Latest news with #Aparicio
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Rochester man facing charges after admitting to drunk driving
May 14—ROCHESTER — A Rochester man is facing charges after colliding head-on with a vehicle and admitting to law enforcement that he was drunk driving. New charges filed in Olmsted County District Court revealed that David De Los Santos Aparicio, 26, is facing two felony counts of criminal vehicular operation after the two-vehicle crash in January near Highway 52 and 6th Street Southwest in Rochester. An active warrant is out for Aparicio's arrest. According to the criminal complaint, the Minnesota State Patrol responded to a two-vehicle crash around 11 p.m. on Jan. 13 near Highway 52 and Sixth Street Southwest in Rochester. Upon arrival, it appeared that a Ford Explorer was traveling southbound in the northbound lane when it crashed head-on with a Honda CRV. Both vehicles were "heavily damaged," the complaint said. The criminal complaint said the driver of the Honda CRV told law enforcement she was traveling at about 60 mph when she saw a vehicle traveling southbound heading directly toward her. The driver attempted to evade the Ford Explorer, but it crashed into her. The Honda CRV driver sustained a lacerated liver, a brain bleed, several fractured ribs and multiple cuts and bruises, the complaint said. A trooper identified the driver of the Ford Explorer as David De Los Santos Aparicio. Aparicio was asked whether he knew he was driving the wrong way. He said, "no, but I'm drunk," according to the complaint. Aparicio said he consumed eight or nine beers before getting behind the wheel. According to the complaint, a preliminary breath test revealed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.247. In the complaint warrant, the state requested an alcohol monitor be placed on Aparicio as part of his release conditions.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Yahoo
Artist Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, affected by the Eaton fire, traces memories and time
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio didn't sleep the entire night before the Eaton fire hit his Altadena neighborhood in early January. The intensity of the winds and power outage had him on edge. The artist and his partner were sitting in the dark, on their phones, glued to the news as harrowing details came out of the Palisades. But Aparicio's evening took a devastating turn when he began receiving messages from friends that a fire erupted above Pasadena. 'We could see these massive flames wicking off the top of the mountain and moving fast,' he said. Aparicio left without knowing it would be the last time he would see his house. The couple safely fled with their three pets — cats Bird and Mammon and a dog, Dune — and a few belongings. But his home office contained years of drawings, drafts of projects and notes. There were also paintings by his father, Juan Edgar Aparicio, an artist whose work captured the trauma of the Salvadoran civil war. All of it was destroyed. A rare, 100-year-old blue cactus Aparicio planted with hundreds of native species in his yard are among the scorched remains. An immense sculptural beehive oven, 'Pansa del Publicó,' which he originally built as a public sculpture at L.A. State Historic Park, is irrecoverable due to toxification from the fire. It also operated as a mutual-aid project to feed people during the COVID-19 pandemic and as a nod to his parents: His father, who was an activist and student leader in El Salvador organizing with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and his mother, a lawyer and former executive director at the Central American Resource Center. One of the paintings by his father lost to the fire, 'Pesadilla de un General,' was created in 1994 and focused on children whose lives were taken in the war. In the painting, a young girl — engulfed in a radiant glow — points her finger at a general standing before her. The model was Eddie's sister Carolina, named after Juan Edgar's preteen daughter, who was disappeared by paramilitary forces along with her mother. Weeks before the fire, Aparicio brought several of his father's wooden wall sculptures and paintings home from his art studio in North Hollywood, thinking they would be safer there — one included a dedication to the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. 'I consider [these] to be his most significant and important works,' Aparicio said. 'I held on to them because I was having conversations with different institutions so they could collect them, care for them and display them.' Aparicio says his dad has rarely been able to talk about this sensitive period: 'It's part of why he stopped making that type of work.' Their loss, he acknowledged, 'has definitely been heavy.' But his father, who lives in La Palma, El Salvador, is hoping to bring the paintings back to life. 'Even though the paintings were destroyed in the fire, it's something that happened to the world and happened to El Salvador, specifically,' said Juan Edgar. 