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That soon may be changing thanks to a new documentary film airing this August on public television.

Filmmaker Hector Galan has spent nearly 20 years documenting Latino stories for public television, including such PBS works as The Hunt for Pancho Villa, The Forgotten Americans, Chicano, the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, and Songs of the Homeland.

His latest film, Accordion Dreams, documents the history of this instrument and the role it plays in the development of Texas' most prominent working-class music throughout most of the 20th century.

So for all the people who really don't understand how it is that Mexicanos and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest ended up playing accordions of all things, give us that history.

Well, you know, it's a little cloudy, the history in terms of the actual accordion when it came to the United States. If you look at studies in Mexico, for instance, they claim that it came to Texas around New Braunfels area first.

Other scholars feel or state that the accordion came to Monterrey in Mexico first.

So there's that people really don't know where the German button accordion first arrived. But the fact is, it's the German button accordion, the diatonic accordion that has maintained.

The first accordions that came were, of course, the one row sort of primitive accordions. And people were playing oompas and polkas and a lot of this lively music that the people embraced and slowly became incorporating that music into their own.

And what I found fascinating was to see these kids in your documentary who are playing the accordion, a la Jimi Hendrix. [laughter]

It's young people like those are maintaining the traditions of Valerio Longoria started. Some of the pioneers that created new forms of playing the accordion are innovators like Paulino Bernal and some of these great accordion players. They are maintaining those traditions.

He was born poor in Chihuahua of a Mexican mother and Irish father and became an actor who was often cast in the role of the foreigner, the other.

Listen to some of the names of the characters he played.

Manolo de Palma, Chief Crazy Horse, Eufemio Zapata, Attila, Quasimodo, and of course, Zorba.

He won two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, one for Viva Zapata and the other for Lust for Life.

Later in his life, Anthony Quinn continued to make film and television appearances, but his creative endeavors turned mainly to painting and books.

His second autobiography, One Man Tango, was published in 1995.

So was it when you went to Italy that you feel that things changed? You had been typecast in Hollywood for so long as a pirate or an Indian chief, for example. When did the roles that you were able to play begin to change for you?

Right after I made La Strada, everything changed.

I became, forgive me because I don't believe in it, but I mean I don't believe it happened. I became what they call an international star at that time. And things changed for me then.

And then I had won the Academy Award for Viva Zapata. So that changed my life to a great extent.

But the biggest, interesting enough, the biggest hit I ever made was in Mohammed, which was not shown in America for political reasons.

And another picture I made called Lion of the Desert, which was about an Arab Omar Mukhtar, who was the hero of all the Arab people in the world. And so I have 750 million fans in the Arab countries.

You know, reading your book, One Man Tango, there's really a sense that you are, at this point of your life, dealing with issues of spirituality, of what the world means, what the world means to you.

My name is Quique Aviles and I'm a poet and performer from Washington DC and this poem is called Border Crossing Chicken.

The chicken crossed the border to taste some Kentucky Fried chicken. The chicken crossed the border to meet Frank Purdue.

The chicken crossed cause the other side wanted to play a quick game of chicken.

The chicken crossed wanting to meet the gay lobby and shake hands with feminist hands.

The chicken crossed to sign a bilateral bilingual bisexual chicken free trade agreement.

The chicken crossed to look into American chicken deportation methodology.

The chicken crossed to deliver a spanish-speaking pizza. The chicken crossed to be a contestant in Miss Chicken USA.

The chicken crossed to fall in love with a new-age rooster guru.

The chicken crossed to lambada with Californian chicks. The chicken crossed for four years of studies at Chicken MIT.

The chicken crossed to learn Black chicken slang. The chicken crossed out of curiosity, wonder and need.

The chickens simply wanted to get a chance to meet the other chicken. The chicken simply wanted to look you in the eyes.

The bilingual film chronicles the struggle of immigrants to form a union in Southern California during the 1990s.

Laverty convinced director Ken Loach there was a film in the story of the janitors and he began poking around the union where he ran into organizer Jono Shaffer.

But over time he, you know, sort of wore on me. He said he was making a movie. I was like, yeah, right, everybody in L.A. is going to make a movie. You know, it's like this will end up in some trash can somewhere.

