Hispanics Los Angeles County

The Pico Rivera garage that four decades ago served as headquarters for Dionicio Morales' fledging Mexican American Opportunity Foundation is where he now withdraws to work on a book. In the book, he plans to spell out how the nonprofit foundation became the largest Latino human-services provider in the nation--with corporate and government support.

This time, the politicians walked on stage and 19-year-old Arisbey Espinoza felt a tug of familiarity. This time, they talked about what it was like to be first in their families to make it to college. If they grew up poor, it didn't weigh them down like a shameful anchor. Instead, they grabbed hold of opportunity and just refused to let go. "You don't expect that," said Espinoza, the second in her Van Nuys family to attend college. "You think poor people will always stay that way."

Despite modest improvements in health insurance coverage, nearly one in three adults and one in five children in Los Angeles County are uninsured--one of the worst records in the nation, according to a new survey by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Thirty-one percent of adults under age 65 were uninsured in 1999, compared with 34% in 1997, according to the telephone survey of approximately 8,000 households.

The cackling chickens and roosters kept in stacked cages behind Elia's Pet Warehouse have the look of fear in their eyes. It's that twitching, bug-eyed, ready-to-jump-any-second look that I remember from the chickens in my own childhood backyard. You can't blame them. There they are, in unfamiliar surroundings, crammed together wing to wing in the stifling summer heat with only a corrugated tin roof overhead for shade.

The women are remarkably similar. Two opinionated 19-year-old college students, lifelong residents of Glendale with dark, flowing hair and bright eyes. Both are from close-knit immigrant families, both fiercely loyal to their protective, nurturing communities. In a different time and place, they might be best friends. But they don't know one another and, if they did, they would be unlikely to become close: Lorena Aguirre is Mexican American, and Takuhi H. Fidanian is Armenian American.

Businesses, corporations or advertising executives pondering entry to the vast and growing Latino market can attend a two-day conference with leading market experts June 15 and 16 at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. The event, which costs $1,595, is hosted by the Strategic Research Institute and reads like a who's who in cutting-edge thinking about the Latino consumer.

A federal judge gave final approval Friday to a negotiated settlement of a 6-year-old civil rights lawsuit filed by black probation officers against Los Angeles County. U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said the agreement was fair and reasonable, but she retained jurisdiction in the case to ensure that the terms are carried out faithfully.

On the corner, there is music in the traffic that rushes by, in the long afternoons filled with no work and diminishing pride, in the stubborn presence there of the day laborer. Omar Sierra, 35, felt it resonate in his gut like a freshly struck chord one day in 1996, just before Los Jornaleros del Norte were born. This is the story of that amateur band of Central American day laborers who turned their hard lives into song and now see modest fame dancing seductively before them.

On the corner, there is music in the traffic that rushes by, in the long afternoons filled with no work and diminishing pride, in the stubborn presence there of the day laborer. Omar Sierra, 35, felt it resonate in his gut like a freshly struck chord one day in 1996, just before Los Jornaleros del Norte were born. This is the story of that amateur band of Central American day laborers who turned their hard lives into song and now see modest fame dancing seductively before them.

The white mayor of Huntington Park, a city that is 92% Latino, faces a City Council vote next week to strip him of his ceremonial title because of comments he made about Mexican immigrants at a recent meeting. During a discussion about a state bill that would make it easier for immigrants to get driver's licenses, Mayor Tom Jackson railed against Mexican immigration in comments that some colleagues and activists say were racist.