'I want to be able to remake them. The fires can't take the reality of that away.' And just like his father, Aparicio says he will continue making art that tackles causes important to him, which now includes his experience escaping the Eaton fire. The 34-year-old often engages with the concept of ever-shifting time and materiality as a tool for preserving and archiving realities. The torched properties in his Altadena town were a reminder of how the fire that devastated his community is connecting to his work. Aparicio explores themes of erasure and memory to honor and reflect on his family's history during and after the Salvadoran civil war by usingmaterials such as amber or petrified resin and rubber, inspired by Indigenous techniques, his Salvadoran heritage and L.A. roots. His ongoing 'Caucho (Rubber)' series features casts of trees, like the ficus, labeled as 'invasive' in Southern California decades after city planners introduced them throughout L.A. He uses rubber castings as metaphors to acknowledge communities vulnerable to 'forced displacement' in broader discussions about identity, movement and migration. This month, Aparicio will participate at the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance Omnibus Series, 'Salvage Efforts,' where he will reflect on U.S.-Salvadoran collective memory, weaving together topics that he already integrates into his artwork. Aparicio said he first encountered art-making through his father, who ended up in Westlake after fleeing El Salvador in 1982. As Aparicio developed his practice, he looked deeper into the world around him. He did this through 'various methods of engagement, some of which were rational and scientific [or] a lot more subjective and imaginative,' he said. 'I find that to be a really fruitful place to think about being part of the Salvadoran diaspora, particularly because so much of its history is unknown to Salvadorans and the general public or has been erased purposefully and obfuscated. So, it's this place of intense research and imaginative spaces of filling gaps.' Aparicio's first major show, 2018's 'My Veins Do Not End in Me' — named after a line in a poem by the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton — was an evocative and intimate portrayal of remembrance and the effects of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran civil war through artwork from three generations of Aparicio's family. Aparicio's late grandmother, Maria de la Paz Torres Aparicio, handcrafted dolls adorned with clothes that people left behind during the war. His dad's artwork hung between Aparicio's colossal rubber castings dangling from the ceiling, embodying residual markings. The influence of familial experiences on his work is evident, suggesting that memory is inherited. His first solo museum presentation in 2024, at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, included a glimmering installation of amber splayed across the floor. The title '601ft2 para El Playon / 601 sq. ft for El Playon' refers to the lava field near El Salvador's capital that became an infamous dumping ground in the war. The cascading amber-encapsulated ceramic bones, together with found objects and ephemera from MacArthur Park, serve as a gesture to the green space's deep history of organizing and presence for the Central American diaspora. 'During the walk-through of that show with my dad, who had come to visit from El Salvador, he told me [El Playon] is where the body of his daughter was found,' he said. While walking through the debris fields in his old neighborhood, Aparicio was drawn to pieces of glass that had morphed into an iridescent color and slumped over from the heat of the fire. Like his earlier works of reclamation, Aparicio looked at the rubble of the Eaton fire as a palette. 'It's a place where everyone cared about history and place and place-making. I can't think of a single house in the entirety of Altadena that looked like a new construction,' he says. Aparicio's distinct neighborhood, the nature surrounding it, the house he filled with curations and the landscaping he designed and built mirrored his art-making. Like a painting, this town and its environment held memories and stories, revealing a specific time but altered by the fire. In March, Aparicio participated in the painting of a collaborative mural as part of a climate rally at the Pasadena Community Job Center. Aparicio designed the chimney and brick fireplace in the work, loosely based on the only remaining structure in his house. The paint was made of ash and charcoal ground, 'sifted and mixed' from the Altadena and Palisades fires by arts organizer David Solnit and volunteers. Aparicio recalls seeing the haunting image of chimneys across the news after the fire swept L.A. '[They're] something that has survived pretty consistently and gives us a road map to the future. It is a symbol both of destruction and optimism,' he says. Wolfson is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Get our Latinx Files newsletter for stories that capture the complexity of our communities. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
23-04-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Artist Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, affected by the Eaton fire, traces memories and time
