title: Tony Mendez

text: Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1940 to John George Mendez (1917–1943) and Neva June Tognoni (1919–1995). He attended local public schools. His father was Mexican of mestizo descent, and his mother had Italian and French ancestry. In an interview by "Open Your Eyes" magazine, Mendez said that his father died when he was quite young. As he never really learned to speak Spanish and was cut off from his father's Mexican-American culture, he did not identify as Hispanic.


title: Tony Mendez

text: When Mendez was a teen, his family moved to Colorado. After graduating from Englewood high school, he studied art at the University of Colorado.


title: Tony Mendez

text: Mendez continued to work as an artist after college. He first worked as an illustrator and tool designer for Martin Marietta, a large aerospace firm. In 1965, Mendez answered a blind advertisement for a graphic artist. He was hired by the CIA and became an espionage artist for the Technical Services Division, where he specialized in identity document forgery and creating disguises. He worked as an officer in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, and served in the CIA for 25 years.


title: Tony Mendez

text: In 1980, in what became known as the Canadian Caper, Mendez travelled to Iran to rescue six American diplomats who had taken refuge at the Canadian embassy, after the United States embassy was overrun in the disruption related to the overthrow of the government. Mendez was part of a strategy to exfiltrate the diplomats by passing them off as a Canadian film crew, having received passports and supporting documents from the Canadian Government to identify them as such. He was awarded the Intelligence Star on March 12, 1980, for his efforts in leading the rescue mission.


title: Tony Mendez

text: Mendez and his first wife, Karen, had three children together. Karen Mendez died of cancer in 1986. Their son Ian died in 2010. Their son Antonio Tobias Mendez became a sculptor.


title: Tony Mendez

text: In the mid-1980s, Mendez worked with Jonna Hiestand Goeser, also a CIA officer, on rebuilding the U.S. security organization in the Soviet Union and later Russia. Following Mendez's retirement in 1990, they married in 1991. They had a son together.


title: Tony Mendez

text: After retiring from the CIA in 1990, Mendez and his wife Jonna, herself a 27-year veteran of the CIA, served on the board of directors of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. He also worked as an artist.


title: Tony Mendez

text: His first book was lauded in 2002 by John Hollister Hedley, former Chairman of the CIA's Publications Review Board, as one of three "landmark memoirs" by former CIA officers.


title: Tony Mendez

text: Mendez was interviewed by film director Errol Morris for the "First Person" TV series. He appeared in the season one episode 11, "The Little Gray Man."


title: Tony Mendez

text: In 2009, Mendez was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He died on January 19, 2019, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 78.


title: Tony Mendez

text: In the first decade of the 21st century, records related to the Canadian Caper were declassified. Journalist Joshuah Bearman wrote a full article about this in the April 2007 issue of "Wired" magazine.


title: Tony Mendez

text: Bearman's account was loosely adapted for the screenplay and development of the feature film "Argo" (2012). It was directed by Ben Affleck, who also starred as Mendez. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture. When interviewed in 2013 by "ShowBizCafe.com", Mendez was asked how he felt about being portrayed by Ben Affleck, who is non-Hispanic. Mendez noted that losing his father when he was young meant he did not learn Spanish nor much of his father's culture. He said, "I don't think of myself as a Hispanic. I think of myself as a person who grew up in the desert."


title: Dio Brando

text: The poor son of Dario Brando, an abusive alcoholic who worked Dio's mother to death, Dio holds an inordinate amount of enmity toward others. As the series' most prolific villain, his defining trait is his staunch ambition, which manifests in a peerless desire for power, no matter the cost. In the alternate universe of the series' seventh part, "Steel Ball Run", a character named bears resemblance to Dio and appears as a major antagonist.


title: Dio Brando

text: When beginning the series, Dio was the character that Araki looked forward to drawing the most. He also revealed that he had not thought up a weakness for the character and that it was difficult to come up with a way for Dio to be defeated. In regard to Dio's characterization, Araki said that he was inspired by FBI profiling of serial killers, admitting that in a way he thinks they must be incredibly strong to be able to commit the heinous crimes that they do. How serial killers control their victims through psychological manipulation interested Araki as well, a trait similar to how Dio uses his charisma to ensure his followers to do his bidding. Araki intended to characterize Dio as unapologetically baleful in his pursuit of power, with his literal abandonment of his humanity reflecting his figurative and emotional one. Araki wanted his name to sound cool next to JoJo's, so he chose Dio, the Italian word for God.


title: Dio Brando

text: According to Araki, Dio's physical appearance is inspired by Rutger Hauer's character Roy Batty from the 1982 film "Blade Runner".


title: Dio Brando

text: Some of Dio's mannerisms, such as his frequent cries of and , have yielded several Internet memes and other popular culture references.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio is canonically bisexual. Araki stated in a 2007 interview that "[Dio's] sort of a composed character that could go either way. [He] could go with a man or a woman."


title: Dio Brando

text: In "Phantom Blood", the child of an abusive drunkard named Dario Brando, Dio Brando becomes the adopted brother of Jonathan Joestar by using the promise that George Joestar made to Dario years ago. Upon entering the Joestar estate after his father died, Dio wasted no time unequivocally making young Jonathan's life a living hell to take everything from him including abusing and later killing Jonathan's dog, Danny. Dio underestimated Jonathan's retaliation for forcefully kissing his beloved Erina Pendleton, spending the next seven years feigning to be Jonathan's friend before enacting his plan to steal the Joestar fortune by poisoning George with the same poison he used to kill Dario. When Jonathan investigates the matter for proof, Dio plots to use an ancient Aztec stone mask to murder Jonathan.


title: Dio Brando

text: However, Dio learns the mask transforms the wearer into a vampire when exposed to blood, and uses it on himself when his scheme is exposed. Although seemingly killed when Jonathan impales him on a stone statue and leaves him in the burning Joestar mansion, Dio survives, and proceeds to start his subjugation of England in the small village of Windknight's Lot, amassing sired followers to his cause. Jonathan is sought out by Will A. Zeppeli, a master of an ancient martial art called Hamon, which can kill Vampires. He teaches Jonathan how to use this ability as Dio sends other vampires and zombies in his pursuit to kill him so he can take over the world.


title: Dio Brando

text: Jonathan seemingly kills him once more, but Dio's head survives. With the help of his servant, Wang Chan, Dio attacks Jonathan on a steam liner during his honeymoon with Erina in an attempt to claim his enemy's body for his own. Despite having his throat fatally punctured by Dio, Jonathan is able to use Hamon one last time to overload the ship's engines, with Dio apparently destroyed in the resulting explosion. Erina, escaping unharmed with an orphaned girl, survives with their unborn son.


title: Dio Brando

text: As he is dormant in the sunken ship, Dio Brando does not appear in "Battle Tendency", but the aftermath of his apparent death at the hands of Jonathan Joestar affects the plot. It is ultimately revealed that Jonathan and Erina's son George Joestar II, a famed pilot of the Royal Air Force in World War I, was murdered by one of Dio's zombie henchmen who survived the battle of Windknight's Lot and had infiltrated the RAF. George II's wife, the orphaned girl Elizabeth, hunted down this zombie and killed him with her Hamon. However, as none else recognized the zombie's true identity, she became a wanted murderer and was forced into hiding as Lisa Lisa with the help of the Speedwagon Foundation that was founded by Robert E. O. Speedwagon. Lisa Lisa would later encounter her son Joseph Joestar, teaching him Hamon so he can defeat the Pillar Man, Kars, whose creation of the Stone masks made him indirectly responsible for Dio's transformation.


