Movie Miento

Muertos

2009-11-13T23:22:55Z

Day of the Dead's come and gone, one more year on its march toward becoming this country's newest holiday.

That's what Rutgers University professor Regina Marchi argues in her new book. You can find Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead celebrations across the U.S. because there are now significant populations of Latin American immigrants in most states. And the celebrations are attracting non-Latinos, who are picking up the tradition as their own.

We need to go back to the Chicano civil rights movement, 40 years ago, to trace the current growth of the observance. Mostly U.S.-born Mexican American artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s started these celebrations in California cultural centers after trips to Mexico, where it was purposefully forgotten in large cities.

In the 1950s and 60s, Marchi said in an interview, Mexico's ruling class saw Dia de los Muertos as a backward tradition that had no place in large cities undergoing post-World War Two modernization. That changed in the 1970s when Day of the Dead was folded into national tourism campaigns, becoming one of many stops on an extensive cultural tourism trail carved out by the Mexican government.

]]> It was the artists at Chicano cultural centers who showed that Day of the Dead can build community among unrelated people as it does a nuclear family. Thematic altars dedicated to deceased civil rights leaders and to victims of foreign wars became popular. The technique has remained the same: marigold flowers and petals cover tiered steps, the favorite food and drink of the deceased is placed prominently, surrounded by sugar skulls.

Long established Chicano art galleries in California such as the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, Self Help Graphics in East L.A. and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, have staged Day of the Dead altar making workshops, public altar viewings and parades for decades.

The decade-old Dia de Los Muertos festival at the Hollywood Forever cemetery attracted several thousand people, about half of them non-Latinos, said Adela Marquez, a native of Mexico who's lived in the U.S. most of her life. Marquez and her younger, U.S. born sister began the celebration, - which now includes Latin alternative bands, Aztec dancers and lots of thematic altars - to make sure their heritage didn't die out. "We started it because we wanted to bring the old traditions to the new generations here in the United States that have not had the opportunity to experience this incredible ceremonies that happen in Mexico and Latin America."

The holiday's growth and subsequent commercialization - Marchi includes in her book a picture of Starbucks Day of the Dead product shelves - doesn't signal a demise. Think about it, just because Christmas is the most commercialized holiday in the world doesn't mean there aren't people who don't observe it as a deeply transformative event.

This transformation makes me think of the first and second line funeral processions in New Orleans. They're somber and festive celebrations of the dead that take place in the city's public spaces. They've become part of the cultural patrimony of all New Orleans residents.

Some Chicanos are upset about the migration of Day of the Dead to communities outside the traditionally Latino neighborhoods. In conducting research for her book, Marchi said she interviewed Chicanos who have seen their worst nightmare come true: Day of the Dead Happy Hours. Non-Latinos are grateful, she said, that Chicano artists a generation ago began making altars at cultural centers. "It was a gift that they gave to the larger U.S. society in terms of offering a forum that people could adopt and identify with as a way to remember their loved ones and connect with their past and their histories in a very public way and in a very joyous, positive way."

Watch

2009-10-19T05:00:37Z

Sunday, 2:00 p.m., San Pedro.

For about 30 minutes I've been sitting in my folding chair between palm trees at Point Fermin Park. Earlier, I took out my bicycle from the trunk of my car, rode left on the street that hems the coast, turned right on Western Avenue and felt like I coughed up a lung going up the steep, curvy road toward 25th Street. I returned 45 minutes later. I'd come to Pedro to have breakfast with R, my buddy from college.

I'm facing the ocean, looking at the chest-high concrete wall that divides treacherous cliffs from a long sidewalk and healthy green lawns. A continuous row of Arabic-style stars are cut out from the concrete wall and give ticker-tape peeks at the overcast ocean.

A few minutes ago I saw walk past an Asian couple, a man and a woman in their mid forties. Maybe they're Filipino. They walked with a deliberate aimlessness. The man wore shorts, a t-shirt, flip-flops, and smoked a cigarette. The woman wore a bomber jacket vest and walked a few yards behind the man, making sure he'd not missed anything. The man bowed his head into an oil drum trash can. He found nothing. He moved on to the other trash can, diagonally to his right, and found disappointment.

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About 15 minutes before I'd seen a white woman in her early 50s, dressed very casually, clothes clean, shiny purse under her arm. She bowed her head above the trash can in similar adoration. She'd found three beer bottles, held them in her hand with a split-finger grip and spilled the remaining beer onto the grass.

And five minutes before that I'd seen a gray-haired man in a ponytail walk from his car and dump the bottles into the trash can. He shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and walked back to his car.

To my left there's a woman with wide hips, faded blue jeans and an amethyst-colored shirt sitting on a concrete bench with her back to me, reading a book.