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio didn't sleep the entire night before the Eaton fire hit his Altadena neighborhood in early January. The intensity of the winds and power outage had him on edge. The artist and his partner were sitting in the dark, on their phones, glued to the news as harrowing details came out of the Palisades. But Aparicio's evening took a devastating turn when he began receiving messages from friends that a fire erupted above Pasadena. 'We could see these massive flames wicking off the top of the mountain and moving fast,' he said. Aparicio left without knowing it would be the last time he would see his house. The couple safely fled with their three pets — cats Bird and Mammon and a dog, Dune — and a few belongings. But his home office contained years of drawings, drafts of projects and notes. There were also paintings by his father, Juan Edgar Aparicio, an artist whose work captured the trauma of the Salvadoran civil war. All of it was destroyed. A rare, 100-year-old blue cactus Aparicio planted with hundreds of native species in his yard are among the scorched remains. An immense sculptural beehive oven, 'Pansa del Publicó,' which he originally built as a public sculpture at L.A. State Historic Park, is irrecoverable due to toxification from the fire. It also operated as a mutual-aid project to feed people during the COVID-19 pandemic and as a nod to his parents: His father, who was an activist and student leader in El Salvador organizing with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and his mother, a lawyer and former executive director at the Central American Resource Center. One of the paintings by his father lost to the fire, 'Pesadilla de un General,' was created in 1994 and focused on children whose lives were taken in the war. In the painting, a young girl — engulfed in a radiant glow — points her finger at a general standing before her. The model was Eddie's sister Carolina, named after Juan Edgar's preteen daughter, who was disappeared by paramilitary forces along with her mother. Weeks before the fire, Aparicio brought several of his father's wooden wall sculptures and paintings home from his art studio in North Hollywood, thinking they would be safer there — one included a dedication to the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. 'I consider [these] to be his most significant and important works,' Aparicio said. 'I held on to them because I was having conversations with different institutions so they could collect them, care for them and display them.' Aparicio says his dad has rarely been able to talk about this sensitive period: 'It's part of why he stopped making that type of work.' Their loss, he acknowledged, 'has definitely been heavy.' But his father, who lives in La Palma, El Salvador, is hoping to bring the paintings back to life. 'Even though the paintings were destroyed in the fire, it's something that happened to the world and happened to El Salvador, specifically,' said Juan Edgar. 'I want to be able to remake them. The fires can't take the reality of that away.' And just like his father, Aparicio says he will continue making art that tackles causes important to him, which now includes his experience escaping the Eaton fire. The 34-year-old often engages with the concept of ever-shifting time and materiality as a tool for preserving and archiving realities. The torched properties in his Altadena town were a reminder of how the fire that devastated his community is connecting to his work. Aparicio explores themes of erasure and memory to honor and reflect on his family's history during and after the Salvadoran civil war by usingmaterials such as amber or petrified resin and rubber, inspired by Indigenous techniques, his Salvadoran heritage and L.A. roots. His ongoing 'Caucho (Rubber)' series features casts of trees, like the ficus, labeled as 'invasive' in Southern California decades after city planners introduced them throughout L.A. He uses rubber castings as metaphors to acknowledge communities vulnerable to 'forced displacement' in broader discussions about identity, movement and migration. This month, Aparicio will participate at the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance Omnibus Series, 'Salvage Efforts,' where he will reflect on U.S.-Salvadoran collective memory, weaving together topics that he already integrates into his artwork. Aparicio said he first encountered art-making through his father, who ended up in Westlake after fleeing El Salvador in 1982. As Aparicio developed his practice, he looked deeper into the world around him. He did this through 'various methods of engagement, some of which were rational and scientific [or] a lot more subjective and imaginative,' he said. 'I find that to be a really fruitful place to think about being part of the Salvadoran diaspora, particularly because so much of its history is unknown to Salvadorans and the general public or has been erased purposefully and obfuscated. So, it's this place of intense research and imaginative spaces of filling gaps.' Aparicio's first major show, 2018's 'My Veins Do Not End in Me' — named after a line in a poem by the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton — was an evocative and intimate portrayal of remembrance and the effects of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran civil war through artwork from three generations of Aparicio's family. Aparicio's late grandmother, Maria de la Paz Torres Aparicio, handcrafted dolls adorned with clothes that people left behind during the war. His dad's artwork hung between Aparicio's colossal rubber castings dangling from the ceiling, embodying residual markings. The influence of familial experiences on his work is evident, suggesting that memory is inherited. His first solo museum presentation in 2024, at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, included a glimmering installation of amber splayed across the floor. The title '601ft2 para El Playon / 601 sq. ft for El Playon' refers to the lava field near El Salvador's capital that became an infamous dumping ground in the war. The cascading amber-encapsulated ceramic bones, together with found objects and ephemera from MacArthur Park, serve as a gesture to the green space's deep history of organizing and presence for the Central American diaspora. 