By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times September 6, 2008
Joacim Naranjo plays the trumpet pretty well. But the 16-year-old from East Los Angeles found himself flapping his sore lips like a horse as he and a half dozen other boys tried to master the rapidly cascading sounds of a mariachi song.That’s why he and about 80 boys and girls went to church this week. They were there for mariachi camp.Read More

September 5, 2008 Miami Herald
A Mexican cultural festival aims to highlight the community’s growing influence in South Florida and to celebrate Mexican contributions to art.

South Florida’s Mexican community has grown in size and influence in recent years, as a new wave of immigrants from both the agricultural and business fields have chosen to make their home here.
Now local cultural and business leaders say it’s time to celebrate that evolution. A diverse group of organizations, led by the Mexican consulate, kick off the two-week Mexico Miami Festival on Sept. 14 with events ranging from a piñata-making class to a food festival.
It is the first, and largest, Mexican cultural event of its kind in South Florida.
‘’The Mexican community brings a lot to the Florida economy, but its presence isn’t widely felt,’’ Consul General Juan Miguel Gutiérrez Tinoco.
‘’This event will highlight that presence, and help bring the community together,’’ Gutiérrez Tinoco said.Read More

By Marjorie Miller, Los Angeles Times September 5, 2008
Shortly before 5 a.m. on a recent Saturday, Josie Reynaga welcomes three generations of the Castaneda family into her Pueblos Unidos hair salon in Compton, where half a dozen stylists await the groggy clients with curling irons and cans of Aqua Net at the ready.A dozen mothers and daughters, sisters, cousins and in-laws file in to get their hair done for Irene Castaneda’s quinceañera, her elaborate 15th birthday party. And Reynaga knows most of them by name.Read More

By FERNANDA SANTOS, New York Times August 31, 2008
They stood half in awe, half in confusion on Saturday on a stretch of 46th Street in Manhattan known as Little Brazil, taking in the unlikely scene in front of them: 20 women in white turbans, hoop skirts and flowing tops dancing, chanting and washing the pavement with a mix of water, perfume and petals poured from tall ceramic pots.Read More

Alejandro De León, El Periodico de Guatemala, 08/21/2008
Cuando Guatemala compite en Internet, el tercer lugar parece ser el límite. Tercer mejor alcalde del mundo, Álvaro Arzú. Tercer puesto en la lista de las banderas más bonitas del mundo. En el listado de las siete nuevas maravillas naturales, llenamos dos lugares que se encuentran más arriba (o abajo; es cuestión de perspectiva) en el listado de votación: lago de Atitlán en el puesto 67 y, en el 104, el volcán de Pacaya.Read More

August 20, 2008 New York Times Inside an authentic Mexican restaurant, the mariachi band played “Guantanamera” while the one-man melting pot walked inside. “Hola,” Larry Langowski said.
Only at the Olympics could one expect to find an athlete like Langowski, a self-described Polexican — part Polish, part Mexican — who lives in Chicago, runs the family-owned Italian gelato cafe and is the sole member of the Mexican wrestling team: four cultures blended into one man. He was on his way into a Mexican restaurant that serves an Olympic parrillada: a combination of chicken, beef, chorizo, cheese, fried fish, fresh shrimp and refried beans, served with corn tortillas.
“Taste delicious taco, feel real Olympic,” the menu says. The one-man melting pot is feeling real Olympic these days. He lives in the Olympic Village. He eats in the spacious dining hall. He hopes to run into the American softball player Jennie Finch. Maybe he can explain to her just how he got here, just what he represents.Read More

JUAN ARIAS - Río de Janeiro - 19/08/2008 El Pais
Los sambistas han sido siempre los que mejor han captado en las letras de sus músicas la idiosincrasia y los humores de Río de Janeiro, la más divertida e irreverente ciudad de Brasil. Sin embargo, en este momento, el mundo de la samba, que tiene su mayor eco y sus mejores intérpretes en las favelas, no hace otra cosa que captar el clima de violencia que atenaza a los ciudadanos y que les impide vivir la cara nocturna y festiva de una ciudad que no dormía.Read More

Por KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH © 2008 The Associated Press
Aug. 14, 2008
Krystle Gonzales parece una princesa, con su tiara y su resplandeciente vestido dorado. Ella está sentada en un trono en un salón de baile alquilado para su quinceañera, la celebración del 15° cumpleaños de las niñas hispanas.