To her right a Spanish-speaking family of five has laid out their aluminum foil lunch on the concrete table. Their orange and lime green soda bottles keep the wrappers from flying away. The mother's pulling meat from bones, laying it on tortillas and dripping a dark red salsa on it. The daughter's about 16. She wears tight dark blue jeans, a sweatshirt, primped hair and very high heeled shoes. The grandma wears a black veil that doesn't cover all her gray hair. The father's wearing a frumpy, white button down Oxford. The boy, about 9 years old, wears a basketball tank top. The girl's black high heels bother me. The are totally out of place. They're inappropriate.

Much farther to the left of these picnic tables a woman and a man embrace at one of the concrete tables in the nook of the concrete wall. Their kid, maybe four years old, plays with something under the table, on the table and moves to the grass. They French kiss. The man's sitting on the edge of the table top, facing her. The woman's sitting a bit below on the bench puckering up to kiss him, hungry.

The boy looks at the gliding birds, tries to climb the wall, and walks away in a slow zigzag.

The woman's gotten up. The man sits on the bench, she turns around and sits on his lap and leans her shoulders forward while still on his lap. Their part of the park's nearly empty. A person walks by every 5 minutes. She rubs her hips counterclockwise on his lap. His hands are wide open along the top of her legs. She turns her head slowly from side to side. She can't see the boy. She gets up dutifully. He points down the sidewalk. "¡-ando!¡Vamonos!" The boy turns around and walks back.

The couple starts kissing again. She's now sitting on the narrow edge of the table and opens her legs. He moves forward to kiss her. A group of about 9 people, several adults led by 3 teenagers, leaves their minivan and walks toward the wall. They head toward the nook with the French-kissing couple. The lovers are surrounded by the family, jelly-fish tentacles. As the couple and the kid walk past me I realize they're much younger than I thought, maybe 20 and 21 years old.

The woman in the amethyst shirt gets up and carries her book like a server does a tray, and takes out her car keys from her pocket.

Lead

2009-10-09T16:48:37Z

The assimilation of Gustavo Dudamel is playing well on the red carpet. Walking into Disney Hall Thursday night, Quincy Jones told me Dudamel reminds him of a young Leonard Bernstein. Andy Garcia said he's proud Dudamel's Hispanic but loves him for being a great conductor. Angela Bassett said she admires his humility and "of the earth" background. And Eli Broad gushed, "He's brought young people together, he's brought the Latino community together, he's brought us all together." And you know that Broad with his billions in philanthropy has as much power to anoint and legitimize as anyone in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Dudamel's Simon Bolivar- tinged declaration on Saturday opened the door even wider. Several on the red carpet repeated his words. Remember Dudamel said he's proud to be Venezuelan, Latino and American. And the echo of those words appears to be in a pinball machine bounce off the Hollywood Hills, the San Gabriel Mountains down to the Anaheim Hills.

But can we consider this list: Salma Hayek, Robert Graham, Gustavo Dudamel, Lupillo Rivera, George Lopez, Julieta Venegas. All are accomplished artists or performers, all either Latin American-born or Mexican American, and all at various stages of personal assimilation and mainstream acceptance. I suppose Lupillo Rivera is the one who sticks out the most. Is it because banda music remains on the fringes of American mainstream culture? When will it join zydeco? When do we wear our foreign nationalism proudly and when do we couch it in larger multi-ethnic terms? When is it OK to be Mexican first? How do the doors of mainstream acceptance open and close depending on how you express your national identity?

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Millions of first and second generation immigrant students are grappling with that question right now. You're likely to get one answer from students attending Santee Learning Complex south of downtown L.A. Some of their teachers - members of the militant Association of Raza Educators - are trying out carve out a safe space for a Mexican identity in an American context. And how does this compare to the identity dilemma of immigrant students who attend schools in well off suburban schools?

On Thursday night Dudamel conducted a symphony by a European composer who likely grappled with similar issues but who's now in the mainstream classical music canon. Gustav Mahler was born Jewish in Bohemia, performed in Prague, and other European cities and at one point converted to Catholicism to get a plum conducting position in Vienna. In 1909 he became the New York Philharmonic's conductor. Talk about fluid ethnic identity!

Pitch

2009-10-07T16:27:08Z

The end is near. That's what my senses told me Sunday at Chavez Ravine. The cool air fluttered the flags to the east. The Santa Ana winds retreated to hibernation. Many of the seats on the west side of the stadium were in the shade. No sizzling sunburns on this day. The zig-zag canopy shading the top deck created a moon-curve shadow on the field below, just a few feet from the pitcher's mound.

The one o'clock game felt more like a late afternoon, early evening game. The top row in Reserve 14, above first base, had a tail wind from the ocean. Clouds form above the shark-tooth ridge of the San Gabriel Mountains. The winds and the clouds remind us that the coming winter rains will wash away the sins of summer. The trees in the hills where the parking lot ends plead for rain. Maybe the houses from 50 years ago left some roots. Maybe the trees think that with some water the neighborhood will return, and the kids will climb their branches.

