Today's politics in Mexico and the United States, two important countries next door to each other, are difficult to comprehend because their political universes have been polluted.
Pollution of ideas by campaigners for the highest offices of the two countries in the presidential campaigns of Mexico and the U.S. damaged the democratic foundations of both countries. Wading through the lies caused millions of people to not vote and caused others who did vote to vote wrongly because they didn’t know the truth behind their reasons for voting as they did.
While Raoul observes politics and policies that occur around the world among many ethnicities and races, he concentrates on the U.S.,
Mexico and the Middle East from the Mediterranean to the ubiquitous nations of the old trading route between Europe and China.
LIKE MANY BEFORE, A COLLEGE NEWSPAPER, WAS FIRST
He not only observes, he also reports. He started with his college newspaper with two years of creative college journalism, writing for, and publishing a newsletter for his U.S. Marine Reserve battalion, then a year with a partisan political newspaper in Northern California.
From newsletters and newspapers, Raoul moved into political research and writing news releases, issue and speaking on behalf of issues and candidates. In the past three decades, he served as full-time official spokesperson for the anti-tax California statewide campaign against a tax on tobacco in 1998. Of all the millions of people in California, the issue lost by less than one percent, it won in 50 of California’s 58 counties.
Raoul crisscrossed the country’s largest state and appeared on myriad radio and television media, made dozens of speeches, and was interviewed by dozens of newspapers. He was well received. The leader of the proposition’s campaign was “Meathead” from the All in the Family” TV program. He refused to debate Raoul and even appear in the same room or hall. “Meathead” was appointed by the governor to head the Proposition’s implementation commission; he later resigned and disappeared politically; The reason: was the corrupt spending of millions of cigarette tax dollars.
Two years later he went national -- he served as an official speech surrogate for Governor George W. Bush’s successful 2000 campaign for President and followed up in 2003 by being an official state spokesman for the famous successful “Recall California Governor Gray Davis” campaign in 2003.
Back home, Raoul added being a political Op/Ed writer for California dailies with weekly columns - in English and Spanish. He wrote from a Hispanic point of view -- a field he had almost to himself nationally.
Newspapers from California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and up the east coast to Boston and west through Chicago and the state of Washington bought his columns through syndicators like Creator’s Syndicate and the New York Times. Some newspapers have published Raoul since 1988.
Raoul goes international, goes radio/television…Cinco de Mayo.
Raoul’s first international efforts were handling a number of functions representing a major international business, a sports business of year-round thoroughbred horse and Greyhound dog racing in Tijuana, Mexico, just a few miles from the border with San Diego, California. The pioneering Caliente Race Track employed 1500 people. When Raoul took the job it made him a public figure.
He filled in for employees who worked with government officials in Mexico and the United States and others who worked with the press of both countries and international race track associations.
This exposure led to Raoul entering television where he hosted a bilingual, bicultural program - EN VIVO - for 25 years. He was hired to host his own political radio talk show. He worked on the same station that carried Rush Limbaugh’s program.
He also wrote many articles that defined and celebrated Mexico’s Cinco De Mayo - the Fifth of May -- the anniversary of fighting off the French Empire’s attempt to annex Mexico to the French Empire in Africa and Southeast Asia. One article was about a cruel French commander who ordered all boys and men from ten years of age and older to be executed in one village in tropical Mexico because, he insisted, “Every Mexican boy/man was a guerilla.”
Raoul walks the Silk Route…
That brought him to the attention of a well-to-do citizen of Azerbaijan on the old “Silk Route of Marco Polo” between Europe and China. The man was from a small city in Azerbaijan on the border with Armenia. When the Soviet empire collapsed, fighting broke out when Armenians invaded next door Azerbaijan to conquer 20% of Azerbaijan and to hold on to that land for 25 years. He contacted Raoul and told him the story of a small town in the Caucasus Mountains that was attacked by Armenian irregulars and Russian troops on a February night in 1992. Hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children were murdered that night, the man said. He thought the massacre would interest Raoul. It did. He plunged into the story and wrote his first book on foreign policy and foreign events four years after his first book about the Bush victory in 2000.
He would write another book on Armenian campaign funding in American elections. Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Armenia continued the fighting until Azerbaijan thoroughly defeated Armenian forces and simply gave up the fight and went home. Raoul’s reports from the miniwar gave Americans enough information that the Armenian monopoly and lobby lost the support of many Americans causing them to give up the support of Armenians.
Flying back and forth from California to Baku, Azerbaijan put 90,000 more miles on Raoul’s travel history.
Raoul’s most memorable experience there, where Marco Polo walked on cobblestone streets, was his standing on the Russian border one day and two days later on the Iranian border with an extended middle index finger salute to the Russians and Iranians, our pals.
Besides his foray into foreign policy and foreign wars since 2000, much of Raoul’s attention has concentrated on observation of events on both sides of the border with Mexico. He was born in Mexico and came to the United States in 1943 just in time to celebrate his third birthday.
American public and parochial schools educated him up to his graduation from high school, the first in his family to do so. He entered college at San Diego State in September 1958. He scored Dean’s list.
As part of his plan, he joined the Marine Reserves and went to Boot Camp where he was meritoriously promoted upon graduation. Six months in San Diego and weekend reserve drills for five years in the same San Diego.
He was given a tiny budget to produce a mimeographed newsletter “Tank Treads”, the only published Reserve publication by a Marine unit on the West Coast, the 1st Tank Battalion, USMCR. This was one of his three different jobs, this project was the Battalion Commander’s pet project. To maintain quality, the Colonel ordered Raoul to the base every month the week before the regular reserve drill. Raoul’s Marine income to support his college expenses doubled. That was his plan.
He started The Contreras Report on YouTube five years ago. It started exclusively in Mexico and Mexican American issues then broadened to the Middle East, then bilingually in English and Spanish and now back to the U.S. and its huge Mexican-American population and what it does on a daily, regional, and national basis. They’ve accomplished more in 100 years in America than any other group in America. We have university studies to prove it and we will publish them.
Now, he plans to publish MEXAMERICA TODAY -- the story of close to 40 million men, women, and children of Mexican origin. They are 60% of all Hispanic Americans. Sign up, to stay on top of what millions are doing, what you are doing.