title: Dio Brando

text: It is revealed in "Stardust Crusaders" that Dio survived the ship's explosion and attached himself as a head to Jonathan's headless body as the ship sank, confining himself in a casket at the bottom of the ocean for a century until a shipwreck salvage operation unintentionally retrieved him in 1983. Now known mononymously as "DIO", he soon meets the mystic Enya Geil who awakens both of his Stands, , allowing him to stop the passage of time around him, and a Hermit Purple-like stand (technically Jonathan's Stand; one person could only have one Stand. Since Dio is using Jonathan's body, he could use Jonathan's Stand). As his head is attached to Jonathan's body, Dio's acquisition of The World also awakens Stand abilities in all of Jonathan's living descendants. While Joseph Joestar and his grandson Jotaro Kujo have the resolve to control their Stands, Joseph's daughter and Jotaro's mother Holly has her very life sapped away from her own Stand because of her kind disposition. This spurs Jotaro and Joseph to track down Dio along with their friends Mohammed Avdol, Noriaki Kakyoin, Jean-Pierre Polnareff, and Iggy the Boston Terrier to kill him once and for all, freeing Holly from the curse the Stand has trapped her under.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio responds by preemptively trying to assassinate the Joestars before they can find him in his lair in Cairo, sending other evil Stand users, some of whom (namely Kakyoin and Polnareff) he controlled mentally before they joined the Joestars on their journey. Along the way, Avdol and Iggy are killed by Dio's right-hand man Vanilla Ice, who in turn is killed by Polnareff. Dio kills Jotaro's friend Kakyoin in combat and temporarily kills Joseph after draining him of his blood, but Jotaro's own Stand Star Platinum proves to be The World's equally powered counterpart, and Jotaro's own rage at Dio being the cause of his friends' deaths and his mother's dwindling health leads him to kill Dio with Star Platinum. After the Speedwagon Foundation revives Joseph via blood transfusion from Jonathan's corpse, he and Jotaro take their ancestor's corpse out into the desert and expose it to sunlight, vanquishing Dio once and for all.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio is not present in either "Diamond Is Unbreakable" or "Golden Wind", but his influence on the story is still present. In "Diamond Is Unbreakable", it is revealed that Dio acquired his Stand by means of an ancient artifact known as the "Bow and Arrow", which has reappeared in the fictional Japanese town of Morioh because the children of one of Dio's former lackeys, Mr. Nijimura, are seeking out someone who can possibly kill their father and put him out his misery due to the strange mutation he has suffered as a result of Dio's death. In "Golden Wind", the protagonist Giorno Giovanna is Dio's son, but because Dio was in possession of Jonathan's body at the time of Giorno's conception, Giorno is biologically Jonathan's son and thus a member of the Joestar family, and his own virtuous soul prevents him from becoming evil as Dio was, thanks to his encounter with a heroic gangster in his childhood life.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio's influence on "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" returns in "Stone Ocean", where it is revealed that he met the story arc's main antagonist, Father Enrico Pucci, shortly before the events of "Stardust Crusaders". He told Father Pucci of his desire to use his Stand, The World in order to reach "Heaven", and saw in the young priest a friendship that would help him achieve his goals. Father Pucci's reverence for Dio drives him to carry out his plans decades later, manipulating events to frame Jotaro Kujo's daughter Jolyne Cujoh for murder in order to trap her in the prison where he serves as a chaplain, using the final physical remains of Dio to evolve his Stand to reset reality in what he believes is Dio's vision of Heaven, a world where everyone knows their own destiny, and more importantly a world free of the Joestar bloodline. However, his hubris leads to his defeat at the hands of Jolyne's last surviving friend Emporio, who manages to reset reality back to what it once was, but not quite exactly the way it was before, as, in this new version of the world, Pucci is missing instead of the Joestars. "Stone Ocean" also introduces Dio's three other children: Ungalo, Rikiel, and Donatello Versus.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio Brando himself does not appear in "Steel Ball Run", set in an alternate universe in 1890, and is replaced by Diego Brando. Like Dio, Diego is the child of an abusive household, and one who reveres his mother. She instilled in him a sense of pride that he took with him as he became a masterful jockey in his adulthood. When he decides to take part in the Steel Ball Run horse race across the United States, he winds up under the thrall of the Stand Scary Monsters , transforming him into a dromaeosaurid dinosaur. As a result of this encounter, however, he gains his own Stand Scary Monsters, which grants him the same abilities that he now has under his control.


title: Dio Brando

text: Diego is hired by United States President Funny Valentine in his quest to seek out the pieces of the Saint's Corpse scattered along the racecourse, but after some time fighting against the heroes Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli, he realizes that President Valentine's plans are more dangerous to the world as a whole and joins the heroes in an attempt to stop him, only to die during his quest as well.


title: Dio Brando

text: Valentine then uses his Stand's powers to summon a Diego Brando from an alternate universe. This Diego possesses the same stand powers as the original Dio Brando, due to having his own version of The World as a Stand. He manages to defeat Johnny Joestar in battle and wins the Steel Ball Run, in addition to obtaining all of the Saint's Corpse and hiding it in a secure location, even though President Valentine has already been killed by Johnny in a fight. However, in this alternate universe Diego meets his demise at the hands of Lucy Steel, who uses the skull of this universe's Diego Brando to obliterate his own head as a result of the effects of Valentine's Stand.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio makes a brief cameo appearance during the events of "The Wonder of You (The Miracle of Your Love)" arc, along with the Stone Mask.


title: Dio Brando

text: Above all else, Dio Brando is known for his cunning and careful consideration. It is when Jonathan Joestar defies his expectations, defeating him in battle and thwarting his deliberate machinations, that Dio dons the Stone Mask that grants him the power of a vampire. He attains superhuman speed, regeneration fueled by sucking blood through his fingers, and strength insofar as he can lift a road roller with ease - a frequent source of references in popular culture.


title: Dio Brando

text: As a vampire, he most frequently uses an exaggerated evaporated cooling form of freezing known simply as the that allows him to freeze his opponents while rendering direct attacks with Hamon useless. While powerful, it does not kill people instantly (seen at the end of Phantom Blood, a victim of the attack survives - although he died shortly after.) Another vampiric technique available to Dio is that allows him to shoot two pressurised fluid jets from his eyes. He can also graft body parts of different beings together, an ability he used to take Jonathan Joestar's headless body as his own.


title: Dio Brando

text: Once he returns 100 years later with Jonathan's body, Dio developed his signature Stand, The World, after being struck by the Bow and Arrow. As a psychic manifestation of Dio, it has all of his aforementioned superhuman abilities and facilitates melee attacks, though its signature ability is to stop time. This time-stopping ability only lasts for a limited amount of time (which in the anime adaptation of Stardust Crusaders is heavily exaggerated), though this limit can be extended through practice or through other means of increasing the user's strength (such as when Dio was able to increase his limit by several seconds after drinking Joseph Joestar's blood). In addition, Dio gained access to a second stand through the use of Jonathan's body; this unnamed stand bears a resemblance to Joseph's Hermit Purple, and has the ability of divination.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio's Part 7 counterpart, Diego Brando, first encounters Scary Monsters when he comes into conflict with its original user Dr. Ferdinand, Ferdinand "infects" Diego, as well as an entire village, transforming them into dinosaurs. After gaining the Left Eye Corpse Part, Diego gains his own version of Scary Monsters that allows him to transform himself or others (including his horse Silver Bullet) into dinosaur versions of themselves, partially or entirely. Scary Monsters grants Diego increased strength, speed, healing, and "dynamic vision". Dynamic vision provides Diego with excellent eyesight however he can only see objects which are moving, similar to that of the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Jurassic Park.


title: Dio Brando

text: After Diego's death by the hands of Funny Valentine, Valentine summons a Diego from an alternate universe. This Diego possesses The World like Part 3's Dio, and can also stop time. The design of Diego's The World is very similar to that of Part 3, apart from its skinnier profile and the replacement of the hearts on The World's knees for capital Ds.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio has had many different voice actors in different types of media. He was first voiced by Norio Wakamoto in the 1992 drama CDs, followed by Nobuo Tanaka in the OVAs and Isshin Chiba in the 1998 video game. He is voiced by both Kenji Nojima and Hikaru Midorikawa in the "Phantom Blood" video game and as the younger and older incarnations, respectively. In the 2012 television anime and in all subsequent media, he is voiced by Takehito Koyasu.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio has only ever had two English voice actors; he was voiced by Kid Beyond in the OVAs, and by Patrick Seitz in the TV anime.


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio Brando has appeared in many video games related to the "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" franchise, usually as a player character or a boss. Some games include multiple versions of the character; in "" for example, both Dio Brando from Part 1 and DIO from Part 3 are playable characters, along with Diego Brando and Parallel World Diego from Part 7. Furthermore, he has appeared as a playable character in several crossover video games, such as "Jump Super Stars", "Jump Ultimate Stars", and "Jump Force".


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio is the main antagonist in the story mode of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven". Although the video game begins with the final scenes of "Stardust Crusaders", the antagonist is a version of Dio from another universe who managed to beat the Joestar family. He seeks to control all universes by means of the Saint's Corpse, and uses his more advanced powers over time to bring all of the fallen heroes and villains back to life to serve him in preventing Jotaro Kujo and the other Joestars from obtaining all of the Saint's Corpse, or at least using them to gather the parts so he can steal them from them and achieve his ultimate power. This version of Dio is called and his Stand is called .


title: Dio Brando

text: Dio has generally received praise from various reviewers of manga, anime, and other media; most praised his frightening and enjoyably evil personality making an appealing antagonist, as well as his influence on the rest of the series. Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network notes that his far-reaching influence throughout the entire series works especially well as a stark contrast to his humble origins. Her colleague Jacob Chapman called him "one of the greatest supervillains ever invented in any medium." Can Hoang Tran of The News Hub cites the anticipation of Dio's appearance in the 2014 reanimation of "Stardust Crusaders" to be a driving force of the series' success, later calling him the most rewarding character to play as in the series' video games. Joel Loynds of The Linc wrote "Dio's actions so powerfully and immediately establish his evil... that you will be invested in seeing his evolution even more than you [will be for JoJo]". Dallas Marshall of Green Tea Graffiti writes that Araki's straightforward intention of making the reader hate Dio worked simply and flawlessly, citing Dio's defining character moment as burning the protagonist's dog alive. Jun Yamamoto for "Billboard" said he "could almost feel the passion and ambition that Jonathan Joestar had in his fight against Dio" when listening to the first opening of the TV series.


title: Dio Brando

text: Readers of Anime News Network voted Dio number one in a poll of which anime villains would make the best friends in real life for his "cool composure" and "awesome lines".


title: Dio Brando

text: In February 2013, a life-size statue of Dio was displayed at Wonder Festival to promote the event. Starting in June 2014, Dio began appearing on cans of Japanese best-selling java Georgia coffee, as part of a special promotion of their Emerald Mountain Black flavor. An attraction in Cinema 4-D based on the fight between Dio and Jotaro Kujo had been created by Universal Studios Japan.


title: Dio Brando

text: Several characters in Japanese anime, manga, and video games draw inspiration from Dio. One such example is Sakuya Izayoi from the "Touhou Project".


