Intersections

LAPD: Winning hearts and minds in East L.A. *

Let's just make sure we have this straight: Hold a carwash for a high school field trip in Any Town, California, get a certificate from your church or a mention in the local paper. Hold a carwash at Ramona Gardens to raise funeral expenses for a guy who died in LAPD custody after witnesses said he was beaten with a baton while handcuffed, get a testy brigade of shotgun-toting cops in riot helmets. "We weren't getting any cooperation," Deputy Chief Cayler Carter told the L.A. Times after LAPD asked the crowd to disperse. Well, no, you wouldn't, would you?

Links: L.A. Times, LAObserved, and the murals of the projects. * LAT photo by Bryan Chan.

Come one, come all! Travel like your drywall man did!

This is probably the most entertaining New York Times story I've read in a very long while. The Travel section (of all sections) reports that the Hñahñus Indians of Hidalgo state communally operate Parque EcoAlberto, which for 200 pesos a pop offers a hike that simulates the crossing of the U.S.-Mexico border. The hike comes complete with a shady guide, a raid by sirens, and a mysterious 5-year-old boy that emerges from the brush to led extreme-entertainment tourists to safety:

They advised us to be brave, to remember our ancestors and to hit the ground if we heard gunshots.

We’d been walking down a gravel road for 10 minutes when people started shouting and tearing off into the dark. “Vamos rápido!” they shouted. “Vamos corriendo! Hasta el puente! Apúrense!” (“Let’s get moving! To the bridge! Get going!”) Behind us, headlights and the police drew nearer.

“Run!” Mr. Santiago shouted, frantically directing us toward a concrete bridge at the bottom of the sloping road. “Shut off that light, they’re coming. Fast, fast. Damn it, shut off that light!”

Sirens whooped. We scrambled down a hill of loose dirt, tripping and stumbling over rocks and gouges in the ground. We ended up in a mire along the Tula River, ankle-deep in mud and water.

Far out! The Hñahñus know a bit about what it's like to make the actual run across the border: a majority of their people live en el otro lado, mostly in Nevada, the story says. The piece ends, amazingly, with the phone number and website for Parque EcoAlberto, which suggests that the NYT is endorsing the idea of its pale New England readership doing some extreme eco-tourism in the central Mexican highlands by actually paying to "play" illegal immigrant and relive, in some mediated form, the experiences of their construction workers and housekeepers. What. Is the world. Coming to?

* Photo by David Zeiger.

Happy gays in Mexico

About a week ago Karla López and Karina Almaguer, both 29, entered the history books as Mexico's first same-sex civil union, in Saltillo, Coahuila. A day before that here in Los Angeles, Jorge Soto Vega was granted asylum as a gay man in the U.S., a major victory for Lambda Legal. Soto argued he would face persecution in his native Guadalajara, which is arguably the most gay-friendly city in Latin America. But Mexico City may now top GDL as most-gay-friendly metropolis in Mexico. The capital government decided in November to allow same-sex unions. The law goes into effect in March. The photo of this girl couple is from a GlobalGayz page on the thriving gay life in Mexico City, Morelia, and Cancun. It mentions the D.F.'s comprehensive gay publication Ser Gay. Mexico is in many ways a rigid, machista society, which as Joseph Carrier describes, makes it kinda gay.

Silence and outrage on Schwarzenegger's "Mexicans"

The two major dailies in Los Angeles had follow-up takes as different as night and day on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest off-the-cuff remarks. The L.A. Times goes with this breezy report on shrugs from the Democrats Arnold talked smack about, while La Opinion headlines its story: Governor attacks Mexicans. "Attacks" seems a bit strong, as these were off-the-record musings, but the subtext of outrage seems entirely appropriate.

Like a lot of people, I tend to dismiss whatever Schwarzenegger says as the words of a misguided if charming simpleton. But imagine, for the sake of discussion, how the English-language press would respond if the governor's disparaging comments on Mexicans would have been directed in some form at Jews or African Americans. I can't find any voices in English countering the patently prejudicial idea that Mexican immigrants resist assimilating, much less any discussion on what these antiquated ideas of "assimilation" even mean anymore. The unequal distribution of L.A. media anger on this story is especially stinging in Latino Los Angeles.

