers, as race and ethnicity are not part of Heritage immigration policy recommendations.”

RELATED: Opinion: Conservatives slamming the Heritage report on immigration is the right move for GOP

“We welcome a rigorous, fact-based debate on the data, methodology, and conclusions of the Heritage study on the cost of amnesty,” wrote Mike Gonzalez, vice president of communications, at The Heritage Foundation.

“Instead, some have pointed to a Harvard dissertation written by Dr. Jason Richwine. Dr. Richwine did not shape the methodology or the policy recommendations in the Heritage paper; he provided quantitative support to lead author Robert Rector. The dissertation was written while Dr. Richwine was a student at Harvard, supervised and approved by a committee of respected scholars.”

The National Council of La Raza, which blasted Richwine’s dissertation comments as  ”unspeakable” were further angered but mostly just shocked about the new videos. Lisa Navarette, advisor to the NCLR president said she couldn’t believe Harvard gave him a PhD.

“This gentleman’s PhD dissertation shows that when you scratch the surface of extreme immigration opposition you find a disturbing and troubling history with racism, a belief in eugenics,” she said. “It’s just troubling and disturbing. It’s bigotry disguised as science.”

Many on Twitter piled on concerning Richwine.

why isn’t everybody else Richwine-bashing. so much fun.

— Barely Americano (@soy_patria) May 9, 2013

Glad to see they’re naming and shaming this Jason Richwine character. These types of people need to be run out of the conservative movement.

— Matt Dabrowski (@MattDabrowski) May 9, 2013

Hector Cordero, posted the conclusion to Richwine’s dissertation which says “today’s immigrants are not as intelligent on average as white natives.”

@karthickr this is the conclusion to 10 page concluding chapter of #Richwine‘s Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard’s KSG twitter.com/HCorderoGuzman…

— Hector Cordero (@HCorderoGuzman) May 9, 2013

Richwine’s beliefs have only added to the anger surrounding the Heritage Foundation study on the cost of a path to citizenship included in the immigration reform bill, which they calculated to be $6.3 trillion, but conservatives blasted as incorrectly calculated. Now groups like the Center for Community Change have called for Heritage president and former senator Jim DeMint to resign.

“No one should be surprised by the results of the Heritage Foundation’s “economic study” about the cost of immigration reform. After all, its president, Jim DeMint, is someone who has a history of unabashed opposition to immigration reform,” the statement read.

“We cannot stand by and allow our country’s ugly history of racism and injustice to repeat itself.”

Twice.  Young’s initial statement was neither a full apology nor a complete admission of guilt.  It took a full day of public scolding and shame for him to disown his words.  The lesson here is that it is grossly inappropriate for any lawmaker to use such hate speech, let alone one from a party that is trying to rebrand itself among Latinos.  Unfortunately, Young is so out of touch that he does not realize that “wetback” is an indefensible ethnic slur.

In his first apology on Thursday, Young said, “During a sit down interview with Ketchikan Public Radio this week, I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California. I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect.”

That apology fell short.  First of all, Young did not actually say that he was sorry.  Secondly, the fact that “wetback” was once in more common usage is no excuse for using it today.  The n-word was once in common usage; would any civilized person consider that a justification for using it now?  And whether Young meant any disrespect is irrelevant.  The disrespect was self-evident and ugly.

Young was also wrong to suggest that “wetback” is used differently today than in years past.  The term was originally coined to refer to Mexican immigrants who crossed the Rio Grande to work in the Southwest.  However, it has never been used in a positive way.  It is an enduring insult to immigrants as well as Hispanics.

In his second apology, Young said that he was sorry for his “poor choice of words.”  Yet why did it take so long?  Is he truly remorseful, or just sorry about the uproar he caused? 

Young’s comments are disturbing because they were not secretly recorded, or made off the cuff.  He was speaking in a radio interview; imagine what he says in private.  Then again, The Washington Post calls Young “no stranger to controversy” due to his long history of imprudent comments and alleged ethical improprieties.