Shaffer, who bears a resemblance to the film's organizer, says Laverty and Ken Loach took some artistic license, making the work of the organizer a little more reckless and spontaneous than it is in real life.

But he says they didn't exaggerate the difficulty of organizing a union in the United States.

Real life janitor Dolores Sanchez says she saw a lot of herself and her co-workers in Bread and Roses.

It doesn't have Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson, it doesn't have a lot of action, it's got a political bent to it about union organizing and those just aren't easy things. It's not a popcorn, bubble gum kind of movie.

The film was made independently, backed by a group of investors from Europe, but says Ortenberg he hopes it's successful enough at the box office to convince Hollywood to take on similar projects.

Bread and Roses debuts June 1st in 15 to 18 cities across the country with more to follow in the coming weeks.

I see the work of the Teatro as being a Chicano Latino theater company over the years, but it's been more than that. It's been a cultural institution. I think we've had an impact not just as a theater company, but as a mover, a mover and a shaker.

I'm Maria Martin. For more than 35 years now, the theater company El Teatro Campesino has brought the Chicano and Latino experience to the American stage.

Once a ragtag troupe performing in the great fields of California, it staged the back of a flatbed truck. El Teatro Campesino has made its mark from movies to Broadway, training a now veteran generation of Latino actors and directors and influencing a new generation.

Like most days, it's busy at the old packing shed that Teatro Campesino converted to its theater and headquarters. Kinan and Anahuac Valdez, both young directors, actors and filmmakers, are busy rehearsing a new play.

And in the Teatro's recording studio, their uncle, singer, composer and actor Daniel Valdez, is recording the soundtrack of the Teatro's annual miracle play, The Virgen of Tepeyac.

Many of those who will act in this play this year have done so countless times before. Some 10, 20 or even 30 years. Like the Teatro Campesino itself, it's become a tradition, an expression of community and familia.

At that time, I was aware that the problem with trying to be a Chicano playwright in America was that there was no such thing as Hispanic theater in America.

There was community Hispanic theater, but professional Hispanic theater in America was almost nonexistent.

So I saw it as a challenge, you know. Here's a challenge to try to fill this gap, this hole, this enormous vacuity.

Teatro's early performances were simple, agitprop pieces. Valdez called them actos.

Bilingual, one-act skits using broad characters. The grower, el patroncito. The strikers, los huelguistas. And los esquirolaes, the scabs.

In those days, there were no sets, no costumes. The actors wore signs around their necks with their characters' names. The stage was the back of a flatbed truck. It was, says Valdez, our own brand of commedia dell'arte.

So back when we started, it was basically an empty plane. And I knew that as a playwright. Here I was a playwright without an audience, a playwright without a theater that could produce my works, a playwright without actors, Latino actors that could do my roles.

So I had to begin to write to my reality. And so agitprop and the acto level, and later the mito and the corrido, was the way that I could survive as a theater artist by not overtaxing, if you will, the preparation of my actors and my audience.

Political theater made perfect sense. It was free. That makes a lot of sense to an audience.

But it was passionate. And it was pointed at an action that they could also participate in. So that allowed our survival.

That led to my being invited to commission to write a play for the Mark Taper Forum.

By that time, the audience in Los Angeles was willing to pay for theater tickets.

So that proved that, oh, Latinos can finally sustain commercial theater. The problem is that there has not been another one since then.

And so Zoot Suit became a symbol of Chicano identity, but also a symbol of American identity. So that's what the play's about.

Four hundred thousand people saw the production of Zoot Suit at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where it ran for 46 weeks, with actor Edward James Olmos in the lead role of El Pachuco.

Before I got that phone call, I could not work in this community because there was nothing for me to do. I've been entertaining people since 1961. Here it is, 1978. I had not gained one penny from the American theater. The first paycheck I ever got was from Zoot Suit when I made 250 bucks a week for acting on stage.

Actor Edward James Olmos, star of Stand and Deliver and Miami Vice, recalls he was a furniture mover when he was asked to audition for Zoot Suit and saw a script of the play.