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972) was an American Baptist pastor and politician who represented the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the United States House of Representatives from 1945 until 1971. He was the first African American to be elected to Congress from New York, as well as the first from any state in the Northeast. Re-elected for nearly three decades, Powell became a powerful national politician of the Democratic Party, and served as a national spokesman on civil rights and social issues. He also urged United States presidents to support emerging nations in Africa and Asia as they gained independence after colonialism.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1961, after 16 years in the House, Powell became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the most powerful position held by an African American in Congress. As chairman, he supported the passage of important social and civil rights legislation under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Following allegations of corruption, in 1967 Powell was excluded from his seat by Democratic Representatives-elect of the 90th United States Congress, but he was re-elected and regained the seat in the 1969 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States in "Powell v. McCormack". He lost his seat in 1970 to Charles Rangel and retired from electoral politics.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell was born in 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut, the second child and only son of Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Mattie Buster Shaffer, both born poor in Virginia and West Virginia, respectively. His sister, Blanche, was 10 years older. His parents were of mixed race with African and European ancestry (and, according to his father, American Indian on his mother's side). (In his autobiography "Adam By Adam", Powell says that his mother had partial German ancestry.) They and their ancestors were classified as mulatto in 19th-century censuses. Powell's paternal grandmother's ancestors had been free persons of color for generations before the Civil War. By 1908, Powell Sr. had become a prominent Baptist minister, serving as a pastor in Philadelphia, and as lead pastor at a Baptist church in New Haven.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell Sr. had worked his way out of poverty and through Wayland Seminary, a historically black college, and postgraduate study at Yale University and Virginia Theological Seminary. In the year of his son's birth in New Haven, Powell Sr. was called as the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He led the church for decades through major expansion, including fundraising for and the construction of an addition to accommodate the increased membership of the congregation during the years of the Great Migration, as many African Americans moved north from the South. That congregation grew to a community of 10,000 persons.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Due to his father's achievements, Powell grew up in a wealthy household in New York City. Because of some of his European ancestry, Adam was born with hazel eyes, light skin and blond hair, such that he could pass for white. However, he did not play with that racial ambiguity until college. He attended Townsend Harris High School, then studied at City College of New York before starting at Colgate University as a freshman. The four other African American students at Colgate at the time were all athletes. For a time, Powell briefly passed as white, using his appearance to escape racial strictures at college. The other black students were dismayed to discover what he had done.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Encouraged by his father to become a minister, Powell became more serious about his studies at Colgate, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1930. After returning to New York, Powell began his graduate work and in 1931 earned an M.A. in religious education from Columbia University. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African-American, intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Later, apparently trying to bolster his black identity, Powell would say that his paternal grandparents were born into slavery. However, his paternal grandmother, Sally Dunning, was at least the third generation of free people of color in her family. In the 1860 census, she is listed as a free mulatto, as were her mother, grandmother, and siblings. Sally never identified the father of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., born in 1865. She appeared to have named her son after her older brother Adam Dunning, listed on the 1860 census as a farmer and the head of their household. In 1867, Sally Dunning married Anthony Bush, a mulatto freedman. All the family members were listed under the surname Dunning in the 1870 census.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: The family changed its surname to Powell when they moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia, as part of their new life there. According to Charles V. Hamilton, a 1991 biographer of Powell, Anthony Bush "decided to take the name Powell as a new identity", and this is how they were recorded in the 1880 census.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Adam Jr.'s mother, Mattie Buster Shaffer, was African-American with possibly some German ancestry. Her parents had been slaves in Virginia and were freed after the Civil War. Powell's parents married in West Virginia, where they met. Numerous freedmen had migrated there in the late 19th century for work.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: After ordination, Powell began assisting his father with charitable services at the church and as a preacher. He greatly increased the volume of meals and clothing provided to the needy, and began to learn more about the lives of the working class and poor in Harlem.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a civil rights leader in Harlem. He recounted these experiences in a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book "Who Speaks for the Negro?" He developed a formidable public following in the community through his crusades for jobs and affordable housing. As chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, Powell used numerous methods of community organizing to bring political pressure on major businesses to open their doors to black employees at professional levels. He organized mass meetings, rent strikes, and public campaigns to force companies, utilities, and Harlem Hospital, which operated in the community, to hire black workers at skill levels higher than the lowest positions, to which they had formerly been restricted by informal discrimination.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: For instance, during the 1939 New York World's Fair, Powell organized a picket line at the Fair's offices in the Empire State Building. As a result, the Fair hired more black employees, increasing their numbers from about 200 to 732. In 1941, Powell led a bus boycott in Harlem, where blacks constituted the majority of passengers but held few of the jobs; the New York City Transit Authority hired 200 black workers and set the precedent for more. Powell also led a fight to have drugstores operating in Harlem hire black pharmacists. He encouraged local residents to shop only where blacks were also hired to work. "Mass action is the most powerful force on earth," Powell once said, adding, "As long as it is within the law, it's not wrong; if the law is wrong, change the law.”


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1937, Powell succeeded his father as pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Powell Jr remained pastor of the church until 1972.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1942 he founded "People's Voice", a newspaper designed for "a progressive African American audience, and it educated and enlightened readers on everything from local gatherings and events to U.S. civil rights issues to the political and economic struggles of the peoples of Africa. Reporters and writers for the papers included influential African Americans such as Powell himself, Powell's sister-in-law and actress Fredi Washington, and journalist Marvel Cooke." It also served as a mouthpiece for his views. After he was elected to Congress in 1944, other people led the paper, but it finally closed in 1948, after being accused of communist connections.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1941, with the aid of New York City's use of the single transferable vote, Powell was elected to the New York City Council as the city's first black Council member. He received 65,736 votes, the third-best total among the six successful Council candidates.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1944, Powell ran for the United States Congress on a platform of civil rights for African Americans: support for "fair employment practices, and a ban on poll taxes and lynching." Requiring poll taxes for voter registration and voting was a device used by southern states in new constitutions adopted from 1890 to 1908 to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites, to exclude them from politics. Poll taxes in the United States, together with the social and economic intimidation of Jim Crow laws, were maintained in the South into the 1960s to keep blacks excluded from politics and politically powerless. Although often associated with states of the former Confederate States of America, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell was elected as a Democrat and defeated Republican candidate Sara Pelham Speaks to represent the Congressional District that included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman elected from New York State.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Here was a person who [in the 1940s] would at least 'speak out. '...  That would be different ... Many Negroes were angry that no Northern liberals would get up on the floor of Congress and challenge the segregationists. ... Powell certainly promised to do that ...