To their credit, GOP lawmakers denounced Young’s comments.  House Majority leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, “Congressman Young’s remarks were offensive and beneath the dignity of the office he holds.”  Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) criticized Young for reinforcing a negative image of the Republican party.  Migrant workers, Cornyn noted, come to the U.S. for opportunity, not to hear ethnic slurs from elected officials.  He’s right.  Still, with the GOP just announcing their intention to remake themselves as more inclusive and appealing to Hispanics, Young’s comments are exactly what the party does not need now – another example of Republican insensitivity towards Latinos.

True, it is unfair to judge the entire Republican party by the words of one Congressman.  But Young is only the latest Republican to turn off Hispanics in a very public way.  From Rep. Steve King, who once compared immigrants to dogs and then insisted it was a compliment, to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, poster child for anti-immigrant sentiment run amuck, the GOP has a problem relating to Latinos.  No wonder the Hispanic Leadership Network, a conservative group, issued a memo to GOP lawmakers on how to talk to Latinos.

Young’s comments were deserving of condemnation.  His fellow Republicans, Hispanics and Americans know better; “wetback” has never been acceptable language, and it never will be.

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.

According to a Quinnipiac poll, the Senator has a 40 percent approval rating and 37 percent disapproval rating, up from a negative 36 to 41 percent approval rating on February 20.  The negative rating, in the wake of recent allegations, had marked a 15-point drop from a 51 to 33 percent approval January 23.

“The fallout from those scandal stories has wounded Sen. Robert Menendez, but it looks like he has stopped the bleeding and even recovered a little,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Senator Menendez has been embroiled in controversy over a donor who is being investigated.

According to the poll, New Jersey voters are divided 35 to 36 percent, with 29 percent undecided, on whether Sen. Menendez is honest and trustworthy. But his standing has improved since last month, when 44 of voters doubted his trustworthiness.

While voters lean towards being satisfied with how he is handling the controversy (40 to 35 percent), a majority (53 percent) say it is worth investigating, while 30 percent say it is politically motivated.

“A substantial number of voters say the attacks are ‘just politics,’ but a majority thinks the allegations should be investigated,” Caroll said.

Questions over Menendez’s ties to Florida eye doctor and political donor Dr. Salomon Melgen have been referred to a Senate ethics panel.

The poll, conducted from March 19 to 24, surveyed 1,129 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.

RELATED: Menendez’ bill could have aided donors

@chrisbrown @coryrooney @beaucaspersmart @missgillygrace #studiolife #makinghistory #Album10 #SAMEGIRL twitter.com/JLo/status/314…

— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) March 21, 2013

Lopez is currently working on her tenth studio album with some help from all-star producers and artists. The 43-year-old mom of twins recently told NBC Latino that “I’m going to make music and I’m going to focus on my artistry.”

And it looks like boyfriend Casper Smart approves of the upcoming collaboration between Lopez and Rihanna’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, as he retweeted the picture.

That’s right: there’s a Latino in this fictional White House, but the man playing him is Caucasian actor Phil Austin.

“I read for several different parts in the film and then my agent called to tell me I had been cast for the vice president role,” Austin told NBC Latino of his supporting role. “I never read for it and I did wonder if they would change the character’s name. I’m straight up Caucasian and there was no attempt to play any sort of ethnic spin. The script did say Charlie or Charles Rodriguez, but the fact I wasn’t Hispanic was never discussed or brought up on set.”

“We do not have a comment at this time,” said a representative from “Olympus Has Fallen” domestic distributor Film District.

Actor Phil Austin

Austin says that in his experience, scripts with specific characters – say, a middle-aged Asian woman or blonde Caucasian male in his 30’s – often end up being cast entirely differently.

“It’s very common that actors will get cast for something that wasn’t initially in the script breakdown. It happens all the time,” says Austin, who ventured into acting in 2006 after a career in commercial real estate (“the kids were getting older and I told my wife I wanted to start something different,” he explains).