"It's proven that within two generations, Mexicans assimilate, and there's not a single one that doesn't want to learn and be successful in this country," state Sen. Gil Cedillo told La Opinion. Thanks for that, but where's Fabian, Gloria, Antonio, Hilda ...?

I'm told this morning that the governor's words on Mexicans were being fumed about on all the Spanish-language radio stations. And people wonder why Mexicans and other Latinos feel under attack in this country and lash back in emotional ways. Thankfully, we can count on bilingual, bicultural Californians, the young people who will inherit this state, to think progressively and pragmatically on issues of cultural unity and national identity. * Photo above, the face of the future in California, by Ted Soqui.

Dying at Trader Joe's (Updated)

Anyone who's ever used the crosswalk on Hyperion in Silver Lake between Trader Joe's and Gelson's knows how treacherous it is. Cars zoom up and down the street in a fury, and pedestrians brazenly intersect the flow of traffic without so much as a look either way. Well, I've searched and searched for any media or blog follow-up mention of the guy who was killed at that crosswalk on Jan. 20 and, having found none, here is what City News Service filed on the day of the accident, citing KCAL9:

A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle in Los Feliz today, police said. The accident occurred in the 2800 block of Hyperion Boulevard about 5:10 p.m., said an officer at the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Traffic Division. An investigation was ongoing, he said. The victim was struck by a white Range Rover while in a crosswalk, which crosses four lanes of traffic outside a Trader Joe's grocery store, KCAL9 reported. The victim was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead, Channel 9 reported. Police said the incident appeared to be a tragic accident, according to the TV station.

Here's KCAL9's story. Sounded like a horrendous accident: I was told the impact was so strong the victim flew more than 25 feet and actually skidded on the concrete for about 5 feet. Poor guy... To die on a Saturday afternoon at Trader Joe's, crossing the street with thoughts of trail mix, frozen pizza, and white wine dancing in your head. And --SNAP!-- it's over. I saw flowers and notes attached to a pole there the other day. Here is an online petition for a traffic signal at 2730 Hyperion that says the victim's name was Bill Wingard. * Photo by tmkeesey.

** Here is a link to a fresh update on this post, "RIP Bill Wingard."

If you know Zapotec as its spoken in Mitla, please call ...

* La Opinion says in this story that you should call 213-251-8481 if you speak Zapotec in the varieties of Miahuatlán, Mitla, Juchitán or San Francisco Lachirigui. Of if you speak Tzentzal, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Ixil, or Maya as it's spoken in Yucatán. These are all languages and dialects spoken today in America that lack enough translators in the judicial system. Dealing with the system in a language you understand is guaranteed by the law, the story notes. Many new immigrants from rural Mexico or Central America speak neither English nor Spanish.

* KQED's California Report went with a hard investigative piece on Friday on horrible, abusive conditions at the T. Don Hutto Residential Detention Facility in central Texas, an immigrant family detention center run by a private firm for ICE. Immigrants who suffered living at Hutto tell stories of being timed by guards at mealtime, of children falling ill from the food, and of being blindfolded on trips to the hospital. Listen here.

* Texas is somehow a magnet for modern-day immigrant concentration camps. Imagine that.

(Photo above from a marcha in Chicago, spring 2006. How things change in a year. Wait...)

Death by jalapeño *

Where there are immigrant workers, there are taco trucks. In Los Angeles, this means you can find a tasty taco pretty much anywhere, from Bel Air to downtown to the sexy bends of Mulholland Drive. The Great Taco Hunt recently found itself on Mulholland and discovered what appears to be a most excellent truck called Tacos Carrillo:

My tacos and root beer were gone but I have this rule that if the taquero puts a jalapeño on my plate I feel it is my duty as a taco reporter to eat it. Especially if it a fresh grilled jalapeño. And if it is cut in half? Well all the more reason to just chomp the bugger.

So without any water I just chomped it and for the love of baby jesus if it wasn't the hottest jalapeño pepper I've ever had.

