Honoring Self Help's self-starter

Today, the new board keeps the doors open with a $200,000 annual budget and a volunteer ethos. They have no artistic director, no executive director and a skeleton staff. Board members also mop the floors, open the mail, answer phones and spend their own money on maintenance, said Duron, 52, who started coming to Self Help as a college student in the mid-'70s.

Why do they do it? It's the spirit of the organization, and what it means to the community.

Asked what Boccalero means to him, the silver-haired lawyer, wearing a white dress suit and dignified tie held straight with a tie clasp, took a long pause and stared up to the ceiling to regain his composure.

"I'm sorry," said Duron. "I didn't know I was going to get emotional. I think it's going to take a long time for people to figure out the importance she had. But eventually she's not going to be looked on as just a local East L.A. heroine anymore, but as a truly national treasure."

\o7"Flowers From Carmen's Garden: Homenaje a Sister Karen Boccalero (1933-1997)," Self Help Graphics & Art, 3802 Cesar E. Chavez Ave., L.A. Opens today and ends Aug. 12. Annual Print Fair, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. (323) 881-6444.\f7

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They are devoted to 'St. Death'

There's a bit of buzz surrounding next week's world premiere of "La Santa Muerte," a documentary about the Mexican cult to a skeletal statue known as "St. Death."

The film is written, produced and directed by Eva Aridjis, who visits shrines to the holy Grim Reaper in poor homes and barrios, interviewing folks who believe in her powers.

Although some consider the cult satanic, followers behave in the most wholesome tradition of Mexican Catholicism. In the film, they pray to St. Death for a longer life, for better grades, for a cure to depression, for miraculous recoveries of afflicted loved ones and for release from prison. In a practice akin to the Day of the Dead, they bring her offerings and dress her in robes, crowns and wigs.

"In reality, she's not bad," says a convicted prisoner with St. Death tattooed on his torso. "Actually, she's good and we are the bad ones who try to use her to hurt others. But she is kind and generous."

The thing that hurts watching this movie is seeing so many of Mexico's dispossessed and desperate people having nobody to turn to but a miraculous saint. It doesn't get more Catholic than that.

Narrated by actor Gael Garcia Bernal, the documentary is being screened as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival.

\o7"La Santa Muerte" screens at 7:45 p.m. Monday at Landmark's Regent Theatre, 1045 Broxton Ave., Westwood, and at 9:45 p.m. Friday at the Italian Cultural Institute, 1023 Hilgard Ave., Westwood.

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Gurza covers Latino music, arts and culture. E-mail agustin.gurza@latimes.com with comments, events and ideas for this weekly feature.

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