RELATED: Lupe Ontiveros Oscars snub controversy leads Academy to include her in online memorial

As Austin explains it, casting directors often will make decisions based on the chemistry between actors, rather than “the initial thoughts of the screen play.”

“I really don’t think it’s a slight against one ethnicity over another,” says Austin, whose on-screen credits include television shows like “Scandal” and “Breakout Kings,” as well as films like “The Host.”

The phenomena of non-Latino actors cast as Latinos is nothing new in Hollywood, says Charles Ramírez Berg, a Latino film and media studies professor at the University of Texas-Austin. In fact, it’s a practice that dates back to the production of the entertainment industry’s oldest films – and one that’s still very prominent today in films like “Olympus Has Fallen.”

“Think about how white actors would use blackface to play African-Americans, like in the 1915 film ‘Birth of a Nation” and more recently, how Ben Affleck played Tony Mendez in ‘Argo,’” says Ramírez Berg. “Hollywood has always used Caucasian actors to play ethnic characters. On the other hand, the definition of acting is playing someone you’re not. Anthony Quinn wouldn’t have been a star if he had been restricted to Latin roles, which during his time were nearly non-existent.”

Because there are a limited number of roles featuring Hispanic characters in film and television available to Latin actors, the blow delivered by a Caucasian actor playing a character such as Charles Rodriguez in “Olympus Has Fallen” cannot be underestimated, says Felix Sanchez, chairman and co-founder of National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA).

“Hollywood has long made a practice of ignoring our image and presence,” says Sanchez, whose post on the topic on the NHFA Facebook page quickly sparked a conversation on identity, race and film. “But fictional diversity in films by creating an illusion that Latinos are included – when they are actually absent – is something we cannot accept.”

RELATED: Want a box office hit? Reach Latinos, who watch more movies

According to a recent Nielsen report, Latino moviegoers accounted for 25 percent of all movies seen in 2012, although they are just 18 percent of the U.S. movie going population. Hispanics also watch more movies than any other demographic group: statistics, says Sanchez, which should make the Hollywood movie industry pay more attention to the way Latinos are portrayed in film.

Adding further offense to the situation says Sanchez, is the fact that “Olympus Has Fallen” was filmed under the supervision of African-American director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day).

“I find it difficult to see how an African-American director could be so insensitive about portrayal,” says Sanchez. “How could he think this type of casting decision was anything less than unacceptable?”

The casting of Austin in the role of a Latino character underscores the need for more Latinos in Hollywood’s most prominent positions, says Ramírez Berg: think directors, executive producers, writers, casting directors and high-profile actors.

“Someone like Antoine was probably concerned with protecting the presentation of African-American actors in ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ because his interests lie with that group,” says Ramírez Berg. “And there’s nothing wrong like that. But it would seem like there weren’t any Latinos associated with this film in a position to do that with this character and protect the interests of Hispanic audiences.”

“Creating a Latino character in this type of high-profile film was one step – but we’re at a multicultural stage where casting does matter.”

The controversy follows a widely published photo showing Ahmadinejad embracing Chavez’s mother at the funeral of the late Venezuelan president.

Iranian papers on Tuesday cited clerics from the religious center of Qom who described the contact as “forbidden” and inappropriate behavior and “clowning around.”

Iran’s strict Islamic codes prohibit physical contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex.

The conservative clerics also condemned Ahmadinejad’s condolence letter to Venezuelans in which he called Chavez a “martyr” who will be resurrected and who will return to Earth along with Jesus Christ and Imam Mahdi, a 9th century saint revered by Shiite Muslims.

“Con los terroristas” (“with the terrorists”) raps Puerto Rican reggaetón artist Héctor Delgado Román just seconds into the song. The vocal sample is used repeatedly throughout the three-minute tune and was taken from “Maldades,” a single from Delgado’s  2006 album “The Bad Boy.” Neither Delgado or his label, Machete Music, granted permission for Rodrigues to use the refrain, reports the New York Times.

“It’s almost like they came on my land and built a house,” Delgado told the Times about his music being sampled without consent.

