Join us this Sunday for a HOTEL MARIACH: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles book signing with the authors. The event will be held at Libros Schmibros from 12 - 3pm on Mariachi Plaza during the 23rd Annual Mariachi Festival in Boyle Heights. We hope to see you there. Pick up your latest edition of Brooklyn & Boyle while you're there. Here's the review I've written. ----------------------- Hotel Mariachi: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles is a book that operates in a critical and pivotal nexus. It could not be more necessary, urgent, timely or beautiful if it tried. At once scholarly and a divinely inspired treatise on the art and culture of mariachi, the book is also a love letter to the ghosts of mariachi music and the city of Los Angeles, historic Boyle Heights and those itinerant musicians who have yet to arrive. Part family history, part literary and photo-documentary as well as a sterling work of ethno-musicology, Hotel Mariachi ...

Brooklyn & Boyle is pleased to announce a first-time ever collaboration between artist, master printer and Modern Multiples founder Richard Duardo and artist Antonio Pelayo. One of the prints resulting from their recent collaboration (attached below), will be featured on the cover of our next issue. A special fundraiser/celebration honoring the artists and acknowledging August birthdays for so many of our artist, poet, writer and art aficionado friends (among them your humble Brooklyn & Boyle editor) will be held at KGB Studios on August 31st. The event will feature live music, poetry, and an art auction as well as good eats, delicious refreshment and good vibes. Business owners and well wishers are invited to participate at several levels as advertising sponsors. Sponsors who purchase a full-page ad taken out at the discounted rate of $300 ($400 for full-color) will not only have their message placed in 6,000 copies of Brooklyn & Boyle, but will have their logo ...

 by Abel Salas Theater is often about confessions. This is an article that incorporates a theater review. In this case, the theatrical confessions we refer to are somewhat exaggerated true-to-life experiences as told on stage by writer Josefina López through director Corky Domínguez, a long-time López collaborator. But more specifically, there will also be confessions of a personal nature that relate directly to this site and the paper bills itself as Brooklyn & Boyle. With the adaptation of her debut novel, Hungry Woman in Paris, into a stage production titled, simply, Hungry Woman, López has created an entirely new genre she calls "cineatro." Introducing Hungry Woman for a recent audience, she confesses that the reason we are seeing the book as a play rather than a movie is because she doesn't have the millions of dollars it would take to make a film version. The other confession is my own. I have known Josefina for years and it was, in part, her novel tha...

Valley Economic Development Center, in conjunction with East LA Community Corp. (ELACC), Barrio Planners with support from Brooklyn & Boyle, are pleased to present the fourth and final in a series of FREE and extremely informative workshops on improving your access to capital and the tools you need for growing your small, neighborhood-based business or launching a one!!! There is absolutely no obligation to apply for a loan, even though VEDC does, indeed, have a fund specifically allocated for loans to sma ll business owners in Boyle Heights and surrounding communities. The workshop is simply a very good place to start because the information presented helps eliminate all the red tape and mumbo jumbo you would normally get from a bank when you walk in to ask for help. In clear, understandable bi-lingual format (Spanish speakers also strongly encouraged to attend), the workshop takes all the mystery out of the process. Learn the do's and don...

By Susana Bautista                Bull Slipt by John Valadez at Koplin del Rio Gallery's "Artifex."  Five Latino artists that come from different generations, geographic conditions and cultural influences, but all with one thing in common; a commitment to artistically explore cultural artifacts that signify identity. These artifacts can be anonymous remnants from second-hand stores, found and used by Einar and Jaimex de la Torre, or more personal artifacts such as the clothing, jewelry, and tattoos on the figures drawn by Shizu Saldamando, or John Valadez’s cautious use of Chicano artifacts like the low-rider car and the Virgin. Harry Gamboa Jr.’s characters in his photographs, films, and performances have become artifacts of a new Chicano culture that is being constantly (re)created through the organic evolution of Chicano artists themselves. These five artists both appropriate cultural arti...