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With a nearly slow-motion breaking ball Vicente pitches himself into the third slot of the team's playoff roster. Pockets of rhythmic clapping, from tribes large and small in different sections of the stadium, urge on Padilla and his buddies in white uniforms.

What's the metaphor for baseball? It's not the clashing of armies as in football, in which either brute force or passing finesse win the game. Is baseball the stage for the rugged individualist - the batter - struggling it out in the face of innumerable odds and constant failure?

Ronald's pitched himself into a bases loaded mess. The cars stream out past the thirsty trees. We had our summer fun in the sun and during plenty of after-work games. I wrote the date of the Mannyslam on the bobble-head box we were all handed that day. We were entertained. That's the fragile promise made by each ticket.

Alegria

2009-10-04T09:04:40Z

The Dude clinched it! And he did it an hour before our boys in Chavez Ravine.

Really, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic brought the house down Saturday night. He did it while conducting more than a hundred South L.A. students who'd feverishly rehearsed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" this summer through the L.A. Phil's new youth orchestra program. The performance wasn't up to par to the discriminating classical music ear but it was a great achievement given the cards they were dealt. And it was a seed planted in the arid working-class flatlands.

Dudamel had us 18 thousand people in his pocket leading the white-tuxed L.A. Phil musicians in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The composition is a plea to leave divisions and to embrace thy neighbor in brotherly love. It sounds to me like the composer's last gasp, knowing the end is near, and calling out what's important.

And did I tell you the Bowl's closest seats, the Pool Circle, the seats usually occupied by the crema y nata de la sociedad, nestled students' family members?

It was an unusual concert night at the Hollywood Bowl in several other respects, from the Mexican cowboy hats, yellow-blue-red Venezuelan shirts and hats, and a kaleidoscope of Spanish accents that joined French, Russian, and Armenian hovering toward the brush in the Hollywood Hills arm in arm.

]]> Lots of kids in the audience kept the night from feeling stuffy. At one point, after the end of a movement, a toddler's sweet voice of approval was a fitting transition to the symphony's next part.

The L.A. Phil played up the night's inherent biculturalism and bilingualism. The 9th's German lyrics were translated in subtitles on the Bowl's large video screens. So for this moment Spanish was given its due. "Joy, beautiful spark of the gods." Was followed by "Alegria, Hermosa Luz Divina." "This kiss for all the world." "Un beso para todo el mundo."

Dependence

2009-09-16T16:36:43Z

Manny, the Dominican, is up to bat in Monday's Dodgers game. What song blasts as he walks up? "El Rey" the classic, I'm-down-but-not-out, you'll-miss-me-when-I'm-gone song and which next to the Mexican national anthem stirs up the strongest emotions in Mexicans. That's how my Mexican Independence week started.

So does this mean the Mexican is now universal? In L.A. the embrace of the Mexican has been a rollercoaster ride. The minority Eastern seaboard immigrants who arrived in the mid 1800s loved Mexican culture, so they told their rich, future father in-laws. It kind of went downhill from there for Mexicans. In the mid 1900s "Spanish" food restaurants with sleepy, sombrero and serape wearing Mexicans symbolized the safe Mexican image. At around the same time, some giants of political and cultural thought spent time in the area, like Ricardo Flores-Magon and Octavio Paz.

There are so many layers of Mexican identity to peel back here, right? The 1932 anti-capitalism "American Tropical" mural - whitewashed after it was painted by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros - rises slowly. Mexican immigrants and the children of immigrants, like Antonio Villaraigosa and Antonia Hernandez, rise to the prominence of the offspring of L.A.'s other immigrants.

]]> These accomplishments exist at the same time that city leaders in nearby municipalities attempt to enact ordinances keep Mexican immigrants from living whithin their city boundaries.

One night, in mid-September of 2002, driving north to my place in Arcadia, I made that soft turn on the northbound I-5 near Santa Fe Springs that reveals the downtown L.A. skyline. The Library Towers, the tallest building west of Chicago, had its top lights in green, white, and red. I took it as a welcoming beacon.

Immigration researcher Roberto Suro at USC tells me the current recession is bound to change what constitutes Mexican identity in Los Angeles. The extent of the change depends on the length of the downturn. Fewer jobs mean less Mexican immigration. The influx of Mexican immigrants won't stop, though. Once the economy picks up again, the immigration will pick back up again. In L.A. that leads to a complex mix of Mexican identity, with people with strong Mexican-American identity whose ancestors arrived a century ago. And recent immigrants puzzled that the dark-skinned man in a suit who looks like him, doesn't speak Spanish.

Loyola Marymount University's David Ayon remembers it was a mystery to him as a boy growing up in El Paso how crossing a bridge leads you to a place that's supposed to be different, with different rules. OK, so now he's an expert on cross-border politics but he says there's something to the idea that neighbors often have more in common and should spend less time building fences than working out how they're going to live happily next to each other.