Delgado, who retired from music five years ago to become an evangelical preacher, told the New York Times that he only found about Rodrigues – who records under the stage name Baauer – sampling his music when his former manager Javier Gómez called him with the news three weeks ago. Now, the former reggaetonero - who also went by the names “El Father” and “El Bambino” - is now seeking financial compensation for the use of his music in the hit recording.

“It’s like a trademark of Hector’s,” Gómez told the Times of his former client’s catchphrase. “Hector will get what he deserves. We can turn around and stop that song. That’s a clear breaking of intellectual property rights.”

“Harlem Shake” – which was released as a free digital download by Rodrigues’s label Mad Decent last May – also features an unlawful sample from Philadelphia rapper Jayson Musson, who yells the song’s key phrase “Do the Harlem Shake!”

Standard practice in the music industry relies on music publishers to obtain a license from recording labels to use samples; however, the “Harlem Shake” – which spawned a YouTube dance phenomena – draws attention to the growing use of samples without outright permission to do so.

Here’s Delgado’s original tune, “Maldades.”

Although Ontiveros had originally been omitted from an online gallery of photos honoring  those who didn’t make it on to the broadcast, the Academy has decided to add the actress – whose career spanned more than 30 years with film credits like “Selena” – to their slideshow of respected Academy members who passed away last year.

“Lupe did not receive the attention she deserved during the live Oscar telecast, but now she will be forever remembered by the Academy with her rightful place in history,” says Felix Sanchez, chairman and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA). Sanchez says he personally lobbied for the Academy to include Ontiveros on its website, adding  ”Now you can find Lupe surrounded by her peers, where she belongs.”

The Academy did not offer explanation regarding why Ontiveros had been omitted from the broadcast tribute, but did address the issue.

“Lupe Ontiveros is among the many worthy artists we were unfortunately not able to feature in the In Memoriam segment of this year’s Oscar show,” an Academy spokesperson said in a statement to NBC Latino.  ”She is, however, included in our In Memoriam gallery on Oscar.com.”

A picture of Lupe Ontiveros is now featured on an online gallery of deceased Academy members, thanks to lobbying efforts by the National Hispanic Foundation of the Arts (NHFA).

While Ontiveros will now be remembered in an online tribute, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) has brought attention to the fact that the actress was once was denied membership into the Academy.

The Hispanic media advocacy organization submitted an open letter to the Academy of Motion on Tuesday, noting that Ontiveros wasn’t “a member of the Academy, hence her omission from the Oscars tribute.”

“We want to know the reasons why Lupe Ontiveros was denied membership to the Academy,” states the letter from NHMC president Alex Nogales. “It is astonishing that an actress of Ontiveros’ caliber and experience was denied membership to the Academy.”

RELATED: Lupe Ontiveros omitted from Oscar memorial ignites controversy

The letter explains that Ontiveros – who once estimated that she had played a maid more than 150 times – had applied for membership in the Academy before her death in July 2012 and according to her family, even had the support of actors Miguel Sandoval and Edward James Olmos in doing so.

A 2012 LA Times study of Oscar voters found that 94 percent of the Academy’s 5,765 members are Caucasian and 77 percent male, with Latino members comprising less than 2 percent of total membership. Omitting Ontiveros from the Oscars tribute, says movie critic and NBC Latino contributor Jack Rico, is a situation sadly reflective of the Academy’s lack of diversity and awareness regarding Latino talent.

“There’s still a struggle for the Hispanic actor and film making talent to make a name for themselves in Hollywood,” says Rico.

“But if you are Hispanic, Lupe’s omission rubs you the wrong way, because she was certainly talented but the Academy didn’t see her as a high-profile actress.”

According to TMZ, the “As Good As It Gets” actress’s family gathered together to watch the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Ontiveros’ son Elias told the entertainment outlet that he was “disappointed” that his mother was not acknowledged during the tribute, which included an introduction by George Clooney and a performance by Barbra Streisand.