Words never seen printed in my life. Words that I had heard all my life. Words that only could come from the heart and the passion and the understanding of the finest who command the language.

I said, my lord, que le wacha mis trapos, ese?

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you're about to see is a construct of fact and fantasy. But relax, weigh the facts, and enjoy the pretense.

Our Pachuco realities will only make sense if you grasp their stylization. It was a secret fantasy for Vivato, living in or out of the Pachucada, to put on the Zoot Suit and play the myth. Pues Orale!

This is the fact, the fantasy, the music, the myth, the magic, the movie. Zoot Suit. Universal Pictures presents Zoot Suit, an American Original.

Seven years went by between the release of the film of Zoot Suit and Valdez's second film, La Bamba.

La Bamba, the story of 1950s singer Ricardo Valenzuela, better known as Ritchie Valens, grossed 55 million dollars in the United States, 90 million worldwide.

What makes America great is that it is dynamic, and what makes any theater great or dynamic is the audience.

And in order to ensure that, and some movies have made over 50 million on their first weekend, in order to ensure that they have to pack films with movie stars with a lot of flash, a lot of stuff that is really aimed at the target audience, in most cases the largest audience is the 17 to 25.

So a film has to cater to those tastes, meaning action, meaning male action oriented films. And occasionally they allow themselves, these investors in studios to gamble with an unusual project. Occasionally a surprise comes along and a sleeper becomes a big hit. But there are limits. Nothing can compete with the big blockbusters.

Though Luis Valdez is widely considered a pioneer, he himself doesn't consider his work nearly done yet. Last year, Valdez premiered a new original play, The Mummified Deer. Zoot Suit had a successful revival in Chicago. And in the long term, a number of important film projects remain on El Teatro Campesino's horizon.

Well, I have the movie on Cesar Chavez, you know, that I'm struggling. That's another protracted struggle. But for all the reasons that made Cesar who he was, this is another film that is a long time struggle. Maybe just because I've chosen, you know, this life of struggle that happens this way. But there's a lot of truth in it that California is not ready to acknowledge yet.

And I will continue to work with the family, with United Farm Workers, and with Hollywood in order to make that a reality. So the ultimate result though, and I know Dolores Huerta feels this way, is that maybe what that project is, is an independent film. You know, unrestrained by any corporate pressures. And I think probably Cesar would have appreciated that more.

Poor, you know, in the sense that they won't have a huge budget, but it will be a labor of love and a labor of commitment, a political and social commitment, human commitment, which I think really explains who Cesar was. So maybe that's the way it'll get done.

And don't be surprised if it comes out of this packing shed, because this is a very natural place for it to come out of. And really just looking at it, it's very difficult to take Cesar and to try to put him through the sieve of Hollywood. You know, it somehow doesn't work. And I think he knew that. He knew that for 10 years, the last 10 years of his life, when I was talking to him about this. He resisted the notion. He didn't want a Hollywood movie about him. He hated that stuff.

And I understand. I understand exactly what he meant. And so maybe it'll get done that way. Maybe it'll get done by somebody else. You know what I'm saying? But at least I will have carried the ball this far.

And I have written seven drafts of the Cesar Chavez story, some major drafts that deal with the history of the farm workers from my perspective and my experience in it. I was six years old when I met Cesar Chavez. And he was a pachuco. He was a zoot suiter who ran with one of my cousins.

So you see, what it comes to is the fact that really I'm talking about a member of my own family here. And that's the best way. This is the way I feel about it. So I'll try my best. And we shall proceed and persevere.

Susana Trilling is a chef and former restaurateur from the U.S. now living in Oaxaca, Mexico.

She offers cooking classes at her school, Seasons of the Heart, and also teaches across the United States.

Latino USA caught up with Susana Trilling in Austin, Texas at Manuel's Restaurant, where she shared with us her recipe for ensalada de nopales asados, grilled nopales salad.

Let's just do the ensalada nopal.

Okay so you take a cactus and you clean the spines off.

And when you have the whole petals, you wash them well.

And then you grill them in a cast iron frying pan or on a griddle or a comal.

And then you cut them up in little pieces, cut up some tomato, some green onions, some cilantro.

And then you roast some garlic and chop that up fine.

