From l.: Jeanine Mason, Demián Bichir, Matías Ponce, Daniel Valdez and Rose Portillo in Zoot Suit at the Taper.  Photo by Craig Schwartz. by Abel M. Salas Nearly 40 years after its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in Downtown Los Angeles, Zoot Suit has returned to the city that gave it birth under the direction of the show’s original creator Luís Valdez with a bang. The revival production—being staged as part of the Taper’s 50-Year Anniversary celebration, was commissioned in 1977 by the late Gordon Davidson, then Artistic Director of the MTF, after a meeting with Teatro Campesino founder and director Valdez. The play opened in 1978 and began attracting sell-out houses. It ran for months on end before moving to Hollywood’s famed Aquarius Theater and then finally to the renowned Winter Garden Theater in New York where it became the first Chicano theater production to open on Broadway. Valdez went on to produce and direct a feature film adaptation of the play with th...

  by Abel Salas Jonathan Sanchez, co-founder of Eastern Group Publications (EGP), a chain of newspapers that, until a recent consolidation, included the Eastside Sun , the Northeast Sun , the Mexican American Sun , the Bell Gardens Sun , the City Terrace Comet , the Commerce Comet , the Montebello Comet , the Monterey Park Comet , the ELA Brooklyn Belvedere Comet , the Wyvernwood Chronicle and the Vernon Sun , took his leave on December 23rd, 2016. Associate Publisher and Chief Operating Officer at the vaunted East Side media organization, Sanchez was 64. A life-long Eastside community spokesperson and advocate, Sánchez helmed the business alongside his partner and wife Dolores, with whom he established the business in 1979. He shared his last moments with loved ones after a brief but courageous battle with cancer. Born to José Vicente Sánchez and Juanita Beltrán Sánchez in 1952 as one of nine in the lively Sánchez brood, the native Angeleno was raised and later establish...

Left - right: Jimmy Gómez, Wendy Carrillo, María Cabildo and Arturo Carmona By Abel Salas With the appointment of former Congressman Xavier Becerra to a post as the California State Attorney General, the seat he leaves vacant has drawn a crowded field of congressional contenders. A contest in which no clear front-runner has emerged from among the 23 Washington D.C. hopefuls seeking to replace Becerra in the 34th U.S. Congressional District, the race is as much about redefining the soul of Latino leadership in Los Angeles as it is about effective fundraising and the community-building required to generate enough ground-level campaign momentum between now and the April 4th special primary election. The top two primary candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will appear on the ballot in the general election on June 6th, 2017. In what might be best described as a densely populated political fray, the 23 candidates represent a broad swath of experience, leadership styles and ...

Michael Torrenueva as Aladddin and Sarah Kennedy as Princess Jasmine at Casa 0101 . Photo by Luis Gaudi. by Abel Salas Extended through March by popular demand, Aladdin: Dual Language Edition , one of several official adaptations of Disney's hit Broadway musical, has become the most successful musical theater production to ever debut on the Eastside of Los Angeles. Staged by TNH Productions in a co-presentation with venerable community playhouse Casa 0101, the play has wowed audiences from throughout greater Los Angeles since opening on January 13th and continues to attract sell-out crowds. Under the direction of TNH (Teatro Nuevos Horizontes) founder and Artistic Director Rigo Tejeda, the production—based on the 1992 animated Disney film and featuring the film's musical score—has garnered rave reviews while delighting both neighborhood theater-goers and visitors who have flocked to Boyle Heights in record numbers just to attend the show. Presented in association with...

By Alci Rengifo, Staff Writer/Associate Editor In an age when big budget, multiplex cinema is saturated with special effects behemoths, indie filmmaking is tackling what matters. Such is the case with Dante Betteo’s The Other Barrio , a gritty pulp noir that explores gentrification in San Francisco. Filmed in stylish tones and gothic shadows, The Other Barrio is a detective story with a clear, cutting social message. It also vibrates with a proud Latino identity while celebrating the overall diversity of a city, beset by corporate interests. The film’s story follows a San Francisco housing inspector named Roberto Morales (Richard Montoya), who finds himself investigating a suspicious fire at a residential hotel in the Latino Mission District. A native of The Mission, Morales laments the take over of his boyhood home by expensive condos for tech workers, this as local residents are being slowly pushed out. Morales suspects the fire, which has killed seven people, can be tied to t...