Last month, we remembered what it means to work, and we honored our mothers. Some of us are still fortunate enough to have them in our lives. Some of us keep them in our hearts because they are no longer with us. A close friend recently attended a funeral for the mother of a fifth-grade girl, who spoke with poise when she said that her only regret was that she had not had more time with her mom. While it is an incredibly heartbreaking story, it reminds us that our mothers are to be cherished as sacred angels as who bring beauty and love, unconditionally. And whether we mourn or celebrate our mothers, it is important to remember that among us are those who have grown up with two moms or two dads, with grandparents or adoptive parents. In each case, it is the loving and nurturing spirit transferred to our children that that allows them to forge forward and pursue their dreams. What matters most is that they are wanted and loved. In that vein, we offer a tribute to Sal Castro , wh...

An Excerpt from a Work in Progress by Clodomiro Calvo, Part 2 Canter Brother's Delicatessen along with the Breed Street Shul, were the social centers of the local residents. Eventually, if you lived in Boyle Heights, you would visit Canter Brothers. The display case was on the left side of the delicatessen, and small tables for four were on the right side of the room. A wooden partition separated the tables from the display case area. Two booths were located at the far end of the room, just beyond the tables.      As Tony opened the door, a loud chorus of voices reached his ears. His eyes scanned the warm room, and as he entered the aroma of sautéed onions and baked bread reminded him of his hunger. He noticed that all of the customers were men; the only female was the cashier.     Tony walked over to the cashier and said, "I'm looking for Howard Pensick." The cashier stared at this stranger, and then pointed to a man sitting in one of the booths...

By Abel Salas Written by Mercedes Floresislas and directed by Edward Padilla, Tamales de Puerco is a taut, emotionally driven examination of volatile community issues. That it also celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit with healthy doses of love, joy and humor makes it a near perfect production. At the center of what is essentially a good vs. evil drama, a beautiful, resolute young mother of a deaf child stands up against an abusive husband, takes on a society that rejects and persecutes her as an undocumented immigrant and overcomes the difficulties faced by the community of hearing impaired Latinos. Written as part of a Boyle Heights writing workshop led by Josefina López, the play was originally staged by CASA 0101 in 2008. For the current production, the script has been revisited with more attention to characterization. Things that worked well in the first incarnation have been kept and some of the clunky dialogue present in the early version has been streamline...

During the recent city elections, voter turn-out was, from all evidence, dismal. Too few people saw fit to exercise their civic responsibility. We won't go into the reasons we suspect were at the root of the record low turn-out at the ballot box here. For mayoral candidate Eric Garcett i, now locked in a run-off with W endy Greuel , the vote still managed to underscore his status as the front runner. Despite an impressive showing by newcomer Emanuel Pleitez , and a strong following among the city's Latino population for Wendy Greuel, Garcetti won most all of the precincts on the East Side where Latinos were the majority. It probably didn't hurt to have someone like Salma Hayek loving on him so openly in campaign commercials. Mayoral candidate Jan Perry , who terms out this summer as the Council Member from the Ninth District and still has considerable influence among her constituents, has endorsed Garcetti. Greuel, on the other hand, has picked up an endorsement f...

They are Las Cafeteras, a seven-piece ensemble born in El Sereno under the watchful care of Roberto Flores and his brood, a clan of family members—some only   symbolically adopted—that gathers still at a space called the East Side Café. Home to the spirit of collective cultural and political work, the East Side Café on Huntington Drive had long been an outpost of Zapatismo, progressive politics and a return to the roots of communal labor that seeks to uplift the needs of the many and eschew the glorification or gratification of the few. Quiet and humble, Roberto Flores refused then and refuses still to be considered a patriarch. His has always been the spirit of collectivism. His own children, among them Quetzal and Xochitl and Angela Lucía, took those lessons… that kind of life learning gleaned as children of the movimiento and made music with it. But it was not just music or even just movimiento music. It was black music, African music that had been molded and shaped by...