'During the walk-through of that show with my dad, who had come to visit from El Salvador, he told me [El Playon] is where the body of his daughter was found,' he said. While walking through the debris fields in his old neighborhood, Aparicio was drawn to pieces of glass that had morphed into an iridescent color and slumped over from the heat of the fire. Like his earlier works of reclamation, Aparicio looked at the rubble of the Eaton fire as a palette. 'It's a place where everyone cared about history and place and place-making. I can't think of a single house in the entirety of Altadena that looked like a new construction,' he says. Aparicio's distinct neighborhood, the nature surrounding it, the house he filled with curations and the landscaping he designed and built mirrored his art-making. Like a painting, this town and its environment held memories and stories, revealing a specific time but altered by the fire. In March, Aparicio participated in the painting of a collaborative mural as part of a climate rally at the Pasadena Community Job Center. Aparicio designed the chimney and brick fireplace in the work, loosely based on the only remaining structure in his house. The paint was made of ash and charcoal ground, 'sifted and mixed' from the Altadena and Palisades fires by arts organizer David Solnit and volunteers. Aparicio recalls seeing the haunting image of chimneys across the news after the fire swept L.A. '[They're] something that has survived pretty consistently and gives us a road map to the future. It is a symbol both of destruction and optimism,' he says. Wolfson is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.
Local Spain
21-04-2025
- Health
- Local Spain
The changes to driving licence renewals for seniors in Spain in 2025
At the beginning of 2023, Spain's General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) proposed that licence renewals should be more frequent, particularly for the over-65s, but so far, these new rules have not been implemented. Then, at the end of 2024, more news came to light to suggest that the changes regarding licence renewals would be made at some point in 2025. Whilst we still don't know exactly when these new changes will come into force, we do know more about what changes the DGT will be making. There were rumours circulating about a ban on licence renewals for over-65s, but the DGT have denied this and instead have confirmed several changes to the process. According to Spain's General Deputy Director of Training and Road Education at the DGT, María José Aparicio, 30 percent of those killed in traffic accidents in the European Union are over 65 years of age, and in Spain it's around 28 percent. Aparicio believes that "it seems strange for a 90-year-old person to not have their driving license renewed until they're 95". What changes are in store for senior drivers in Spain? Firstly, the DGT plan on making the medial exams much stricter. Drivers must present their medical history and undergo a specific examination that will assess their fitness to continue driving. This is called a ' psicotécnico ' and tests both your physical and mental abilities to assess whether you can safely carry out certain tasks, including driving a car. The DGT has established a list of 35 conditions that could affect driving ability, and a test will be required to confirm if you can safely continue behind the wheel. These include arrhythmias, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy and aneurisms, multiple sclerosis, strokes, acute myocardial infarction, angina, severe depression, bipolar disorder, dementia, poorly controlled diabetes, severe asthma, advanced cancer, muscular dystrophy and severe intellectual developmental disorders, as well as several others. You will need to take a psicotécnico exam every time you renew your driver's licence. The main parts of it include a health questionnaire, a psychomotor test and an eye exam. You may also need to do a short interview with a doctor. Moving forward each case will be evaluated individually, and your medical report will be crucial in making a decision as to whether or not your licence will be renewed. In cases where your condition is under control and does not compromise driving safety, you shouldn't have any issues, but it should be noted that your licence may be renewed for shorter periods such as one or two years, instead of the usual five for those over 65. Currently, those over 65 should renew their licence every five years, unless it's for a bus or a truck, in which case it's every three years. Another new feature, which has already been introduced is a digital platform that allows for license renewals online. This means a faster process, avoiding travel and reducing wait times, as well as not having to wait and get online appointments to visit your local office.