Wendy Carrillo, Candidate for U.S. Congress , was raised in Boyle Heights an d City Terrace. by Ulisses Sánchez The disconnect between government and the people it serves is often so profound, it seems as if they are worlds apart. It matters little if we are discussing local neighborhoods in relationship to either city hall or Congress.  Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in his 2005 inauguration speech, observed that “It may be a short way from City Terrace to City Hall, but fellow Angelenos, we all know what a vast distance it truly is.” It is a sentiment shared by many, especially on the Eastside where there is a widespread and perhaps legitimate perception that the needs and concerns of its working-class and marginally middle-class residents have been historically subordinate to the interests of outsiders. It is was that disconnect that led Wendy Carrillo to pack up her bags, rent a car and make her way from Los Angeles to the Standing Rock Sioux reservatio...

Special thanks to Raúl González, of Mictlan Murals for the image above, Dos Pericos , acrylic on canvas. By Luís Reyes Lamas A flock of parrots gathered on a tree to interrupt the tranquility of the cemetery, to chatter and build community. They sounded like a big group of comadres gathered around the dinner table drinking wine. The beautiful birds were there to fill-in our ancestors on the on-goings of the neighborhood. One told of how the streets were still calm if compared to the decades of drugs and the crazy life. Another marveled, at a high volume and pitch, at all of the new buildings and the different looking people moving in. A third comadre commenting on how she had not seen people so light since the owners of the shops on Brooklyn a long time ago… Several commiserated over the sad state of the schools so many years later. They chatted of the wonderful jogging track and of how it attracted so many brown faces in their quest for better health. They squawked about the be...

L.-r.: Jim Fisher, Armando Valdes, Aura Vasquez, Abel Salas and Armando Telles at Fisher's Culver City home to load supplies. PART ONE OF A SERIES by Abel M. Salas I had no idea how I would get there, but I knew I needed to be in North Dakota. Unforeseen, a visceral tug had alerted me loudly, telling me to make a move and do it soon enough to see the sky over Standing Rock by Thanksgiving Day. It was imperative, a manda I could not escape. Before Día de los Muertos, I’d begun mulling over the irony of celebrating a holiday inspired by the Mayflower pilgrims while the Lakota Sioux water protectors and their allies engaged in peaceful prayer were being shot with rubber bullets, attacked with dogs, tear-gassed and sprayed with cold water in sub-freezing temperatures. But I suddenly felt compelled, guided by unseen hands, toward the Oceti Sakowin camp. Yes, it is true that I was, by early November, already considering how to capture the ironic nature of the harvest celebr...

From left: Antonia Hernández, Councilmember Gil Cedillo, Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Attorney Mike Feuer.  (Photo courtesy the Office of the Mayor, Los Angeles) by Abel M. Salas Offering a powerful and pointed response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric espoused by the President-elect as a hallmark of his campaign, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was joined earlier today by L.A. County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, City Councilmember Gil Cedillo, City Attorney Mike Feuer, California Community Foundation president and CEO Antonia Hernandez, the Weingart Foundation’s Fred Ali and Robert K. Ross, M.D., president and CEO of The California Endowment. The philanthropic and elected leaders came together at a press conference to announce the creation of a $10 million fund to assist immigrants facing deportation. Amidst the fear and uncertainty that has followed the election, many hard-working, law-abiding immigrants worry that a Trump administration will make good on his threats to cr...

 by Jesse Bliss The twinkle in her eye gives away the possibility she did it. Dramatic entry ways with large, white marble flights of stairs, the smell of incense and statues of Buddha in various iterations jolt one to awakening as the journey begins through His Lai Temple, the largest of its’ kind in the United States, to the four grand hallways of Fo Guang Yuan Gallery that hold the other-worldly work of Emi Motokawa. The Buddha Nature exhibit brings the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most influential scriptures of Buddhism, to light in the simplest and most accessible of ways through the lens of hip-hop and wide-eyed souls occupying the space of another realm. This in itself is the forefront of artistic innovation: taking potentially abstract ideas and transforming them into concrete, accessible concepts that instantly strike the soul. This is the first time in history that art, Buddhism, and Hip-Hop intersect in such a way. To house this meeting inside the wall...