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: [In] the 1940s and 1950s, he was, indeed, virtually alone ... And precisely because of that, he was exceptionally crucial. In many instances during those earlier times, if "he" did not speak out, the issue would not have been raised. ...  For example, only "he" could (or would dare to) challenge Congressman Rankin of Mississippi on the House floor in the 1940s for using the word "nigger". He certainly did not change Rankin's mind or behavior, but he gave solace to millions who longed for a little retaliatory defiance.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: As one of only two black Congressmen (the other being William Levi Dawson) until 1955, Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities previously reserved for white members. He took black constituents to dine with him in the "Whites Only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists from the South in his party.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Since the turn of the 20th century, Southern Democrats had commanded a one-party system, as they had effectively disenfranchised most blacks from voting since the turn of the century and excluded them from the political system through barriers to voter registration and voting. The white Congressmen and Senators controlled all the seats allocated for the total population in the southern states, had established seniority, and commanded many important committee chairs in the House and Senate.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell worked closely with Clarence Mitchell Jr., the representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington, D.C., to try to gain justice in federal programs. Biographer Hamilton described the NAACP as "the quarterback that threw the ball to Powell, who, to his credit, was more than happy to catch and run with it." He developed a strategy known as the "Powell Amendments". "On bill after bill that proposed federal expenditures, Powell would offer 'our customary amendment', requiring that federal funds be denied to any jurisdiction that maintained segregation; Liberals would be embarrassed, Southern politicians angered." This principle would later become integrated into Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell was also willing to act independently; in 1956, he broke party ranks and supported President Dwight D. Eisenhower for re-election, saying the civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform was too weak. In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine in New York to oust him in the primary election. In 1960, Powell, hearing of planned civil rights marches at the Democratic Convention, which could embarrass the party or candidate, threatened to accuse Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of having a homosexual relationship with Bayard Rustin unless the marches were canceled. Rustin, one of King's political advisers, was an openly gay man. King agreed to cancel the planned events and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell also paid attention to the issues of developing nations in Africa and Asia, making trips overseas. He urged presidential policymakers to pay attention to nations seeking independence from colonial powers and support aid to them. During the Cold War, many of them sought neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union. He made speeches on the House Floor to celebrate the anniversaries of the independence of nations such as Ghana, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1955, against the State Department's advice, Powell attended the Asian–African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, as an observer. He made a positive international impression in public addresses that balanced his concerns of his nation's race relations problems with a spirited defense of the United States as a whole against Communist criticisms. Powell returned to the United States to a warm bipartisan reception for his performance, and he was invited to meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: With this influence, Powell suggested to the State Department that the current manner of competing with the Soviet Union in the realm of fine arts such as international symphony orchestra and ballet company tours was ineffective. Instead, he advised that the United States should focus on the popular arts, such as sponsoring international tours of leading jazz musicians, which could draw attention to an indigenous American art form and featured musicians who often performed in mixed race bands. The State Department approved the idea. The first such tour with Dizzy Gillespie proved to be an outstanding success abroad and prompted similarly popular tours featuring other musicians for many years.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1961, after 15 years in Congress, Powell advanced to chairman of the powerful United States House Committee on Education and Labor. In this position, he presided over federal social programs for minimum wage and Medicaid (established later under Johnson); he expanded the minimum wage to include retail workers; and worked for equal pay for women; he supported education and training for the deaf, nursing education, and vocational training; he led legislation for standards for wages and work hours; as well as for aid for elementary and secondary education, and school libraries. Powell's committee proved extremely effective in enacting major parts of President Kennedy's "New Frontier" and President Johnson's "Great Society" social programs and the War on Poverty. It successfully reported to Congress "49 pieces of bedrock legislation", as President Johnson put it in an May 18, 1966, letter congratulating Powell on the fifth anniversary of his chairmanship.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell was instrumental in passing legislation that made lynching a federal crime, as well as bills that desegregated public schools. He challenged the Southern practice of charging Blacks a poll tax to vote. Poll taxes for federal elections were prohibited by the 24th Amendment, passed in 1964. Voter registration and electoral practices were not changed substantially in most of the South until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided federal oversight of voter registration and elections, and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote. In some areas where discrimination was severe, such as Mississippi, it took years for African Americans to register and vote in numbers related to their proportion in the population, but they have since maintained a high rate of registration and voting.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: By the mid-1960s, Powell was increasingly being criticized for mismanaging his committee's budget, taking trips abroad at public expense, and missing meetings of his committee. When under scrutiny by the press and other members of Congress for personal conduct—he had taken two young women at government expense with him on overseas travel—he responded:I wish to state very emphatically... that I will always do just what every other Congressman and committee chairman has done and is doing and will do." Opponents led criticism in his District, where his refusal to pay a 1963 slander judgment in the amount of $150,000, made him subject to arrest; he also spent increasing amounts of time in Florida.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In January 1967, the House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship. A series of hearings on Powell's misconduct had been held by the 89th Congress in December 1966 that produced the evidence that the House Democratic Caucus cited in taking this action. A Select House Committee was established upon the House's reconvening for the 90th Congress to further investigate Powell's misconduct to determine if he should be allowed to take his seat. This committee was appointed by the Speaker of the House. Its chairman was Emanuel Celler of New York and its members were James C. Corman, Claude Pepper, John Conyers, Jr., Andrew Jacobs, Jr., Arch A. Moore, Jr., Charles M. Teague, Clark MacGregor, and Vernon W. Thompson. This committee's inquiry centered on the following issues: "1. Mr. Powell's age, citizenship, and inhabitancy [sic]; 2. The status of legal proceedings to which Mr. Powell was a party in the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico with particular reference to the instances in which he has been held in contempt of court; and 3. Matters of Mr. Powell's alleged official misconduct since January 3, 1961."


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Hearings of the Select House Committee to investigate Rep. Adam Clayton Powell were held over three days in February 1967. Powell was in attendance only on the first day of these hearings, February 8. Neither he nor his legal counsel requested that the select committee summon any witnesses. According to the official Congressional report on these committee hearings, Powell and his counsel's official position was that "the Committee had no authority to consider the misconduct charges."


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: The select committee found that Powell met residency requirements for Congressional representatives under the Constitution, but that Powell had asserted an unconstitutional immunity from earlier rulings against him in criminal cases tried in the New York State Supreme Court. The committee also found that Powell had committed numerous acts of financial misconduct. These included the appropriation of Congressional funds for his personal use, the use of funds meant for the House Education and Labor Committee to pay the salary of a housekeeper at his property on Bimini in The Bahamas, purchasing airline tickets for himself, family, and friends from the funds of the House Education and Labor Committee, as well as making false reports on expenditures of foreign currency while heading of the House Education and Labor Committee.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: The members of the Select Committee had different opinions on the fate of Powell's seat. Claude Pepper was strongly in favor of recommending that Powell not be seated at all, while John Conyers, Jr., the only African American Representative on the Select Committee felt that any punishment beyond severe censure was inappropriate. In fact, in the committee's official report, Conyers asserted that Powell's conduct during the two investigations of his conduct was not contrary to the dignity of the House of Representatives, as had been suggested by the investigation. Conyers also suggested that cases of misconduct brought before the House of Representatives never exceed censure. In the end, the Select House Committee to investigate Rep. Adam Clayton Powell recommended that Powell be seated but stripped of his seniority and forced to pay a fine of $40,000, citing article I, section 5, clause 2 of the Constitution, which gives each house of Congress the ability to punish members for improper conduct.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: The full House refused to seat him until the completion of the investigation. Powell urged his supporters to "keep the faith, baby," while the investigation was underway. On March 1, the House voted 307 to 116 to exclude him, despite the recommendation of the Select Committee. Powell said, "On this day, the day of March, in my opinion, is the end of the United States of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave."


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell won the Special Election to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion, receiving 86% of the vote. But he did not take his seat, as he was filing a separate suit. He sued in "Powell v. McCormack" to retain his seat. In November 1968, Powell was re-elected. On January 3, 1969, he was seated as a member of the 91st Congress, but he was fined $25,000 and denied seniority. In June 1969, in "Powell v. McCormack", the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the House had acted unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, as he had been duly elected by his constituents.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell's increasing absenteeism was observed by constituents, which contributed, in June 1970, to his defeat in the Democratic primary for reelection to his seat by Charles B. Rangel. Powell failed to garner enough signatures for inclusion on the November ballot as an Independent, and Rangel won that (and following) general elections. In the fall of 1970, Powell moved to his retreat on Bimini in The Bahamas, also resigning as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1933, Powell married Isabel Washington (1908–2007), an African American singer and nightclub entertainer. She was the sister of actress Fredi Washington. Powell adopted Washington's son, Preston, from her first marriage.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: After their divorce, in 1945, Powell married the jazz pianist and singer Hazel Scott. They had a son named Adam Clayton Powell III. In the early 21st century, Adam Clayton Powell III became Vice Provost for Globalization at the University of Southern California.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell divorced again, and in 1960 married Yvette Flores Diago from Puerto Rico. They had a son, whom they named Adam Clayton Powell Diago, using the mother's surname as a second surname, according to Hispanic tradition. In 1980, this son changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV (dropping "Diago" from his name) when he moved to the mainland of the United States from Puerto Rico to attend Howard University. Adam Clayton Powell IV, also known as A.C. Powell IV, was elected to the New York City Council in 1991 in a special election; he served for two terms. He also was elected as a New York state Assemblyman (D-East Harlem) for three terms and had a son named Adam Clayton Powell V. In 1994, and again in 2010, Adam Clayton Powell IV unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Rep. Charles B. Rangel for the Democratic nomination in his father's former congressional district.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In 1967, a U.S. Congressional committee subpoenaed Yvette Diago, the former third wife of Powell Jr. and the mother of Adam Clayton Powell IV. They were investigating potential "theft of state funds" related to her having been on Powell Jr.'s payroll but not doing any work. Yvette Diago admitted to the committee that she had been on the Congressional payroll of her former husband, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., from 1961 until 1967, although she had moved back to Puerto Rico in 1961. As reported by "Time" magazine, Yvette Diago had continued living in Puerto Rico and "performed no work at all," yet was kept on the payroll. Her salary was increased to $20,578 and she was paid until January 1967, when she was exposed and fired.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In April 1972, Powell became gravely ill and was flown to a Miami hospital from his home in Bimini. He died there on April 4, 1972, at the age of 63, from acute prostatitis, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, his son, Adam III, poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of Bimini.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Seventh Avenue north of Central Park through Harlem has been renamed as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. One of the landmarks along this street is the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, named for Powell in 1983.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: In addition, two New York City schools were named after him, , at 1750 Amsterdam Ave., and a middle school, IS 172 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. School of Social Justice, at 509 W. 129th St. It closed in 2009. In 2011, the new Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Paideia Academy opened in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Investigations into Powell's misconduct have been cited as an impetus for a permanent ethics committee in the House of Representatives as well as a permanent code of conduct for House Members and their staff.


