Ofrenda by Isaac Pelayo, mixed media, 2019 A TRIBUTE IN HONOR OF THE 10TH ANNUAL EL VELORIO DAY OF THE DEAD FIESTA By L.N. Amoratto It’s all about the ofrenda , you know, the trunk-load of plywood cut into uniform shapes. Pelayo has it down. You give an army of artists what passes for a universal canvas that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and obligates everyone to work with the same piece of wood shaped into a cross or lucha libre mask or something else he’ll dream up soon and which will allow him to include pretty damn near 100 artists in an exhibition which will grace the walls of the Plaza de la Raza Boathouse Gallery at Lincoln Park. And all 100 of them, well, most of them, will be asked to try and sell ten tickets. Few will succeed.  They will, instead, give the tickets away and pay for them out of pocket. A substantial portion of the money goes to keeping the lights on at Plaza de la Raza, and the look of worry off of director María Jimenez’ face, because you wouldn’...

by Abel M. Salas Once the capacity crowd has spilled out of the Tom Bradley Theater at the iconic Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC), Richard Montoya joins them in the ornate, marble-floored lobby. The seasoned performer is—with Herbert Siguenza and Ric Salinas—a co-founder of Culture Clash, the renowned three-man comedy troupe the evening’s throng of patrons had come to see. With the faint residue of stage make-up still evident on his face, the veteran actor-writer-director is being unduly modest. “Hey, man,” Montoya says, rolling his eyes slightly under raised eyebrows and flashing a sheepish, almost apologetic grin. “Guess you could tell we were working without a net up there.” In the aftermath of the acclaimed trio’s second-ever, full-blown staging of Culture Clash: An American Odyssey , an original new production premiered at the “Encuentro de Las Américas: Embracing Our Voices” international theater festival, Montoya is fretting over kinks and glitches—perceptible to him a...

by Alejo Sierra HUIZACHE has become, according to several among its small crew of editors, designers, proofreaders and support staff, the nation’s leading Latino literary magazine, easily home to world-class poetry, fiction, and essays from the original American West. Subscribers and long-time readers of the seven-year-old publication are thrilled, they say,  at the launch yet another blockbuster issue featuring writers from the established Latino literary cannon and, as always, new voices with cutting-edge talent impossible to ignore.   “Today, the West and Southwest are exploding with art and culture rooted in centuries of tradition and fueled by history and a new contemporary culture. The cities that once circumscribed our western frontier—El Paso, San Antonio, Chicago, Denver, Tucson, Austin, San Francisco, Juárez, San Diego, Fresno, and Los Angeles—are pounding with life,” says HUIZACHE founding editor Dagoberto Gilb, an acclaimed writer who also directs th...