Mexican Americans

It's not unusual for a global city to recruit an international talent like Gustavo Dudamel to conduct its symphony orchestra. (Alan Gilbert, the new conductor of the New York Philharmonic, is the first native New Yorker to hold the post since the institution was founded in 1842.) What is unusual is how the Los Angeles orchestra is using the high-culture, Venezuelan-born wunderkind to build a rapport with this city's native-born Latino masses. Gauging from the widespread, deliriously upbeat hoopla -- and taking into account Dudamel's exceptional qualities and charisma -- maybe it'll even work.

President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice has been widely hailed as a triumph for Latinos. But it could just as likely spell the end of the very idea that there is such a thing as Latino America at all. News accounts suggest that Latinos at large are thrilled with her nomination, and there's no doubt that there are many -- particularly among the political elites -- who are.

Mark Sanchez: An article in Monday's Section A about USC quarterback Mark Sanchez and his development into a role model for Mexican Americans gave the wrong last name for a USC professor it quoted. He is Ricardo Ramirez, not Ricardo Rodriguez.

Re "The generic Latino," Opinion, June 1 Essential to the success of the United States as a nation and its attraction to millions of immigrants from all over is that here -- no matter where we come from -- we can all become Americans. Gregory Rodriguez's article concluding that Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court comes at the expense of Mexican Americans shows a lack of understanding of American ideals and, I believe, does not agree with the sentiments of the great majority of Mexican Americans.

A U.S. citizen who was wrongly deported to Tijuana last year while in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the county and the federal government, alleging that his constitutional rights were violated. Pedro Guzman, 30, who is developmentally disabled, was missing for nearly three months before he was found in Mexico and released to his family, his attorneys said.

The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp today honoring Los Angeles newsman Ruben Salazar, who, through his reporting and opinion columns during the 1960s, became a provocative voice for a Mexican American community searching for its political and social identity. Among the first Mexican American reporters to work at a mainstream newspaper, Salazar was killed Aug.

In 1992, construction workers retrofitting UCLA's undergraduate library discovered many dusty boxes hidden behind a bookshelf in the basement. The boxes contained research materials and questionnaires from a pioneering 1965 study on Mexican Americans. Sociology professors Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles skimmed the surveys, which included names and addresses.

Re "Latino, yes, but with new tastes," Column One, May 28 I think it is ridiculous that cities like Baldwin Park or Santa Ana have to beg national retailers to come to their community. As an American (who happens to be Latino), I am more proud to be an American than anything else. I have fought and bled for this country. The "amigo store" owners say that if you want Starbucks coffee, you aren't a real Latino. I beg to differ. Why do I have to hold allegiance to a faraway country I have only visited once?