Mexican Culture

Thank you for Gordon Smith's article pointing out the advantages of learning Spanish at a Mexican language school ("Students Take Fast Route to Learning Spanish," Nov. 29). Recently I returned from a few months in Cuernavaca where I studied at the Center for Bilingual Multicultural Studies and lived with a wonderful Mexican family. I work at St. Joseph Center in Venice and wanted to be able to speak with the Latino people who live in the area. Not only did I learn to speak Spanish (I knew only a few words when I arrived)

TUCSON - Tourism officials here have long lured visitors and their dollars to the region with images of fantastic desert sunsets, wellness resorts and endless nature trails. But to entice their most prized foreign visitors, they tout great shopping at good prices. Louis Vuitton, Dillard's and Apple attract Tucson's neighbors in Mexico, who account for nearly 68% of its international tourists. For decades, millions of Mexican shoppers from neighboring Sonora and Sinaloa have trekked to Arizona for a full day, and sometimes a long weekend, dedicated to buying clothes, electronics and other goods.

A performance by a newly formed string quartet from Mexico and an evening of electroacoustic music will highlight programs at the California Institute of the Arts in conjunction with a Mexican cultural festival being promoted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Mexico City String Quartet will perform chamber music at 8 p.m. Wednesday in CalArts' Roy O. Disney Hall. CalArts students, faculty and alumni will present electroacoustic and other renditions of Mexican-composed music at 8 p.m.

Rolando Zaragoza, 21, was 15 years old when he came to the United States, enrolled in an Oxnard school and first heard the term " Oaxaquita. " Little Oaxacan, it means - and it was not used kindly. "Sometimes I didn't want to go to school," he said. "Sometimes I stayed to fight. " "It kind of seemed that being from Oaxaca was something bad," said Israel Vasquez, 23, who shared the same mocking, "just the way people use ' Oaxaquita ' to refer to anyone who is short and has dark skin.

Male dancers stomped in rhythm and female dancers swayed, dancing a nortena , before about 300 UC Irvine students and guest schoolchildren Thursday at UC Irvine's Cinco de Mayo celebration. The performance by Ballet Folklorico de UCI, made up of about a dozen students, was among events held all through the week at the university. The week has been "a time to celebrate the richness and beauty of Mexican culture," said Corina Espinoza, director of the Cross-Cultural Center.

JACK BLACK'S comic antics often leave audiences in stitches. Now Black himself is being sewn back together, a jagged line of dark thread embroidered around his eye. His impromptu surgery was necessitated by a stunt sequence in his latest cinematic venture, "Nacho Libre." That's what comes from being a successful Hollywood leading man with a bent for throwing yourself headfirst into the action, literally.

"Sabor a Mexico," the annual downtown street fair, will take place Oct. 7-9 on Pacific Boulevard. The salute to Mexican culture will include arts and crafts, commercial exhibits, food and beverage booths, carnival rides and two stages with entertainment. A mariachi and folklorico festival will be the highlights of the event. Florence and Gage avenues will remain open during the fair, but Saturn and Zoe avenues will be closed to through traffic. The fair will run from 2 to 11:30 p.m.

In an effort to strengthen community ties, the Los Angeles Police Department has established a program to educate officers in Spanish and in Mexican culture. The program, which began this month with the training of 31 senior-lead officers from the South Bureau, is one of the department's latest attempts to bridge the gap between the Latino neighborhoods of South-Central and the police. Many residents immigrated from countries where police are dishonest or have been linked to death squads.

Muffled sounds from Olvera Street rise up through Leticia Quezada's window, the rustlings of tourists and schoolchildren weaving around fruit stands in the warm afternoon. Quezada, the president of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, believes her office has the perfect location--the site where Los Angeles was founded 215 years ago by Mexican pobladores, or settlers. Olvera Street, Quezada said, is the heart of Mexican American life in Los Angeles.

Muffled sounds from Olvera Street rise up through Leticia Quezada's window, the rustlings of tourists and schoolchildren weaving around fruit stands in the warm afternoon. Quezada, the president of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, believes her office has the perfect location--the site where Los Angeles was founded 215 years ago by Mexican pobladores, or settlers. Olvera Street, Quezada said, is the heart of Mexican American life in Los Angeles.

An ambitious downtown center created to celebrate the role of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles culture and history opened with great fanfare six months ago, fueled by more than $36 million in public funds and boasting a prominent board of directors. Today the center, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, is staggering. Its chief executive was let go in August, and he's accused of mismanagement. Attendance has been sparse. The private foundation set up to run it hasn't raised much money.

Officials at the planned Mexican American cultural center La Plaza de Cultura y Artes,  which is being built near Olvera Street, scrambled to do damage control this week after news about excavated skeletal remains generated more and more criticism. The fragile bones of dozens of bodies had been found in the historic downtown spot,  buried beneath the site of a planned outdoor space and garden.   Native American groups,  archaeologists and the L.A. Archdiocese have voiced concerns over the removal of what may be the remains of the city's first cemetery.

Mexican American Mojo Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935-1968 Anthony Macias Duke University Press: 408 pp., $24.95 The World of Lucha Libre Secrets, Revelations and Mexican National Identity Heather Levi Duke University Press: 288 pp., $22.95 paper -- Seeing non-Mexicans partake in my mother culture makes me alternately smile and wince.

Considering all the recent speculation about hostility between blacks and Latinos, you have to cringe when you hear what happened to historian Christopher West on a working trip south of the border four years ago. The African American academic was helping research the influence of tourism on children in Isla Mujeres, an idyllic island near Cancun, when a local boy on the street threw a piece of pan dulce at him.

Black-brown tensions are simultaneously overplayed and understated -- and I'll explain the paradox with the following embarrassing anecdote. Years ago, a friend introduced me to an African American writer I had long admired. When we finally met, I tried to greet the guy with a soul handshake: a grip of the palms followed by the clasping of fingers and ending with a gentle knuckle rap.

JACK BLACK'S comic antics often leave audiences in stitches. Now Black himself is being sewn back together, a jagged line of dark thread embroidered around his eye. His impromptu surgery was necessitated by a stunt sequence in his latest cinematic venture, "Nacho Libre." That's what comes from being a successful Hollywood leading man with a bent for throwing yourself headfirst into the action, literally.

At first glance, the show at John Nichols Gallery in Santa Paula seems like a group exhibition focusing on the imagery of Mayan and Mexican culture. On these walls we find paintings in various styles and with varying perspectives, along with finely detailed pen-and-ink drawings of Mayan artifacts. Native-looking iconographic paintings blend with surreal village scenes and vestiges of folklore. The fact that all of this work, in fact, comes from the hand of a single artist, Michael D.B.

Folkloric dancers, marching bands, cowboys on horseback and Mexican statesmen filed down the streets of Santa Ana on Sunday past more than 70,000 spectators in a belated celebration of Mexican Independence Day. The parade capped a weekend of festivities that drew several dignitaries from Mexico to the city, including Michoacan Gov. Lazaro Cardenas Batel, Yucatan Gov. Patricio Patron Laviada and the mayor of Sahuayo, Michoacan, Rafael Ramirez.

Most of us are "Something American," but many of us aren't really aware of what the "Something" is. I am Mexican American. My "equation" looks like this: Mexican-born parents raised mostly in the U.S. + my being born in the U.S. = Mexican American. All of my life, I have spoken Spanish (although English was my first language), eaten Mexican food, listened to Spanish-language music and watched Spanish-language TV, including "novellas." So I should feel fairly "Mexican," right?