Flesh

2009-09-14T16:54:50Z

Fernando Botero's disasters are ours too. From Colombia, a colonial country racked by violence and destruction for decades, Botero depicts images Southern Californians are all too familiar with.

One hundred of Botero's paintings, drawings and sculptures are on display through December at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

The rolling hills near Gorman could have easily inspired the landscape in the 1989 painting "The Picnic." In it a couple enjoys the outdoors; the man lays his cheek on the tablecloth across from two red nail-polished hands, one holding a drink, the other a cigarette. And in the distance - maybe fed by the Santa Ana winds - a plume of smoke rises from a mountaintop. The couple embraces nature's beauty, even as tragedy looms nearby.

In "The Earthquake" Botero turns the viewer into a witness of destruction in progress: colonial churches topple, wood balconies fall, a woman screams from a window for help. The buildings may differ from those destroyed in Northridge in 1994 or Long Beach in 1933 but the piles of rubble and lives lost are the same.

]]> Drug trafficking-related murder has put a stranglehold on Colombia in recent decades, similar to the gang and drug-related killing we see in the Southland's impoverished neighborhoods. In "The Wall (Execution)" Botero depicts a man falling as bullets pierce him and gives top billing to a principal protagonist in this drama, the bullets. The projectiles are have unsettling, and cartoon-like detail. As they float in mid-trajectory, they're equally harmless and deadly.

No reproduction does justice to the original artwork and that's particularly true for the Botero works on display at the Bowers Museum. Many of the paintings are large scale (some 6½ feet by 5½ feet). In "After Velazquez" in which he paints one of the Meninas - the vibrancy of the paint convinces the eye that it's looking at a brilliant fabric.

There are plenty of the fleshy, large portraits on display, the ones that have made Fernando Botero's work unmistakable in the last 40 years. His rotund aristocrats are painted on horses - a traditional colonial technique - some under the shade of banana trees, others with intricately coiffed hair. Are they on their way to their garden box seats at the Hollywood Bowl?

South

2009-08-27T17:48:34Z

The Stars and Bars is dancing a reluctant merengue with the flags of Simon Bolivar.

A nice vacation earlier this summer to visit the in-laws in North Carolina revealed this interesting juxtaposition: along my daily morning walk I passed by the old cemetery in Statesville, set aside in 1756 to inter the remains of the town's pioneers and the dead from the Indian Wars and later the brave men who died in Civil War battles defending the Confederacy.

The burial ground is in the old part of this small town, across the street from the massive Greek-revival Presbyterian Church and a stone wall away from the still-active 19th century synagogue that's cute in its modest design and size, compared to the nearby churches.

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A couple of blocks away, Statesville's downtown seems straight out of Main Street USA central casting: a jewelry store, the old bank, the 19th century city hall (with arches reminiscent of L.A.'s much larger city hall of the same era)

I was jolted to see - for the first time in the decade or so I've been visiting - the red, yellow, and blue of the Colombian flag. Those South American colors filled storefront windows, at one establishment respectfully next to the more proportioned North Carolina flag and the Stars and Stripes. I'm a bit slow to see the change. Between 1990 and 2000 the Hispanic population in North Carolina grew nearly 400% to nearly 400,000 people. Most are foreign born Mexicans, with a small portion from South and Central America.

So in Statesville, it's the Colombians who've planted their flags on Main Street and are waiting for someone to join them at the dance.

Recite

2009-08-21T00:07:38Z

At MOCA, L.A.'s poetry old-guard held out the torch to the young bucks and said... psych!

It was youth's night at the museum's auditorium several weeks ago. That's what the young poets said. Then Luis Alfaro stepped up to the podium, saying he had inaugurated some of the first poetry readings at the museum in the early 1990s and that he was there to represent the youth. Some of the night's poets weren't in kindergarten when Luis first read at MOCA.

Luis's poem sped the audience into the driveways and crashed through the fences of his Pico-Union, Mexican/Chicano upbringing and reminded you why he's decided to write plays for a living. His poem ended with a shaving of the mustache that reminded him of his Mexican father.

19 year-old Dante Mitchell threw down a poem that zipped the audience from "gangsta Bush," to women's basketball, to mother's angel eyes. Dante's a recent high school graduate who's cut his teeth in the Leimert Park scene with Project Blowed. Dante and several of the other poets who read at MOCA credited L.A.'s Mike the Poet with inspiring them to write and perform.

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Longtime poetry and arts promoter Mario Davila organized the reading through LAartlab and called it "METAPHORIA." What was unique about this reading was the overlapping of various schools of poetry. Dante's young bucks performed their rapid spitfire, rapped social analysis, Alfaro made the audience feel the tearing of the soul and body torn by three Chicano cultures, while the poetry of Karla Diaz and Linda Gamboa echoed the melancholy voice of the late, great bulldozed barrio poet Manazar Gamboa. Linda and Karla, while about 15 apart in age both took Manazar's writing workshops.