title: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

text: Powell was the subject of the 2002 cable television film "Keep the Faith, Baby", starring Harry Lennix as Powell and Vanessa Williams as his second wife, jazz pianist Hazel Scott. The film debuted on February 17, 2002, on premium cable network Showtime. It garnered three NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Television Movie, Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie (Lennix), and Outstanding Actress in a TV Movie (Williams). It won two National Association of Minorities in Cable (NAMIC) Vision Awards for Best Drama and Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix), the International Press Association's Best Actress in a Television Film Award (Williams), and Reel.com's Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix). The film's producers were Geoffrey L. Garfield, Powell IV's long-time campaign manager; Monty Ross, a confidant of Spike Lee; son Adam Clayton Powell III; and Hollywood veteran Harry J. Ufland. The film was written by Art Washington and directed by Doug McHenry.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Indigenous peoples of Mexico (), Native Mexicans () or Mexican Native Americans (), are those who are part of communities that trace their roots back to populations and communities that existed in what is now Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The number of indigenous Mexicans is defined through the second article of the Mexican Constitution. The Mexican census does not classify individuals by race, using the cultural-ethnicity of indigenous communities that preserve their indigenous languages, traditions, beliefs, and cultures. According to the National Indigenous Institute (INI) and the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (CDI), in 2012 the indigenous population was approximately 15 million people, divided into 68 ethnic groups. The 2020 Censo General de Población y Vivienda reported 11.8 million people living in households where someone speaks an indigenous language, and 23,232,391 people who self-identify as indigenous.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The indigenous population is distributed throughout the territory of Mexico but is especially concentrated in the Sierra Madre del Sur, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Sierra Madre Oriental, the Sierra Madre Occidental, and neighboring areas. The states with the largest indigenous population are Oaxaca and Yucatán, with the latter having the highest percentage of indigenous population in its own territory. Since the Spanish colonization, the North and Bajio regions of Mexico have had lower percentages of indigenous peoples, but some notable groups include the Rarámuri, the Tepehuán, the Yaquis, and the Yoreme.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In the second article of the Mexican Constitution, Mexico defines itself as a pluricultural nation in recognition of the diverse ethnic groups that constitute it and where the indigenous peoples are the original foundation. The number of indigenous Mexicans is measured using constitutional criteria. The Mexican census does not classify individuals by race, only the cultural-ethnicity of indigenous communities that preserve their indigenous languages, traditions, beliefs and cultures.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The category of "indigena" (indigenous) can be defined narrowly according to linguistic criteria including only persons that speak one of Mexico's 89 indigenous languages, this is the categorization used by the National Mexican Institute of Statistics. It can also be defined broadly to include all persons who self-identify as having an indigenous cultural background, whether or not they speak the language of the indigenous group they identify with. This means that the percentage of the Mexican population defined as "indigenous" varies according to the definition applied; cultural activists have referred to the usage of the narrow definition of the term for census purposes as "statistical genocide".


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The indigenous peoples in Mexico have the right of free determination under the second article of the constitution. According to this article, indigenous peoples are granted:


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Languages recognizes 89 indigenous languages as national languages, which have the same validity as Spanish in all territories where they are spoken. According to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Data Processing (INEGI), approximately 5.4% of the population speaks an indigenous language. The recognition of indigenous languages and the protection of indigenous cultures is granted not only to the ethnic groups indigenous to modern-day Mexican territory but also to other North American indigenous groups that migrated to Mexico from the United States in the nineteenth century and those who immigrated from Guatemala in the 1980s.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The prehispanic civilizations of what now is known as Mexico are often divided into two regions: Mesoamerica, the cultural area where several complex civilizations developed before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, and Aridoamerica (or simply "The North"), the arid region north of the Tropic of Cancer which was less densely populated. Despite the conditions, the Mogollon culture and Peoples established urban population centers at Casas Grandes and Cuarenta Casas in a vast territory that encompassed northern Chihuahua state and parts of Arizona and New Mexico in the United States.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Mesoamerica was densely populated by diverse indigenous ethnic groups which, although sharing common cultural characteristics, spoke different languages and developed unique civilizations.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: One of the most influential civilizations in Mesoamerica was the Olmec civilization, sometimes referred to as the "Mother Culture of Mesoamerica". The later civilization in Teotihuacan reached its peak around 600 AD when the city became the sixth largest city in the world, whose cultural and theological systems influenced the Toltec and Aztec civilizations in later centuries. Evidence has been found on the existence of polyethnic communities or neighborhoods in Teotihuacan (and other large urban areas like Tenochtitlan).


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Maya civilization, influenced by other Mesoamerican civilizations, developed a vast cultural region in southeast Mexico and northern Central America, while the Zapotec and Mixtec cultures dominated the valley of Oaxaca and the Purépecha in western Mexico.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Scholars agree that significant systems of trading existed between the cultures of Mesoamerica, Aridoamerica and the American Southwest, and the architectural remains and artifacts share a commonality of knowledge attributed to this trade network. The routes stretched far into Mesoamerica and reached as far north as ancient communities that included such population centers in the United States such as Snaketown, Chaco Canyon, and Ridge Ruin near Flagstaff (considered some of the finest artifacts ever located).


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: By the time of the arrival of the Spanish in central Mexico, many peoples of Mesoamerica (with the notable exception of the Tlaxcaltecs and the Purépecha Kingdom of Michoacán) were loosely joined under the Aztec Empire, the last Nahua civilization to flourish in Central Mexico. The capital of the empire, Tenochtitlan, became one of the largest urban centers in the world, with an estimated population of 350,000 inhabitants.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: During the conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish conquistadors allied with other ethnic groups in the region, including the Tlaxcaltecs. This strategy succeeded due to discontent with Aztec rule, which demanded tributes and used conquered peoples for ritual sacrifice. During the following decades, the Spanish consolidated their rule in what became the viceroyalty of New Spain. Through the Valladolid Debate, the crown recognized the indigenous nobility in Mesoamerica as nobles, freed indigenous slaves, and kept the existing basic structure of indigenous city-states. Indigenous communities were incorporated as communities under Spanish rule.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: As part of the Spanish incorporation of indigenous into the colonial system, the friars taught indigenous scribes to write their languages in Latin letters so that there is a large corpus of colonial-era documentation in the Nahuatl language, Mixtec, Zapotec, Yucatec Maya, and others. Such a written tradition likely took hold through existing practices of pictorial writing found in many indigenous codices. New Philology scholars have utilized the colonial-era alphabetic documentation to illuminate the colonial experience of Mesoamerican peoples from their own viewpoints.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Conquerors awarded labor and tribute under the "encomienda" system benefitted financially. Since Mesoamerican peoples had existing requirements of labor duty and tribute in the pre-conquest era, indigenous officials were involved in maintaining this system in their communities. There was a precipitous decline in indigenous populations, mainly due to the spread of European diseases previously unknown in the America but also through war and forced labor. Pandemics wrought havoc, but indigenous communities recovered with fewer members.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: With contact between indigenous populations, Spaniards, African slaves, and starting in the late sixteenth century, Asian slaves ("chinos") brought as goods the trade via the Manila Galleon there was an intermingling of groups, with mixed-race castas, particularly mestizos, becoming a component of Spanish cities and to a lesser extent indigenous communities. The Spanish legal structure formally separated what they called the "República de indios" (the republic of Indians) from the "República de españoles" (republic of Spaniards), with the latter encompassing all those in the Hispanic sphere: Spaniards, Africans, and mixed-race castas. Although Indigenous peoples were marginalized in the colonial system, and often rebelled, the paternalistic structure of colonial rule supported the continued existence and structure of indigenous communities. The Spanish crown recognized the existing ruling group, gave protection to the land holdings of indigenous communities, and communities and individuals had access to the Spanish legal system. However, these codes were often ignored in practice, and racial discrimination was prevalent in New Spain.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In the religious sphere, indigenous men were banned from Christian priesthood, following an early Franciscan attempt that included fray Bernardino de Sahagún to train an indigenous group. Mendicants of the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian orders initially evangelized indigenous in their own communities in what is often called the "spiritual conquest". On the northern frontiers, the Spanish created missions and settled indigenous populations in these complexes. The Jesuits were prominent in this enterprise until their expulsion from Spanish America in 1767. Catholicism, often with local characteristics, was the only permissible religion in the colonial era.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: During the early colonial era in central Mexico, Spaniards were more interested in access to indigenous labor than land ownership. The institution of the "encomienda", a crown grant of the labor of indigenous communities to conquerors was a key element of the imposition of Spanish rule. The Spanish crown initially maintained the indigenous sociopolitical system of local rulers and land tenure, with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire eliminating the superstructure of rule, and replacing it with Spanish.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The crown had several concerns about the encomienda. First was that the holders of encomiendas, called "encomenderos," were becoming too powerful, essentially a seigneurial group that might challenge crown power (as shown in the conspiracy by conqueror Hernán Cortés's legitimate son and heir). The second was that the encomenderos were monopolizing indigenous labor, excluding newly arriving Spaniards. And third, the crown was concerned about the damage to the indigenous vassals and their communities by the institution. Through the New Laws of 1542, the crown sought to phase out the "encomienda" and replace it with another crown mechanism of forced indigenous labor, the "repartimiento". Indigenous labor was no longer monopolized by a small group of conquerors and their descendants but apportioned to a larger group of Spaniards. Through the "repartimiento," indigenous peoples were obligated to perform low-paid labor for a certain number of weeks or months on Spanish enterprises, notably silver mining.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The land of indigenous peoples is used for material reasons as well as spiritual reasons. Religious, cultural, social, spiritual, and other events relating to their identity are also tied to the land. Indigenous people use collective property so that the aforementioned services that the land provides are available to the entire community and future generations. This was a stark contrast to the viewpoints of colonists that saw the land purely in an economic way where land could be transferred between individuals. Once the land of the indigenous people and therefore their livelihood was taken from them, they became dependent on those that had land and power. Additionally, the spiritual services that the land provided were no longer available and caused a deterioration of indigenous groups and cultures.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Spanish legal system divided racial groups into two basic categories, the "República de Españoles", consisting of all non-indigenous, but initially Spaniards and black Africans, and the "República de Indios".