Rodeada de amigas, Krystle es el centro de atención hasta que comienza el verdadero espectáculo.

“Tenemos una sorpresa”, dice el anunciador a la concurrencia.

Los Sweet Sensation Cadets invaden el suelo _ una decena de muchachos adolescentes con pelo erizado, impecables zapatos blancos y aretes de diamante. Read More

Dominican Art Gallery coming to Boston!
Merengue! Visual Rythms / Ritmos Visuales
August 14 - November 23, 2008
Merengue! Visual Rhythms/Ritmos Visuales is the first exhibition to explore the significant historical impact merengue music has had on the visual arts in the Dominican Republic. This collection, organized by the Centro Cultural Eduardo Leon Jiménez and travelled by the International Arts and Artists agency, consists of approximately 47 works by 27 classical and contemporary artists - paintings, works on paper, photographs, sculpture and video, as well as popular graphics, video documentaries, and an illustrated timeline panel that reveals the evolving artistic styles practiced by Dominican artists who interpret the island’s most important musical and dance form.Read More

Los Angeles Times --Juan Capistran’s “Do You Want New Wave, or Do You Want the Truth?” is one of more than 120 works in an exhibition that, beginning with its title, wades into social and artistic debates. “Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement” showcases the work of 31 artists who mostly came of age in the 1990s, following a generation that identified as Chicano. Read More

El Nuevo Herald --En Miami libre, Everlayn Borges dio a Jencarlos Canela, su pareja en el musical que se estrenó el miércoles en la sala de conciertos John S. and James L. Knight del Adrienne Arsht Center, el primer beso teatral de su vida. Read More

July 23, 2008 --Christopher Knight, Times Art Critic, reproduced in Los Angeles Times --IN 19th CENTURY EUROPE, when modern science bumped aside the Christian God as the primary artistic foundation for meaning and moral value, artists lost a subject that had preoccupied them for hundreds of years. “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one,” the famously combative showman Gustave Courbet told his detractors. A search for truth trumped its declaration in the depiction of religious narrative. Read More

June 7, 2008 --By SIMON ROMERO, NYT, CALLAO, Peru --“SOMEWHERE in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.”

Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui. Read More

16 de julio—El Nuevo Herald --Lo mejor por una buena causa: por primera vez en la historia de la Fundación del Jackson Memorial se fusionan el interés infantil por crear arte y el talento de un gran pintor. Read More

Los Angeles—Los Angeles Times/ July 08, 2008—
It started out as a joke: OC Weekly reporter Gustavo Arellano’s editor thought it might be funny if he wrote a one-time satiric advice column, and ¡Ask a Mexican! was born. Readers loved the way he played with stereotypes, and Arellano’s been doing the column ever since (lately, also on video). Read More

CHICAGO—Associated Press—July 8, 2008
A window washer dressed as Spider-Man scales a building. A nanny clad as Catwoman attends to children. A pizza delivery man wearing Superman garb rides a bike with pies in the basket.
The humorous photographs by Mexican artist Dulce Pinzón depict real immigrant workers in their everyday jobs. But the images also proclaim them as superheroes who work grueling hours to make a better life for their families. Read More

BY SUE CORBETT

The little penguin that stars in Edel Rodriguez’s picture book debut is, comically, afraid to swim. Despite the fact that fish and water are his favorite things, despite his friends’ encouragement, despite ample protection in the form of floaties, he’s afraid. Edel Rodriguez’s website has samples of his award-winning poster work and a blog that includes autobiographical details about his family and their perilous voyage from Cuba to Miami during the Mariel boatlift. See it at http://www.edelrodriguez.com. Read More

By JEFF BAILEY—NYT
Published: June 29, 2008
IN a fifth-floor art gallery in Pilsen, Chicago’s fashionable Latino neighborhood, vibrant guitar chords were pouring out an open window on a recent Friday night. Four Latina artists were showing their paintings, and the shoebox of a gallery was jammed with a mixed, talkative crowd. Some swayed in time to the music, swigging beer and sipping wine. The din seemed to be drawing art patrons and good-time Chicagoans from all over the huge building at 1932 South Halsted Street, the central site of an every-second-Friday art walk. Read More

By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 29, 2008—MEXICO CITY—

WHICH adjective best fits the work of painter Daniel Lezama? Alluring? Repellent? Classical? Irreverent? Misunderstood?