Add to the mix Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, whose performing roots go back to the mid 1990s Chicago, the birthplace, she says, of poetry slams. She helped everyone in the audience tap into their inner Asian American woman.

More of these kinds of readings are needed, a mixing and matching of styles, generations and backgrounds. It's not easy to put on this kind of reading. As a poetry organizer you need experience outside your comfort zone, you need to recognize good writing that doesn't sound like your crew's own. Most of the poetry readings these days are neighborly, tribal endeavors. There's nothing wrong with that. Leaving the neighborhood, hearing other voices, hearing the beauty of complete sentences and storytelling can only improve everyone's writing. Right?

Split

2009-08-13T06:34:44Z

Six year-old Nathan Zamora is mad at his dad. Both are soccer fans. Nathan cheered for Mexico. His father, Juan Zamora, rooted for the U.S. saying it played more cohesively as a team, not as a group of individual, prima donna soccer stars.

Juan wants me to know he's not a Malinchista, the reference to the ultimate traitor in Mexican culture: La Malinche, the indigenous woman who translated for Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and became his lover. He's from Mexico City, Juan adds, a metropolis with four (Right? America, Pumas, Cruz Azul and Atlante) professional soccer teams.

The Zamoras: Juan, his wife, and four kids took in the game at Guelaguetza restaurant in L.A.'s Koreatown. The kids did a good job of keeping the mole off their clothes, Nintendos, and cel phones. And Juan stayed cool as Mexico shut out top U.S. forward (and L.A. Galaxy star) Landon Donovan and beat the U.S. two goals to one.

Guelaguetza is huge. For nine years it has occupied a former Chinese restaurant near the corner of Olympic and Normandie. The high end mezcal and the michelada beers were flowing and the tacos de chapulines crackled in the molars.

]]> I was there filing some stories for the KPCC newscasts. I interviewed Cal State Northridge economics student Eder (rhymes with header, really) Soriano as he chowed on some clayudas. He was born in the U.S. to Mexican parents and screamed with everyone else after Mexico's two goals. Fernando Lopez's kids were a hoot. He's the founder and owner of Guelaguetza. The "kids" are in their mid to late 20s and grew up in the restaurant's postage stamp-size first location on 8th Street. Paulina, 28, roots for Mexico. Bricia, 24, roots for Mexico. And Fernando Jr., 22, you guessed it, roots for Mexico. But, I counter, you've spent at least half of your lives in the U.S. ¿Qué les pasa?

Bricia jokes that she sees Mexico as her mom and the U.S. as her dad. Father can bring home the bacon and loundly proclaim he wears the pants in the family but when the go head to head, Bricia will always back up her mom. She delves into the cultural with a self-described Pacific Palisades accent (that's where she went to high school while growing up in Culver City) that she quickly abandons when switching to Spanish to talk about Oaxacan food.

Fernando, her brother and a recent U.C. Santa Cruz graduate, snickers that I'm reading too much into what the U.S.-Mexico soccer match means to Mexican Americans (as he describes himself). In Los Angeles, Fernando and Bricia tell me, the game is far from an international match, it's a home game, since so many people here cheer for both sides, think of it as a Cubs-White Sox or Mets-Yankees match up. And you know what, all I have to do is look at six year-old Nathan Zamora and his dad to realize they're probably right.

Wise

2009-07-28T17:11:48Z

The wisest Latina in L.A. County according to my unscientific poll is... Mamá. Aww, isn't that sweet. A couple of others got about as many votes: Latino civil rights advocate Antonia Hernandez, now head of the California Community Foundation, and L.A. County labor chief Maria Elena Durazo, and L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina trailed behind Mama.

There's a lot of talk about "wise Latinas" in the middle age crowd, Pasadena activist Roberta Martinez tells me, after Judge Sonia Sotomayor defended her comments and apologized that sticking up for wise people like her may have offended some people. Sotomayor looks headed to the marble halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Senate confirmation hearings may be remembered for inserting the "Wise Latina" phrase into the lexicon, alongside "Yo Quiero Taco Bell." The words are there, maybe devoid of context.

Southland Latinos I've interviewed over the years mostly complained about the confirmation hearings. The whole thing was off-key to East L.A.-based composer Geoff Gallegos. "A Supreme Court Justice needs to have the freedom to state their interpretation of the law without feeling shell shocked about expressing a semantical word. I thought she was just trying to bring some levity to the process. Has she put any pubic hairs on any soda cans? That didn't prevent another justice from getting confirmed."

He snickers that he knows a lot of wise-ass Latinas, and I'm sure they all know one big wise ass Latino (sorry Geoff, I couldn't resist). He nominates two wise Latinas, one in art and one in public transportation: Angelica Loa Perez in L.A.'s Department of Cultural Affairs and Monica Rodriguez at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "...who was one of the architects at the beginning of the eastside MTA Gold Line extension. Once again, someone who is behind the scenes, and doesn't get much press, but nonetheless, has earned my respect with her brain."