Axios
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
"Ugly as hell." Critique of Surfside collapse memorial complicates project
Last-minute objections to a planned memorial for the victims of the 2021 Surfside condominium collapse have upset family members who say the project must continue without delay. The big picture: Commissioners and a family-led memorial committee have already approved design plans for a memorial park near the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse. But last month, the town's Planning and Zoning Board criticized the appearance of the project and urged the commission to seek alternative design proposals. Friction point: At the March 27 meeting, board member Carlos Aparicio, a Surfside architect, called it "ugly as hell" and "the worst thing I've ever seen in my life." "It makes me want to throw up, it's that bad," he said. Aparicio said the memorial project — proposed to include a roughly 20-foot-tall water feature depicting the Champlain Towers and original materials from the building — had "no soul" and looked like "every cliche of every cheap monument that's ever been put together." "I will chain myself to this corner until this doesn't happen; this is a monstrosity." He told Axios this week that he "never intended to hurt anyone" and was only giving his opinion on the architecture and design of the project. "I spoke as an architect who lives in Surfside that has a private opinion on the matter," he wrote in a text message. The latest: Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told Axios Wednesday evening that Aparicio had resigned. Pablo Langesfeld, whose 26-year-old daughter Nicole Langesfeld died in the collapse, called Aparicio's comments "not only inappropriate but cruel" in an April 2 email to Surfside and Miami-Dade County elected leaders. "The process to create this memorial has been transparent, inclusive, and lawful, and it is disgraceful that a few individuals believe they have the right to dismantle years of work and the collective will of grieving families and the community," Langesfeld wrote. Between the lines: The chair of the planning board, Lindsay Lecour, apologized for the inflammatory comments at an April 8 commission meeting but said she still wants the board to provide input on the design — with final say coming from the family-led committee. "I understand the urgency. But this memorial is going to be here long beyond anyone in this room." Some commissioners, who argued the design plans were incomplete, said they also wanted to hear the board's ideas if it didn't delay the project. Reality check: The planning board doesn't have the authority to block the project. Surfside leaders, including Burkett, say they want to fast-track it while following the will of the family committee. "We are not slowing down," Burkett said at the April 8 commission meeting. The commission voted that day to direct the firm behind the memorial project, Keith & Associates, to engage an artist and work with the memorial committee and the planning board to discuss any possible design changes. The board will discuss the memorial at its Tuesday meeting. Martin Langesfeld, Nicole's brother, said at the April 8 meeting that the families were not opposed to "seeing other ideas and making this better; we just really do not want delays, and we want the final concept to be approved by us." In emailed comments to Axios this week, Martin Langesfeld said it seemed the town was delaying the project by asking the planning board to provide input. "I hope that's not the intention, but it certainly feels that way." He said the planning board had four years to make suggestions about a memorial. Members speaking up now "feels like an unnecessary delay." "The families deserve action, not disrespect and setbacks." The other side: Burkett tells Axios that the planning board will not slow down the process unless Langesfeld and the other family members decide to adopt their suggestions. "Martin is in control, and he can take it or leave it, but we're going," Burkett said. "If anybody says the word 'delay,' then we'll just go right past the [planning] board."