I took Mulholland to Sepulveda and the whole time my eyes were sweating and my vision was blurred and the back of my neck started to cramp and for a moment I thought I might not make it. "This is the end of me" I thought. "The jalapeño has defeated me". I knew this would come but I didn't expect it like this.

Link. Previously, yours truly on "My Favorite Taco."

*A note on this blog: I'll be toying around with a few different names and descriptors. Please let me know what you think?

How to make Saint Death proud

Read the sad case of the snow-cone man "witch doctor" murder. The woman accused of killing the snow-cone man allegedly did so under the spell of a "witch doctor," or bruja. The LA Weekly story references "Afro-Cuban" religion, which is named Santeria, and describes the presence in Los Angeles of botanicas, but one question I had was whether the accused went to a botanica to see her bruja, and if so, which one. Whatever the case, it's good to see botanicas in the public eye again. They are part of the fabric of L.A. street life. With both good and bad consequences, as this case shows, the truly faithful can make any belief system real and powerful. Not all botanicas are dens of sin and darkness. In 2005 at the L.A. Times, I wrote a front-page Column One piece about Charles Guelperin, an Argentine-born Santeria priest who runs Botanica el Congo Manuel at a strip mall on Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood, where he channels a 400-year-old Cuban spirit named Manuel. I attended a seance with Manuel and reported on meeting and "interviewing" the foul-mouthed spirit. Here's an old LAist link on the piece. And an excerpt:

Santeria is practiced in homes and in an increasing number of botanicas, such as El Congo Manuel, sandwiched between Pizza Loca and Pupuseria Loca in a Hollywood strip mall. The shops are one-stop spiritual markets that sell statuettes, oils, candles, herbs and other objects.

A botanica often feels like a cross between a cramped Catholic rectory in rural Latin America, a kitschy Halloween store and maybe a well-worn private TV den in Maywood. Botanicas almost always smell of fresh incense and dead wood.

Lately I've been seeing spiritual shops in L.A. cater to people who want help from illicit Mexican folk saint La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death. The L.A. Times recently reported on a photo exhibit celebrating one of the most rough and lawless neighborhoods in all the Americas, Mexico City's Tepito, the claustrophobia-inducing, mafia-run barrio bravo that I've had the pleasure of visiting a couple times (and surviving). As you can tell by the above photograph from that show, Tepito's roughnecks are notoriously devoted to Death.

His Royal Highness, Prince

Has my wish really come true? Prince did "Purple Rain" at the SuperBowl today:

I sat a couple rows behind Prince at a film screening a few months ago. As a person, he's tiny. As a performer, is he ... even human?

Welcome to Guantanamo -- in Texas

I bet the Mexican Embassy in Washington never sees this much action. The Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles issued an average of 316 passports a day in January 2007, La Opinion reported today. In 2006, the consulate issued an average of 146 passports a day. It's not likely the demand will subside under the government's new passport rules at U.S. airports. At the same time, the feds are also increasing the fees for citizenship from $330 to $595, a nasty new line of red tape that will further trip up new workers on their quest to integrate into U.S. society. For illegal immigrants from farther countries, their sole option appears to be sitting indefinitely at a "futuristic tent city" detention camp in Texas, which sounds like a domestic Guantanamo:

But civil liberties and immigration law groups allege that out of sight, the system is bursting at the seams. In the Texas facility, they say, illegal immigrants are confined 23 hours a day in windowless tents made of a Kevlar-like material, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel.

"I call it 'Ritmo' -- like Gitmo, but it's in Raymondville," said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer from nearby Harlingen.

The upsides of assured destruction

... Then again, an apocalyptic Earth ensured for future generations to inherit has already been a well-spring of productivity for the creative minds of today. Look at Cormac McCarthy's horrifying vision of a post-apocalyptic planet, "The Road," the source of many crazy nightmares. People are already dressing for the world McCarthy sees in our future.

But there also some highly regrettable manifestations of this phenomenon. Let this be a warning, filmmakers of America: "WaterWorld." 

* Image on top from a Terry Richardson spread.