If this were a real contest, with beer company sponsorship for example, I'd have some Wise Latina girlie tees to give out. Too late, Roberta tells me.

UCLA Chicano Studies professor Marissa Lopez believes ex-L.A. first lady Corina Villaraigosa is the wisest Latina, "por que cheaters never change; they just get more crafty."

]]> In the Kabuki theater that was the confirmation process, Sonia Sotomayor had to say "sorry," professor Lopez says. "I think that need to apologize stems from a philosophical difference regarding language and truth. She understands that social positions inform subjectivity which in turn inform notions of truth, and right or wrong. Clearly she wasn't saying that Chicanas (or Boricuas) were smarter than white guys; just that their social locations allow for differently nuanced, perhaps more empathetic and encompassing, reads of situations that might appear black and white to a non-marginalized person."

Playwright and Boyle Heights theater entrepreneur Josefina Lopez is sure the wisest Latina is a little old lady running a botanica at El Mercadito in East L.A. I'd say Josefina's doing well finishing her Wise Latina apprenticeship. She says she's made a lot of mistakes and tries to learn from them. Of Course Sotomayor's wiser than a white male judge, says Josefina, "I wish there was an SNL sketch about the hearings in which she could actually say, 'I'm not just wiser than you but I'm smarter since I had to work three times as hard as you to get into Princeton and Yale!'"

Self described "wise (cracking) Latina" author Michele Serros nominates, "the vendor who came up with idea of wrapping bacon around soy dogs. I now have only half the guilt." She's the second wisest Latina, after her aunt Isabel.

Cal State Northridge Professor Maria Elena Fernandez tells me she hopes Sotomayor's entry to the Supreme Court will help start a process among national political leaders to recognize, "...the vast disparity in class experience in the U.S. and the meaningful differences in experiences according to race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality that give us each particular insight."

That's sure to happen when the jokes start pouring in, "A wise Latina walks into the Supreme Court..."

Follow

2009-07-10T18:42:53Z

These artists made music drip, cut its head off, sewed it into quilts and laser cut it into sheets of metal. Music's the main inspiration behind most of the art on view at the Mixedtape Vol. 1 show at downtown L.A.'s Federal Art Project gallery.

Unless you were one of about a hundred people who stopped by the opening last night you missed Juan Capistran's richly layered piece. It melted down the sidewalk on 2nd Street, east toward Broadway. The piece is titled "Colors (I'm so Bored with the U.S.A. DUB)." Its jumping off point is the 20 year-old song "Colors" by Ice-T. Juan created a pile of ice that on closer inspection includes the phrase "SOBRE TIERRA DE LIBRES" (pulled from the super-controversial Spanish translation of the "Star Spangled Banner" three years ago) spelled with molded ice letters, some clear, some dyed blue, others red.

]]> The piece is imbued with Juan's memories of growing up in the 98th Street and Figueroa neighborhood of South Central 25 years ago. His was one of only two Mexican families on his block. He remembers being beat up, jumped, in the second grade by African American kids. His memories are largely nostalgic. The ice cube colors reference the Bloods and Crips gangs. The cubes also denounce the new oppressive force in that neighborhood. When Ice-T sang about South Central, the LAPD sowed fear among many residents. Now, Capistran says, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers have dutifully assumed that role in the now mostly immigrant Mexican and Central American neighborhoods of South Central.

Seven other artists in the show also layer musical memories into the artwork on display. Hazel Mandujano covers a wall with lyrics from a Joan Jett song. Singer Neil Young inspired artist Rich Shelton to create a laser-cut steel piece titled "Burn Out, Fade Away." Jacob Rhodes documents the Oxnard skinhead scene of the 1980s in quilts sowed with outlines of skinhead guys hanging, drinking beers. He pushes the "do it yourself" aesthetic of the punk movement to its logical conclusion. If you can create your own punk fashion, why not create your own skinhead quilt? One of the three quilts is made of skinheads' green bomber jacket material, lined with gingham and decorated with tassels (a reference to the tasseled shoes skinheads used to wear before they started wearing boots). Jacob tells me the homo-erotic undertones are not in my imagination.

Cal Arts graduate Shizu Saldamando depicts a recent concert scene in Azusa in hyperrealist style in her graphite on wood piece titled "Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lazer Concert, Azusa, CA." There's a lot going on in the piece. Mexico City pop-alternative singer Maria Daniela is depicted only through the butt of her microphone. She's not important. It's the crowd, all dark haired, some Spanish speakers, some 2nd generation immigrants, like Shizu, she says. In Azusa, a majority Latino suburb in the San Gabriel Valley (the Long Island of L.A. County, where immigrants assimilate into the middle class) you don't have to defend your Latino identity, Shizu says, like she had to do growing up in San Francisco. It's a new mainstream setting unlike the under-siege state most Latino immigrants inhabit elsewhere in the United States.

