Hispanics Culture

Steven Cortez was dumbfounded. His college counselor--his mentor, a man he considered as much a buddy as a teacher--was suddenly threatening him: If you do this, don't ever talk to me again. Steven had bumped into Eddy Estrada at a Starbucks in Monterey Park one morning last summer. They had been sitting in the sun with their coffees, laughing and chatting, when Estrada asked Steven about the classes he planned to take that fall as a sophomore at East Los Angeles College.

As the emerging majority in Los Angeles County, Latinos are not only making political and economic strides, but are gaining greater recognition from other ethnic and racial groups, according to a United Way report being released today. A growing interest in Spanish is one bellwether cited in the report, which provides a detailed look at the nation's largest Latino population center.

The Northridge earthquake cracked two major freeways, collapsed towering parking structures and turned fragile glassware into so much confetti, but it's difficult to imagine a casualty of the 1994 disaster that has been more sorely missed by the surrounding community than the Boathouse Gallery at Plaza de la Raza.

"We are the Picassos of the boulevard. We are the working man's work of art." --Kita Lealao, lowrider. * If the car is the signature of America, then the lowrider could be considered a defining mark of the Mexican American. The car that has swelled the hearts of tough pachucos, prompted serenades by Chicano bands and created an allure for a forbidden ethnic Los Angeles has hit the mainstream.

Jeffrey A. Stern and Marcelino Miyares Jr. are helping to script Act 2 of the Latino Internet revolution. In a Westside office cramped with a budding staff, the pair work 14-hour days to build InternetMercado.com, among the first online shopping sites for Latinos. First, a string of portals targeting Latinos in the U.S. and Latin America burst onto the "dot-com" scene, linking viewers with search engines, news and chat groups.

Growing up in a family with nine kids didn't leave much money for luxuries, so East Los Angeles-born designer Estevan Ramos played with pencils and paper that his mom, Aurora, got for free from a print-shop owner down the street. These days, pencil and paper are among the tools of Ramos' trade as a sportswear designer who has taken a business he started with $8,000 in 1995--designing, cutting and sewing garments out of his garage--to sales this year that will top $1.6 million.

Boca has a chip on its shoulder. You sense it in the alternative newspaper's content. You read it in the letters from fans who write to thank Boca for its stories or to say they hiss in the movie theaters when advertisements come on for a certain other big newspaper that has Los Angeles in its name. You won't find in Boca any of that Ricky Martin stuff the mainstream media call Latino culture for their mainstream audience.

Cozkacuauhtli Zenteotl was once known as Eduardo Rivera. For 18 years, he didn't think much about his name until one day he realized that, unlike many of his white and African-American classmates, he knew very little about his family's history. "Their roots went back to Europe and Africa," he said. "But me? I did not know how I came about."

Cozkacuauhtli Zenteotl was once known as Eduardo Rivera. For 18 years, he didn't think much about his name until one day he realized that, unlike many of his white and African American classmates, he knew very little about his family's history. "Their roots went back to Europe and Africa," he said. "But me? I did not know how I came about."

Inside an East L.A. building with a dark mural facade, young men from the neighborhood come to learn how to be good fathers and older men come with dreams of reentering their children's lives. Jerry Tello tells them about elephants: Some scientists wanted to restore the wilderness in a part of Africa. They knew that elephants' presence help the soil and growth of trees, so they brought in some of the animals. But the males they brought to mate with the females were adolescent elephants.