Your kids, and kids' kids, are #$%&-ed

Call me pessimistic, fatalistic, or alarmist. I'll take it. Because I'm prepared to declare that the end of the world has officially started. According to a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released yesterday in Paris, global warming is real (duh), unstoppable, and we have only ourselves to blame. People. Now, I didn't see "An Inconvenient Truth," and I don't intend to. Propoganda of any kind just makes my head hurt. But this is the sort of conclusive, ideology-be-damned news story that makes me want to drop everything and head for the rain forest. (Or at least take a deep breath, and decide for good that most of the crap we fret over day-to-day is very inconsequential.)

While in the U.S. media outlets still, amazingly, feel the need to capitulate some to the dark side on this topic in the form of "objectivity," the Europeans, especially the British, are a little more in tune with the sobering reality, and all its nasty sub-topics. The Guardian, for instance, goes with a story today that says some IPCC scientists were approached with what were essentially bribe offers to dispute the findings. From ExxonMobil. What can we do? For starters, turn off the lights on the Eiffel Tower. For five minutes. Mother, help us. (Then again...)

Morrissey meets a ghost

From Kate Sullivan's interview with Morrissey: 

It was January 1989, and it was a very bitter winter. I went with   three friends onto Saddleworth Moor in the north of England, which is the most barren, desolate, desperate place . . . a place of many, many murders throughout British history — many bodies were dumped [there] because it was so hostile.

There’s nothing for miles, and it’s very easy to lose your way. We had driven through darkness even though it was only 6 p.m. — you can only see as far as your headlights. At one point, we tried to step outside the car and the wind was so ferocious, a bitter chill of winter. You can’t see lights for miles, because there’s nothing there, just peat and heather. Very, very unfriendly terrain.

And suddenly, as we turned onto a side road, from the side of the road, from the heather, somebody pleaded to the car.

It was a boy of maybe 18 years, and he was totally gray, and he had long hair in a sort of 1970s style, one of those strange feather cuts, and he wore a very small anorak and nothing else; he was completely naked. He just emerged from the heather and pleaded to the lights, and we drove past because we all instinctively knew that this was a spirit.

So, we went to the nearest phone box in the nearest village, and we called the police, and we said, “We have just driven down the Wessenden Road on Saddleworth Moor, and somebody has emerged from the side of the road and pleaded to the car.” The police said, “Keep an open mind [mimes hanging up a phone].”

It gets better. Barring any miracles, I won't be at his concerts this weekend at the Rose Bowl. But if you're going, bless you. Here's a link about William E. Jones' documentary on Latino obsession with Morrissey, "Is It Really So Strange?" And Gustavo Arellano's 2003 piece on Morrissey tribute band The Sweet and Tender Hooligans. * Image above from "Viva Morrissey" photos of L.A. Moz heads.

Toys, please respect

LA TACO has cool shots of that Mear One and Cache mural you've probably seen on Sunset Blvd., near that area where it cuts through the hill that divides Echo Park from Silver Lake. Mear is an L.A. graff legend. Cache is the cheeky genius behind those cute round chick murals we've seen all over the city core. Take note of the shot of the word "Respect!," aimed obviously at unskilled tagger "toys" who might be drawn to the mural's lovely surfaces to leave crude throw-ups. These sort of messages are usually effective. I often see them communicated in complete sentences, such as "Toys, please respect," another sign that, as I once inferred, graffiti tends to police itself.

TACO also has a good review of a carnitas shop in Compton that gives me some props after I waxed away on "My Favorite Taco." (Thanks for the comment, Dad. And for the love, TACO.)

In further unrelated related news, there's a new development planned in Chinatown, and in Oaxaca, the Triqui have declared their autonomy.

Who's signing up for the stake-out?

Nothing makes you feel like you live in an exciting city more than local scandals involving power and sex. Look at New York. And San Francisco, whose residents tend to be unyielding in their delusion that their city is somehow more sophisticated than ours. But let's give them credit where credit's due: their mayor, Gavin Newsom, was sleeping with a subordinate's wife, the Chronicle screams! I mean, how cosmopolitan is that?! Which makes us wonder when a paper in L.A. -- any paper -- will start performing a bit like the ballsy, nominally trashy tabloid our fair city so rightfully deserves. We certainly hope it's very, very soon. Very?