What kind of art is this? Chicano art, of course. But not really. Several of these artists were in last year's big, LACMA-organized Phantom Sightings show. It was a seminal Chicano art exhibit embraced by many artists as an institutional door-opening and rejected by others as an attempt to say the Chicano art of the 1960s is no longer relevant. The show's subtitle "Art After the Chicano Movement" fed the controversy.

Shizu Saldamando and Juan Capistran curated the Mixedtape Vol. 1 show. She explains that the show was partly inspired by Phantom Sighting's "Post-Chicano" debate. The label doesn't honor the art and artists who came before, she says. She backtracks soon after though, saying she'd rather frame this show as something born out of love, not hate or paranoia. Next to the melting ice cubes, curator Pilar Tompkins defends the "Post-Chicano" terminology as she hands me a flyer for her upcoming show, "Post-American L.A."

Words and how they're used to frame art are important to these artists. They're not only creating art, they're engaged in how their art drips, is cut, and is sewn into a larger cultural tapestry, which may be far from finished.

Elect

2009-07-02T20:16:29Z

Latinas now make up nearly half of L.A. Unified's board of education! I was oblivious to the obvious in the school district press room while covering the new board's swearing in on Wednesday.

The splash of cold water came from re-elected board member Monica Garcia at the end of her acceptance speech. "I love being the part of history where for the first time in over 159 years, three Latinas sit on the school board at the same time." Joining Garcia and Yolie Flores Aguilar on the seven member board is former San Fernando councilwoman Nury Martinez. "Boy do we have an opportunity to really write a different history for this district," Garcia said.

A watershed moment? Where are the historians scribbling updates for their revised Chicano studies texts? I'd interviewed Yolanda Santoyo outside school district headquarters about her hunger strike to stop teacher layoffs. She's a social worker, Aztec dancer, and Chicana activist. So I went back out to hear if she thought this was a big deal. "A big deal for who?" she answered with a disinterested facial gesture. "How is that beneficial to our community?"

]]> For decades activists have lobbied for more Chicanos in elective office, in management positions and on television. And that's starting to change. "They forget, they sell out," Santoyo said of those newly minted brown politicians. They're not entirely to blame, she said, Latino constituents don't do enough to hold the politicians accountable.

Back inside the school board chambers I pulled aside former L.A. Unified school board member David Tokofsky, certainly he'd think it significant. In 1995, L.A. Unified's first Latina school board president supported his run for school board, he said, earning her flack from people who wanted a Latino instead of him.

Listen, Tokofsky said, as he pointed to the three Latino politicians inside school board chambers for the swearing in - L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and councilmen Tony Cardenas and Jose Huizar - that's six powerful Latino politicians in the same room he said. "If power continues to not have an effect on the learning in the classroom, symbolism doesn't mean anything." Schools are still struggling, he said, so accomplishment in elective office remains much more important than symbolism.

I got back to the press room in time to hear new board member Steven Zimmer twist the symbolism into laughs. "The voters of L.A. have elected and reelected two amazing, powerful, inspirational Latina leaders to the school board, and the bald white Jewish guy who's very well trained in listening to powerful, strong Latinas." Applause and hoots from the community inside school board chambers.

Duck

2009-06-27T06:05:06Z

The Mexican ambassador ducked the drug legalization question as if it were a flying shoe.

During the Q&A at Disney Hall tonight for the Zocalo lecture series, Cal State Long Beach professor Armando Vazquez Ramos wanted to know if the highest ranking representative of the Mexican government was ready to back legalization. Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan's answer? Diplomats and flies both get killed by newspapers. Then he said if that's the conclusion after serious discussions about the issue, so be it.

What did the professor think about the answer? "Bullshit!" "This young student," he said pointing to 21 year-old recent U.C. Santa Cruz grad Fernando Lopez, "is doing a better job citing statistics and studies that endorse the merits of legalization." Professor Vazquez Ramos praised the ambassador's rhetorical reflexes.

The more things stay the same, the more they change, could be the modified adage applied to Mexican politics these days. Thirty five years ago my most vivid memory was a weeping Mexican President, Jose Lopez Portillo, who's tears laced a state of the union address where he railed against the first of many massive peso devaluations. A weak peso to the stronger U.S. dollar was a test of Mexican sovereignty.

]]> Remember, Mexican politicians came in one shape and size, fiercely patriotic and U.S.-hating to the bone or so they led you to believe. The diagonal red, white, and green presidential sash is worn inside the suit jacket, over the tie. It's a reminder of the Niños Heroes of ~~1857~~ 1847, the heroic cadets ~~who~~ one of which wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and threw ~~themselves to their~~ himself to his deaths from a hilltop rather than surrender to invading U.S. troops.

At Disney Hall Ambassador Sarukhan neither kissed the American flag to his right nor stomped on the Mexican flag to his left. He did say he'd favor an American-style legal system replace Mexico's clunker 19th Century Napoleonic legal system.