While critics extol his daring and originality, Lezama, 40, makes certain gallery owners squeamish and collectors nervous. His typically large-scale works are imposing in their size and complexity, startling in their frank depictions of frequently nude, mainly working-class Mexicans (including children) engaged in activities that are simultaneously violent and sordid, touching and tender. Read More

El tiempo 1 de Julio—La población, declarada zona roja desde 1952, se volcó a las calles, con reinas de todas las veredas y comparsas que incluyeron bailes típicos, música y cabalgata.
Actualmente es epicentro de una operación conjunta que persigue a dos cabecillas de las Farc: alias ‘Romaña’ y ‘El mono Jojoy’, que estarían, según el Ejército, en plena cordillera Oriental, entre el Meta, el Tolima, el Huila y Cundinamarca. Read More

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF), the nation’s largest organization in support of Latino higher education, has selected Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO of AT&T Mobility, as an honorary inductee into its 2008 Alumni Hall of Fame. De la Vega will receive the Triunfador Award at the HSF Alumni Hall of Fame gala on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008, at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.Read More

“El aumento en la participación política de los latinos no se debe sólo a ¿Oíste? pero somos parte importante de ese cambio”

Un día bostoniano típico, mezcla de nubes con atisbos de primavera. En la oficina de Downtown Crossing Giovanna llega luego de despacharse una comida rápida por los alrededores. Es delgada, casi menuda y se expresa con energía, sin mover demasiado las manos. Es oriunda de Vieques, de donde es también la abuela, Doña Fe, a quien cariñosamente le dicen Tatá. Su abuela es una fuente de inspiración, no sólo por el cariño sino por haber descubierto a una edad avanzada el valor de la lucha por el terruño, para que la controvertida isla fuera habitada y usufructuada por sus legítimos habitantes y no un escenario para prácticas de guerra. Sus abuelos tuvieron que irse de Vieques porque le expropiaron las tierras.
Giovanna tomó su bandera de lucha en Massachusetts fundando ¿Oíste?, una organización sin fines de lucro concebida para avanzar los derechos políticos de los latinos. Surge en el año 2000 y es parte de una época en la cual los latinos han visto ampliar el eco de su mensaje. Tiene capítulos en todo el estado, han entrenado localmente a muchas personas para que escojan las políticas públicas que requieren.

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Dos profesores universitarios españoles, Gerardo Piña, del neoyorquino Lehman College, y Gonzalo Navajas, de la californiana Irvine, analizan la situación del idioma español en ambas costas de Estados Unidos. Uno y otro han publicado sendas novelas en la editorial madrileño-americana Verbum, y Piña acaba de preparar un libro pionero, Escritores españoles en Estados Unidos (Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, 2007). Read More

By Alyce Rocco, published Jun 01, 2007

In the article “Who Are La Razas”, La Razas were identified as people who identify themselves as “The Race”. The NCLR defines “the race” as being comprised of Latinos or Hispanics. Latina refers to females. Latinos do not consider themselves Hispanics or descendents of Spain. Latinos and Hispanics use forms of the Spanish language. The La Razas are making such a ruckus in the United States of America it caused me to wonder exactly who Latinos are.

The Latin language was spoken by the people of Latium a region of ancient Italy. Because the people of Latium were living in the area before history was recorded not much is known about their origins. Conquered by the Romans in 338 BC, Latin became the formal language of Romans. “Vulgar Latin” was used among the soldiers and merchants of Rome. Languages derived from Vulgar Latin were later called “Romance Languages”. These include languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. Who are Latinos? Are they a race of people descended from Latium’s or from the Roman Empire?

Latin America is considered to be “Latin” because the majority of the people speak one of the Romance Languages. Latin America is roughly comprised of 21,069,501 square kilometers as compared to 24,490,000 sq. km.square of other American lands. The American Continents were named after the Italian explorer, Americus Vespucci. Armies from Spain conquered much of the lands of South and Central America. English and French settlers took over the Northern parts of the Continent. Thus “Latinos” could be said to be descendents of the Spanish Conquistadores. This confuses me because the La Raza’s precept is that the United States stole their land. The land at the time of Spain’s invasion belonged to many people who were not Latinos. Read More