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The degree to which racial category labels had legal and social consequences has been subject to academic debate since the idea of a "caste system" was developed by Ángel Rosenblat and Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán in the 1940s. Both historians popularized the notion that racial status was a key organizing principle of Spanish colonial rule. However, recent academic studies have challenged this notion, considering it a flawed and ideologically-based reinterpretation of the colonial period.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: When Mexico gained independence in 1821, the casta designations were eliminated as a legal structure, but racial divides remained. White Mexicans argued about what the solution was to the "Indian Problem", that is indigenous who continued to live in communities and were not integrated politically or socially as citizens of the new republic. The Mexican Constitution of 1824 has several articles pertaining to indigenous peoples.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Mexican War of Independence was a decade-long struggle ending in 1821, in which indigenous peoples participated for their own motivations. The new country was named after its capital city, Mexico City. The new flag had at its center a symbol of the Aztecs, an eagle perched on a nopal cactus. Mexico declared the abolition of slavery in 1829 and the equality of all citizens before the law in 1857. Indigenous communities continued to have rights as corporations to maintain land holdings until the liberal Reforma. Some indigenous individuals integrated into Mexican society, like Benito Juárez of Zapotec ethnicity, the first indigenous president in the Americas. Juárez supported the removal of provisions protecting indigenous communal land holdings through the Lerdo law.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In the North of Mexico, indigenous peoples, such as the Comanche and Apache, who had acquired the horse, waged a successful warfare against the Mexican state. The Comanche controlled considerable territory, called the Comancheria. The Yaqui also had a long tradition of resistance, with the late nineteenth-century leader Cajemé being prominent during the Yaqui Wars. The Mayo joined their Yaqui neighbors in rebellion after 1867. In Yucatán, Mayas waged a protracted war against local Mexican control in the Caste War of Yucatán, which was most intensely fought in 1847 and lasted until 1915.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Mexican Revolution, a violent social and cultural movement that defined 20th-century Mexico, produced a nationalist sentiment that the indigenous peoples were the foundation of Mexican society in a movement known as "indigenismo". Several prominent artists promoted the "Indigenous Sentiment" ("sentimiento indigenista") of the country, including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Throughout the twentieth century, the government established bilingual education in some indigenous communities and published free bilingual textbooks. Some states of the federation appropriated an indigenous inheritance in order to reinforce their identity.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In spite of the official recognition of indigenous peoples, the economic underdevelopment of their communities, accentuated by the crises of the 1980s and 1990s, has not allowed for the development of most indigenous communities. Thousands of indigenous Mexicans have emigrated to urban centers in Mexico and the United States. In Los Angeles, for example, the Mexican government has established electronic access to some of the consular services provided in Spanish as well as Zapotec and Mixe. Some of the Maya peoples of Chiapas have revolted, demanding better social and economic opportunities, requests voiced by the EZLN.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Chiapas conflict of 1994 led to collaboration between the Mexican government and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a libertarian socialist indigenous political group. This movement generated international media attention and united many indigenous groups. In 1996 the San Andrés Larráinzar Accords were negotiated between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Mexican government. The San Andrés accords were the first time that indigenous rights were acknowledged by the Mexican government.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The government has made certain legislative changes to promote the development of rural and indigenous communities and the promotion of indigenous languages. The second article of the Constitution was modified to include the right of self-determination and requires state governments to promote and ensure the economic development of indigenous communities as well as the preservation of their languages and traditions.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Spanish crown had legal protections for indigenous individuals as well as their communities, including establishing a separate General Indian Court. The mid-nineteenth-century liberal reform removed them as part of its establishment of equality before the law. The creation of a national identity not linked to racial or ethnic identity was an aim of Mexican liberalism.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In the late twentieth century, there has been a push for indigenous rights and a recognition of indigenous cultural identity. According to the constitutional reform of 2001, the following rights of indigenous peoples are recognized:


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The second article of the Constitution of Mexico recognizes and enforces the right of indigenous peoples and communities to self-determination and autonomy to:


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: V. Preserve and improve their habitat as well as preserve the integrity of their lands in accordance with this constitution. VI. Be entitled to the estate and land property modalities established by this constitution and its derived legislation, to all private property rights and communal property rights as well as to use and enjoy in a preferential way all the natural resources located at the places which the communities live in, except those defined as strategic areas according to the constitution. The communities shall be authorized to associate with each other in order to achieve such goals.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Through the land reforms of the early 20th century, some indigenous people had land rights under the "ejido" system. Under ejidos, indigenous communities have usufruct rights of the land. Indigenous communities do this when they do not have the legal evidence to claim the land. In 1992, free market reforms allowed ejidos to be partitioned and sold. For this to happen, the PROCEDE program was established. The PROCEDE program surveyed, mapped, and verified the ejido lands. According to several analysts, the privatization of ejidos has undermined the economic base of indigenous communities.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The history of linguistic rights in Mexico began when the Spanish first made contact with Indigenous Languages during the colonial period. Beginning in the early sixteenth century, "mestizaje", the mixing of races and cultures, led to the mixing of languages as well. The Spanish Crown proclaimed Spanish to be the language of the empire; indigenous languages were used during the conversion of individuals to Catholicism. Because of this, indigenous languages were more widespread than Spanish from 1523 to 1581. During the late sixteenth century, the prevalence of the Spanish language increased.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Indigenous tongues are discriminated against and seen as not modern. By the seventeenth century, the elite minority were Spanish speakers. After independence in 1821, there was a shift to Spanish to legitimize the Mexican Spanish created by Mexican "criollos". The nineteenth century brought with it programs to provide bilingual education at primary levels where they would eventually transition to Spanish-only education. Linguistic uniformity was sought out to strengthen national identity. This further excluded indigenous languages from power structures.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Chiapas conflict of 1994 led to collaboration between the Mexican government and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, an indigenous political group. In 1996 the San Andrés Larráinzar Accords were negotiated between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Mexican government. The San Andrés accords were the first time that indigenous rights were acknowledged by the Mexican government. The San Andrés Accords did not explicitly state language but language was involved in matters involving culture and education.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In 2001, the second article of the constitution of Mexico was changed to recognize and enforce the right of indigenous peoples and communities to self-determination and therefore their autonomy to preserve and enrich their language, knowledge, and every part of their culture and identity.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In 2003, the General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples explicitly stated the protection of individual and collective linguistic rights of indigenous peoples. The final section also sanctioned the creation of a National Institute for Indigenous Languages (INALI) whose purpose is to promote the growth of indigenous languages in Mexico.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: There has been a lack of enforcement of the law. For example, the General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People guarantees the right to a trial in the language of indigenous peoples with someone who understands their culture. According to the Mexican National Human Rights Commission, Mexico has not abided by this law. Examples include Jacinta Francisca Marcial, an indigenous woman imprisoned for her alleged involvement in a 2006 kidnapping. After three years and the assistance of Amnesty International, she was released for lack of evidence.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Additionally, the General Law on Linguistics also guarantees bilingual and intercultural education. These efforts have been criticized on grounds that teachers do not know the indigenous language or do not prioritize its teaching. In fact, some studies argue that formal education has decreased the prevalence of indigenous languages. Some parents do not teach their children their indigenous language, and some children refuse to learn their indigenous language for fear of discrimination. Scholars argue that there needs to be a social change to elevate the status of indigenous languages in order for the law to be withheld so that indigenous languages are protected.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Indigenous women are often taken advantage of because they are women, indigenous, and often poor. Indigenous traditions have been used as a pretext by the Mexican government to deny rights to indigenous women, such as the right to own land. Additionally, violence against women has been regarded by the Mexican government as a cultural practice.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The EZLN accepted a Revolutionary Law for Women on March 8, 1993. The law is not fully enforced but shows solidarity between the indigenous movement and women. The Mexican government increased militarization of indigenous areas has made women more susceptible to harassment through military abuses. The government has remained largely inactive against denunciations of abuse of indigenous women by elements of the armed forces.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Indigenous women have formed many support organizations to improve their social position and gain financial independence. Indigenous women use national and international legislation to support their claims that go against cultural norms such as domestic violence. Reproductive justice is an important issue to indigenous communities because there is a lack of development in these areas and is less access to maternal care. Conditional cash transfer programs such as Oportunidades have been used to encourage indigenous women to seek formal health care.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Generally, indigenous Mexicans are poorer than non-indigenous Mexicans, though social development varies between states, different indigenous ethnicities, and between rural and urban areas. In all states, indigenous people have higher infant mortality, and in some states, almost double that of the non-indigenous populations.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Some indigenous groups, particularly the Yucatec Maya in the Yucatán Peninsula and some of the Nahua and Otomi peoples in central states have maintained higher levels of development while indigenous peoples in states such as the Guerrero or Michoacán are ranked drastically lower than the average Mexican citizen in these fields. Despite certain indigenous groups such as the Maya or Nahua retaining high levels of development, the general indigenous population lives at a lower level of development than the general population.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Literacy rates are much lower for the indigenous, particularly in the southwestern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca due lack of access to education and a lack of educational literature available in indigenous languages. Literacy rates are also much lower, with 27% of indigenous children between 6 and 14 being illiterate compared to a national average of 12% in 2000. The Mexican government is required to provide education in indigenous languages but often fails to provide schooling in languages other than Spanish. As a result, many indigenous groups have resorted to creating their own small community educational institutions.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The indigenous population participates in the workforce longer than the national average, starting earlier and continuing longer. A major reason for this is that a significant number of the indigenous practice subsistence agriculture and receive no regular salaries. Indigenous people also have lower access to health care.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Languages recognizes 62 indigenous languages as "national languages" which have the same validity as Spanish in all territories where they are spoken. According to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Data Processing (INEGI), approximately 6.7% of the population speaks an indigenous language. That is, less than half of those identified as indigenous. 6,695,228 people 5 years or older were tallied as indigenous-language speakers in the 2010 census, an increase of about 650,000 from the 2000 census. In 2000, 6,044,547 people 5 years or older spoke an indigenous language.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In previous censuses, information on the indigenous speaking population five years of age and older was obtained from the Mexican people. However, in the 2010 census, this approach was changed and the Government also began to collect data on people 3 years and older. With this new approach, it was determined that there were 6,913,362 people 3 years of age or more who spoke an indigenous language (218,000 children 3 and 4 four years of age fell into this category), accounting for 6.6% of the total population. The population of children aged 0 to 2 years in homes where the head of household or a spouse spoke an indigenous language was 678 954. The indigenous language speaking population has been increasing in absolute numbers for decades, but have nonetheless been falling in proportion to the national population.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The recognition of indigenous languages and the protection of indigenous cultures is granted not only to the ethnic groups indigenous to modern-day Mexican territory, but also to other North American indigenous groups that migrated to Mexico from the United States in the nineteenth century and those who immigrated from Guatemala in the 1980s.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: These five states accounted for 61.1% of all indigenous language speakers in Mexico. Most indigenous Mexicans do not speak their own languages and speak only Spanish. This is reflected in these five states' populations. Although Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Puebla, and Yucatán have 34.2%, 27.2%, 9.4%, 11.7%, and 30.3% of their populations speaking an indigenous language, these states' indigenous populations are 65.73%, 36.15%, 29.25%, 35.28%, 65.4% respectively.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: According to the National Commission for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples (CDI), there were 25,694,928 indigenous people reported in Mexico in 2015, which constitutes 21.5% of the population of Mexico. This is a significant increase from the 2010 census, in which indigenous Mexicans accounted for 14.9% of the population, and numbered 15,700,000 Most indigenous communities have a degree of financial, political autonomy under the legislation of "usos y costumbres", which allows them to regulate internal issues under customary law.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The indigenous population of Mexico has in recent decades increased both in absolute numbers as-well as a percentage of the population. This is largely due to increased self-identification as indigenous, as well as indigenous women having higher birth rates than the country average. Indigenous peoples are also more likely to live in rural areas, but many reside in urban or suburban areas, particularly in the central states of Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Mexico City and the Yucatán Peninsula.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: According to the CDI, the states with the greatest percentage of indigenous population are: Yucatán, with 65.40%, Quintana Roo with 44.44% and Campeche with 44.54% of the population being indigenous, most of them Maya; Oaxaca with 65.73% of the population, the most numerous groups being the Mixtec and Zapotec peoples; Chiapas has 36.15%, the majority being Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya; Hidalgo with 36.21%, the majority being Otomi; Puebla with 35.28%, and Guerrero with 33.92%, mostly Nahua people and the states of San Luis Potosí and Veracruz both home to a population of 19% indigenous people, mostly from the Totonac, Nahua and Teenek (Huastec) groups.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The majority of the indigenous population is concentrated in the central and southern states. According to the CDI, the states with the greatest percentage of indigenous population as of 2020 according to INEGI are:


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: In 2011 a large scale mitochondrial sequencing in Mexican Americans revealed 85 to 90% of maternal mtDNA lineages are of Native American origin, with the remainder having European (5–7%) or African ancestry (3–5%). Thus the observed frequency of Native American mtDNA in Mexican/Mexican Americans is higher than was expected on the basis of autosomal estimates of Native American admixture for these populations i.e. ~ 30–46%<ref name="http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-11-293.pdf">http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-11-293.pdf


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: “For mtDNA variation, some studies have measured Native American, European and African contributions to Mexican and Mexican American populations, revealing 85 to 90% of mtDNA lineages are of Native American origin, with the remainder having European (5–7%) or African ancestry (3–5%). Thus the observed frequency of Native American mtDNA in Mexican/Mexican Americans is higher than was expected on the basis of autosomal estimates of Native American admixture for these populations i.e. ~ 30–46%. The difference is indicative of directional mating involving preferentially immigrant men and Native American women. This type of genetic asymmetry has been observed in other populations, including Brazilian individuals of African ancestry, as the analysis of sex specific and autosomal markers has revealed evidence for substantial European admixture that was mediated mostly through men. In our 384 completely sequenced Mexican American mitochondrial genomes, 12 (3.1%) are of African ancestry belonging to haplogroups L0a1a’3’, L2a1, L3b, L3d and U6a7; 52 (13.6%) belong to European haplogroups HV, JT, U1, U4, U5; and K and the majority (320, 83.3%) are of Native American ancestry.” </ref>


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The indigenous groups within what is now Mexico are genetically distinct from each other. The genetic differences between geographically separated indigenous groups (e.g., between indigenous people living in the Yucatán Peninsula compared to indigenous people living in western Mexico) can be as large as the genetic differences seen between a European and an East Asian person.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: Mexico is the nation of the Americas with the highest number of living languages in the early years of the 21st century, despite this cultural wealth, there is a technological disparity in education for indigenous peoples compared to other ethnic groups living in the country.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: With the creation of the SEP, the first indigenous education works for children and adults were carried out in order to eradicate illiteracy. However, the first educational policies for indigenous peoples did not work because they reduced the number of indigenous speakers with Spanish language literacy. In the year 2003 INALI was created, the first institution of the Mexican government that activated bilingualism by providing literacy in the mother language of indigenous speakers. But the poverty of the communities and the lack of teachers in indigenous languages limited progress in writing in the mother language.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Mexican Indigenous communities are enriched on celebrations, traditional costumes, oral heritage, medicine, literature, architecture and music by gender-separated groups. It includes parades of indigenous walking bands, native food, and statewide artisanal crafts, such as Pre-Hispanic-style textiles. Each costume and dance usually has a local indigenous historical and cultural meaning.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The Guelaguetza is an indigenous cultural event in Mexico that takes place in the city of Oaxaca. A similar celebration is the Atlixcayotl in Atlixco, Puebla. While this celebrations have attracted an increasing number of tourists, are primarily of deep cultural importance for the indigenous peoples of the country and is important for the survival of these cultures. Xantolo is another indigenous cultural event in the Huasteca (Hidalgo, Veracruz and San Luis Potosí) celebrated with Day of the Deaths.