Mexican diplomats and politicians never said things like this in public a generation ago. It would be a betrayal to admit liking anything about the United States, even hamburgers. Hence comments like those from my Mexico City relatives when I visited, "Adolfo's here, get the ketchup!"

Sarukahn said things have changed: in the 1980s during a visit to Singapore, then President Miguel de la Madrid complained that Mexico had to share a 3,000 kilometer border with the U.S. The leader of Singapore, a country then the darling of global capital, answered that they'd give a lot to share one kilometer with the United States.

Sarukhan had the audience with zingers like this and the one where the Israeli Ambassador flipped the famous Porfirio Diaz saying: "Israel, so close to God, so far from the United States.

Los Angeles is one of the top five Mexican cities, if you count how many Mexicans live here. Sarukhan's the highest ranking representative of Mexico in the United States. 288 people showed up to hear him talk. Lots of Mexico City accents upstairs at the wine meet and greet afterward. As I returned to take a picture of the Mexican flag a well trained aide with the Mexican consulate, guarding the folded flag, was just about to tell me protocol forbids taking a picture of the flag. It belongs to the Mexican consulate, he said.

I met a 40 year-old real estate broker who pushes Mexican property and a 26 year-old Peruvian American, USC grad who's a budding policy wonk. Writer Gregory Rodriguez created this lecture series, called Zocalo, as a public space for talk and to watch the figurative shoe thrown at the podium every once in a while.

You can view the entire chat on Zocalo sometime soon.

FIGHT

2009-06-25T18:04:27Z

A Muslim 12th grader at a San Fernando Valley campus schooled me on the complexities of ethnic identity.

For most of the past decade ethnic fights at her campus, Birmingham High School, and neighboring Grant High School have been as predictable as the Santa Ana winds or traffic in the Sepulveda Pass. The headlines out of the Van Nuys schools appeared clear: Hundreds of Armenian and Latino High School Students in Campus Brawls. Some fights were so bad, on several occasions school district police summoned the LAPD for reinforcements. Students say perceived disrespect was the most common trigger.

Campus administrators began clamping down with tougher discipline and by training teachers to nip conflict in the bud. They were helped by Cal State Northridge professors who helped guide conflict mediation sessions.

Graduating senior Saaliha Khan is one of 40 students at Birmingham High signed up this year as a peer mediator. She has stood out among students this year for her enlightened leadership. That praise comes from fellow students and administrators. Princeton University said so too when it handed her the Princeton Prize this year for her efforts to diffuse ethnic tensions at Birmingham High School.

]]> Saaliha Khan is Birmigham High's first Muslim student body president. A couple of weeks ago she walked me through campus after her AP English final, an essay exploring whether The Catcher in the Rye's main character suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.

She's neither big nor a man but it became obvious strolling down the halls she's the Big Man On Campus. Here's an interesting coincidence: nearly everyone on campus calls her "Sally." She likes it because one of Birmingham High's most notable graduates is actor Sally Field.

She claims friends from most ethnicities and is able to back that up by switching from Spanish and Armenian to Urdu.

12th grader Harumy Cruz counts herself as a friend of Sally. Cruz says racism is alive and well and counts herself lucky to have avoided it most of her life. She admires Sally's ability to bridge cultures. "Sometimes kids tend to avoid each other. Like when we're out at the quad during lunch. They'll just stick with their group of friends, their own race or culture and when they see Sally come in and talk to different people, they start realizing, hey maybe I can be friend with those kids too."

Lunchtime is the most segregated part of the school day. Armenians are in one corner of the quad, white students in another, black kids by the cafeteria, and Asians in the yearbook office.

Burly football player Jose Giacoman, also a friend of Sally, says it's gotten much better in the four years he's been at Birmingham High. Some students are looking for any reason to fight and ethnic divisions are the natural camps, he says. He's a U.S.-raised Latino with three Salvadoran grandparents and one Turkish grandparent. He downplays ethnicity. These days, he says, divisions fall along interests: skaters hang out, swim team members hang out.

The campus is roughly 70% Hispanic, 13% white and 10% black. Harumy Cruz says that allows Latinos to more easily move between cliques. "I guess you could consider me part of the Latino clique but I'm in a group that has white kids, black kids." Cruz's parents are Salvadoran immigrants. She grew up in a bilingual household and is headed to Soka University in Aliso Viejo to major in social and behavioral science.

Saaliha's is and is not an immigrant. She was born in New Jersey but lived in her parents' native Pakistan until seven years ago. She's very aware of politics in that country. Her father was a doctor in Pakistan and was laid off from his medical research job here several months ago. She's headed to Georgetown University, hopefully she says, in preparation for a career as a diplomat.

Saaliha says the Koran is her guide to the complexities of her current everyday life. She's a devout Muslim who prays three times a day and is active in her Reseda mosque. She tells me the Koran says a smile is a form of charity. Saaliha Khan's found out that's often the best way to open the door to communication and understanding.