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FROM THE GREATER EAST SIDE: Time to Roll Up Our Sleeves, Says Cudahy’s Martín U. Fuentes

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Martín Ulysses Fuentes By Abel M. Salas When Martín U. Fuentes launched his successful campaign for Cudahy City Council as a first time candidate for office in 2022, he was well-acquainted with the history of political scandal that had wreaked havoc on local municipal governments across a region now commonly known as South East Los Angeles, or SELA. For years, beginning with a 2003 L.A. Times exposé on then South Gate political operative Albert Robles, Jr., a tale fraught by charges of greed, graft and cronyism, Fuentes--and the rest of Southern California--had been steadily bombarded by unflattering media coverage with respect to the area. Reporters often referred to L.A.‘s southeastern suburbs as a “corridor of corruption,” a designation he considered excessive and not entirely fair. “I was still in high school when I started hearing about Robles and the shenanigans at South Gate City Hall,” says Fuentes. “Then it was (the city of) Bell, which was actually worse and had b...
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The Enchanting World of a Chicano Trickster: The Whimsy in José Lozano’s Pictures

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Metro/La Brea and Exposition Station/One of Eight Panels, ceramic tile, 2012 By Dianna Marisol Santillano, Special to Brooklyn & Boyle   In Junot Diaz’s novel, This is How you Lose Her (2012), he tells of the Dominican experience in the U.S. and in particular Dominican love and life in New Jersey. The narratives portrayed are of everyday folks that simultaneously occupy two cultures and how they shape and negotiate their reality as they seek to redefine their identities. What is refreshing and distinct in his work is that his subjects are complex individuals full of gravitas, whose very real depiction collapses the fine line between good and evil. Visually, and on the opposite coast, one can locate a similar type of authentic yet nuanced and multidimensional representation in the rich imagery produced by Chicano artist José Lozano. Born in Los Angeles, but having spent his childhood in the borderlands of Juarez, Mexico before returning to southern California where he attend...
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US Latino Political Power Lost in the Mist of Time

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by Richard Vasquez  If you listen to what Latinos want, you’ll hear echoes of a seed I helped plant some 40 years ago as a marketer for many of the biggest U.S. consumer advertisers. Among the brands--and institutions--I’ve advised are: Sears, Kia Motors America, Walt Disney Company/ Disneyland, NBC Universal/Telemundo, The California Endowment and the City of Los Angeles. Most marketers in this space came up among the ranks of the ad agency system. I began as a southern California field representative for U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, the legendary moderate-to-liberal Democrat. As part of an effort to understand the implications of an impending seismic shift in demographics represented by the explosive growth in blue-collar Mexican and Central American communities, his office saw fit to hire a Mexican-American kid from a working class, pro-union L.A. family. A portion of that population surge had been spurred by the arrival of immigrants from Mexico and Central America in pursui...
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