You mix that all together.

And then in a molcajete, you grind up some star anise, maybe one star, and then about half a cup of vinegar, half a cup of olive oil, and the juice of two limes.

And you mix that in and then you cut up some avocado and you fold that in.

And that's called ensalada de nopal asado. It's really good for you.

And in case you didn't catch all of that the first time, here's the recipe.

One pound of fresh nopales, nine garlic cloves, a quarter pound of tomatoes, three cebollitas, or green onions, two avocados, half a cup of chopped cilantro, or coriander, one star of anise, ground, a third of a cup of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.

I serve them on totopos or like tortillas that are baked in the oven with a little bit of queso fresco on top.

Susana Trilling is author of the book Seasons of My Heart, A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca, Mexico.

The recipe for Ensalada de Nopales Asados can also be found on our website at latinousa.org.

[Music] In Old New Mexico, way before the advent of the railroad, candle flames danced in tin sconces on white plaster walls. Tin flames lit the faces of Christian saints. Tin crosses led processions of worship.

In those days, traders brought in small tin items. Then in the mid-1800s, the railroads began to haul in large sheets of tin. It became plentiful for the first time, inspiring the golden days of tin making for the next 75 years.

Sadly, we don't know much about tin's history. Few artists signed their work, and much of it has been lost. But today, tin making is popular once again in New Mexico.

Reporter Deborah Begel dropped in on a tin making class at the public library in the northern New Mexico town of El Rito.

There's two ways of making the tin. One is the way we learned here, where you do each little indentation into the tin on your own by doing each one individually, while nowadays they're making that with machines. But I think it's more unique when you take the time and make your own piece.

If you're going to make it into a nightlight, you're going to need a very pointy tip. We have different ones here, and yours is going to be a nightlight, right?

Elaine Archuleta started taking tin making classes and found she couldn't stop. She stayed for three semesters. Now she's teaching her first class at the El Rito Public Library. She explains each step to students one on one. I lean in close to catch her soft voice.

You don't want your holes too close, but you don't want them too far. So you can keep that distance away from each one of them and go all the way around your piece and see how it works.

Tin work in our community hasn't been around lately these last years, but the thing about it is that it's been done many years before, and I think it's great that we can introduce it back into the young kids and keep it going for the years to come.

When it comes to designs, Archuleta encourages people to be adventurous. For inspiration in her work, she likes to look at quilting patterns.

Start stamping out any design that you want. Create your own. Do you have a plan? Let's see. You know, it's just mostly design and shapes. It's easy on you, especially as a beginner.

What you're going to do is draw the line all the way around your image, okay, and keep it a certain distance away from the edge.

I made a nightlight shaped like a fish in a neat little frame for the last picture I took of my dearest dog, Annie. As the class drew to a close, I grew anxious to get home to hang the picture and see the light come through the fish.

I wasn't the only one making plans. Get the hole, Elaine. I'm going to hang it. Well, let's finish it. You can make the hole. Let's see if you can do that part, though. Oh, look at that line.

Alex's line may be crooked, but his ornament will look great on the Christmas tree this year.

So then people that were in other disciplines like graphic designers, painters, and then they say, you know, 'I'm working with the image from the border, an image from Tijuana, and I fusioned this in my works. Can I use your music?' Yeah, of course.

For this year's Academy Awards, actor Benicio Del Toro has been nominated as best supporting actor. If he wins, Del Toro would become only the second Latino to win an Oscar in one of the major categories. The only other time that happened was in 1961.

And my father gave me permission to watch this movie about something happening in New York and of course you were there.

You're speaking of West Side Story.

And certainly that moment for me became an incredible moment in recognition. In that someone who had my name existed in this country which of course I previously felt that no one did exist in this country with that name.

My goodness that movie did more things for more Latinos than you can possibly imagine.

Eddie Olmos and Paul Rodriguez both told me that they felt 'Well if she can do it, I can do it.' And it's what encouraged them to pursue a career in our business.

Visible? Oh my dear it took a long time. The fact that I was in movies and television and all that kind of stuff really didn't mean a thing. It's how you perceive how visible you are and I didn't feel that way for many many years.