title: Indigenous peoples of Mexico

text: The anthropologist and chef Raquel Torres Cerdán has recorded and ensured the preservation of many of the indigenous cuisines of Veracruz.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis, of which the seasonal type is called hay fever, is a type of inflammation in the nose that occurs when the immune system overreacts to allergens in the air. Signs and symptoms include a runny or stuffy nose, sneezing, red, itchy, and watery eyes, and swelling around the eyes. The fluid from the nose is usually clear. Symptom onset is often within minutes following allergen exposure, and can affect sleep and the ability to work or study. Some people may develop symptoms only during specific times of the year, often as a result of pollen exposure. Many people with allergic rhinitis also have asthma, allergic conjunctivitis, or atopic dermatitis.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis is typically triggered by environmental allergens such as pollen, pet hair, dust, or mold. Inherited genetics and environmental exposures contribute to the development of allergies. Growing up on a farm and having multiple siblings decreases this risk. The underlying mechanism involves IgE antibodies that attach to an allergen, and subsequently result in the release of inflammatory chemicals such as histamine from mast cells. It causes mucous membranes in the nose, eyes and throat to become inflamed and itchy as they work to eject the allergen. Diagnosis is typically based on a combination of symptoms and a skin prick test or blood tests for allergen-specific IgE antibodies. These tests, however, can be falsely positive. The symptoms of allergies resemble those of the common cold; however, they often last for more than two weeks and, despite the common name, typically do not include a fever.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Exposure to animals early in life might reduce the risk of developing these specific allergies. Several different types of medications reduce allergic symptoms, including nasal steroids, antihistamines, such as diphenhydramine, cromolyn sodium, and leukotriene receptor antagonists such as montelukast. Oftentimes, medications do not completely control symptoms, and they may also have side effects. Exposing people to larger and larger amounts of allergen, known as allergen immunotherapy (AIT), is often effective. The allergen can be given as an injection under the skin or as a tablet under the tongue. Treatment typically lasts three to five years, after which benefits may be prolonged.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis is the type of allergy that affects the greatest number of people. In Western countries, between 10 and 30% of people are affected in a given year. It is most common between the ages of twenty and forty. The first accurate description is from the 10th-century physician Abu Bakr al-Razi. In 1859, Charles Blackley identified pollen as the cause. In 1906, the mechanism was determined by Clemens von Pirquet. The link with hay came about due to an early (and incorrect) theory that the symptoms were brought about by the smell of new hay. Although the scent per se is irrelevant, the correlation with hay remains more than random, as peak hay-harvesting season overlaps with peak pollen season, and hay-harvesting work puts people in close contact with seasonal allergens.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: The characteristic symptoms of allergic rhinitis are: rhinorrhea (excess nasal secretion), itching, sneezing fits, and nasal congestion and obstruction. Characteristic physical findings include conjunctival swelling and erythema, eyelid swelling with Dennie–Morgan folds, lower eyelid venous stasis (rings under the eyes known as "allergic shiners"), swollen nasal turbinates, and middle ear effusion.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: There can also be behavioral signs; in order to relieve the irritation or flow of mucus, people may wipe or rub their nose with the palm of their hand in an upward motion: an action known as the "nasal salute" or the "allergic salute". This may result in a crease running across the nose (or above each nostril if only one side of the nose is wiped at a time), commonly referred to as the "transverse nasal crease", and can lead to permanent physical deformity if repeated enough.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: People might also find that cross-reactivity occurs. For example, people allergic to birch pollen may also find that they have an allergic reaction to the skin of apples or potatoes. A clear sign of this is the occurrence of an itchy throat after eating an apple or sneezing when peeling potatoes or apples. This occurs because of similarities in the proteins of the pollen and the food. There are many cross-reacting substances. Hay fever is not a true fever, meaning it does not cause a core body temperature in the fever over 37.5–38.3 °C (99.5–100.9 °F).


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Pollen is often considered as a cause of allergic rhinitis, hence called hay fever (See sub-section below).


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Predisposing factors to allergic rhinitis include eczema (atopic dermatitis) and asthma. These three conditions can often occur together which is referred to as the atopic triad. Additionally, environmental exposures such as air pollution and maternal tobacco smoking can increase an individual's chances of developing allergies.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis triggered by the pollens of specific seasonal plants is commonly known as "hay fever", because it is most prevalent during haying season. However, it is possible to have allergic rhinitis throughout the year. The pollen that causes hay fever varies between individuals and from region to region; in general, the tiny, hardly visible pollens of wind-pollinated plants are the predominant cause. Pollens of insect-pollinated plants are too large to remain airborne and pose no risk. Examples of plants commonly responsible for hay fever include:


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis may also be caused by allergy to Balsam of Peru, which is in various fragrances and other products.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: The causes and pathogenesis of allergic rhinitis are hypothesized to be affected by both genetic and environmental factors, with many recent studies focusing on specific loci that could be potential therapeutic targets for the disease. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified a number of different loci and genetic pathways that seem to mediate the body's response to allergens and promote the development of allergic rhinitis, with some of the most promising results coming from studies involving single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the interleukin-33 (IL-33) gene. The IL-33 protein that is encoded by the IL-33 gene is part of the interleukin family of cytokines that interact with T-helper 2 (Th2) cells, a specific type of T cell. Th2 cells contribute to the body's inflammatory response to allergens, and specific ST2 receptors, also known as IL1RL1, on these cells bind to the ligand IL-33 protein. This IL-33/ST2 signaling pathway has been found to be one of the main genetic determinants in bronchial asthma pathogenesis, and because of the pathological linkage between asthma and rhinitis, the experimental focus of IL-33 has now turned to its role in the development of allergic rhinitis in humans and mouse models. Recently, it was found that allergic rhinitis patients expressed higher levels of IL-33 in their nasal epithelium and had a higher concentration of ST2 serum in nasal passageways following their exposure to pollen and other allergens, indicating that this gene and its associated receptor are expressed at a higher rate in allergic rhinitis patients. In a 2020 study on polymorphisms of the IL-33 gene and their link to allergic rhinitis within the Han Chinese population, researchers found that five SNPs specifically contributed to the pathogenesis of allergic rhinitis, with three of those five SNPs previously identified as genetic determinants for asthma.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Another study focusing on Han Chinese children found that certain SNPs in the protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor 22 (PTPN22) gene and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) gene can be associated with childhood allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma. The encoded PTPN22 protein, which is found primarily in lymphoid tissue, acts as a post-translational regulator by removing phosphate groups from targeted proteins. Importantly, PTPN22 can affect the phosphorylation of T cell responses, and thus the subsequent proliferation of the T cells. As mentioned earlier, T cells contribute to the body's inflammatory response in a variety of ways, so any changes to the cells' structure and function can have potentially deleterious effects on the body's inflammatory response to allergens. To date, one SNP in the PTPN22 gene has been found to be significantly associated with allergic rhinitis onset in children. On the other hand, CTLA-4 is an immune-checkpoint protein that helps mediate and control the body's immune response to prevent overactivation. It is expressed only in T cells as a glycoprotein for the Immunoglobulin (Ig) protein family, also known as antibodies. There have been two SNPs in CTLA-4 that were found to be significantly associated with childhood allergic rhinitis. Both SNPs most likely affect the associated protein's shape and function, causing the body to exhibit an overactive immune response to the posed allergen. The polymorphisms in both genes are only beginning to be examined, therefore more research is needed to determine the severity of the impact of polymorphisms in the respective genes.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Finally, epigenetic alterations and associations are of particular interest to the study and ultimate treatment of allergic rhinitis. Specifically, microRNAs (miRNA) are hypothesized to be imperative to the pathogenesis of allergic rhinitis due to the post-transcriptional regulation and repression of translation in their mRNA complement. Both miRNAs and their common carrier vessel exosomes have been found to play a role in the body's immune and inflammatory responses to allergens. miRNAs are housed and packaged inside of exosomes until they are ready to be released into the section of the cell that they are coded to reside and act. Repressing the translation of proteins can ultimately repress parts of the body's immune and inflammatory responses, thus contributing to the pathogenesis of allergic rhinitis and other autoimmune disorders. There are many miRNAs that have been deemed potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of allergic rhinitis by many different researchers, with the most widely studied being miR-133, miR-155, miR-205, miR-498, and let-7e.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergy testing may reveal the specific allergens to which an individual is sensitive. Skin testing is the most common method of allergy testing. This may include a patch test to determine if a particular substance is causing the rhinitis, or an intradermal, scratch, or other test. Less commonly, the suspected allergen is dissolved and dropped onto the lower eyelid as a means of testing for allergies. This test should be done only by a physician, since it can be harmful if done improperly. In some individuals not able to undergo skin testing (as determined by the doctor), the RAST blood test may be helpful in determining specific allergen sensitivity. Peripheral eosinophilia can be seen in differential leukocyte count.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergy testing is not definitive. At times, these tests can reveal positive results for certain allergens that are not actually causing symptoms, and can also not pick up allergens that do cause an individual's symptoms. The intradermal allergy test is more sensitive than the skin prick test, but is also more often positive in people that do not have symptoms to that allergen.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Even if a person has negative skin-prick, intradermal and blood tests for allergies, they may still have allergic rhinitis, from a local allergy in the nose. This is called local allergic rhinitis. Specialized testing is necessary to diagnose local allergic rhinitis.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis may be seasonal, perennial, or episodic. Seasonal allergic rhinitis occurs in particular during pollen seasons. It does not usually develop until after 6 years of age. Perennial allergic rhinitis occurs throughout the year. This type of allergic rhinitis is commonly seen in younger children.


title: Allergic rhinitis

text: Allergic rhinitis may also be classified as mild-intermittent, moderate-severe intermittent, mild-persistent, and moderate-severe persistent. Intermittent is when the symptoms occur <4 days per week or <4 consecutive weeks. Persistent is when symptoms occur >4 days/week and >4 consecutive weeks. The symptoms are considered mild with normal sleep, no impairment of daily activities, no impairment of work or school, and if symptoms are not troublesome. Severe symptoms result in sleep disturbance, impairment of daily activities, and impairment of school or work.