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

Now, when I interviewed Valerio Longoria in your film, Accordion Dreams, you call him the great innovator of Conjunto music. What struck me, and this was in 1985, but what struck me about him was that he was so humble.

And the notion of Conjunto music really being a roots music, a working class music, a real pueblo music.

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.

Now, yes, they do experiment and dabble in different areas, but that key music is still there. And that's what gives me hope that it will stay and it will be what it is.

Well, thanks very much for speaking with us. We've been talking with filmmaker, Hector Galan of Galan Productions. His latest documentary, Accordion Dreams, is scheduled to air nationally August 30th on PBS.

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

Well, that's interesting because, I mean, I've never negated it. I've always said, I mean, as a matter of fact, in my early years in Hollywood, I was in trouble.

As you know, there were a lot of racist things going on at that time in the 30s and 40s during the war.

I did negate that I was Mexican, saying that I was Tarahumara, Indian. I really still prefer calling myself Indian-blooded than Mexican.

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?

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

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.

v

Because your father fought with Pancho Villa.

Yes, he fought with Pancho Villa, and my mother did too because she was a solidera.

How do you say goodbye in Tarahumara?

Tarahumara, I don't say no, no, no. I don't say goodbye in Tarahumara.

As Bread and Roses opens, its heroine, Maya Montenegro, played by Pilar Padilla, survives a dramatic border crossing.

Once in Los Angeles, she joins her sister, Rosa, played by Elpidia Carrillo, working as a janitor in a downtown high-rise. Soon, a union organizer comes calling.

Hi, is Rosa in? Yeah, Hold On. Mami! Que? Hay alguien en la puerta-

I'm Rosa, Justice for Rosa's campaign.

There is every chance you can get fired. I've seen it before. What are you going to do? Pay the rent? Feed my kids?

And you? You better keep away from this nice one. Listen, they will fire anyway!

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.

Director Ken Loach required the actors to work a shift alongside real life janitors, some of whom also appear in the movie along with other L.A. activists.

Si se puede, si se puede, si se puede...

In this scene at a union celebration, the music is provided by Los Jornaleros del Norte, five men who haven't quit their real life day jobs.

They're members of L.A.'s day laborers union and they play their topical songs at labor and immigrant rights events.

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.

On this special edition of our program, we remember farmworker leader Cesar Chavez by recalling 35 years of the theater that grew out of the farmworkers movement, El Teatro Campesino.

Teatro had a tremendous impact because it gave people the courage and the vision and also made it possible for them to laugh at themselves during a hard, hard struggle.

El Teatro Campesino, its past, present and future, in the words of Teatro founder Luis Valdez.

I was six years old when I met Cesar Chavez. He used to come to my house when I was a little kid. He lived on the same street where I was born.

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.

Where's our warm-up coach? I'm just, I'm getting everybody. Do you want any more people?

It's full in San Juan Bautista, California, the tranquil California mission town that Teatro Campesino, the farmworker's theater, has called home for over three decades.

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.

Teatro Campesino is corazón de la gente. It's what our soul is about and it touches it.

I've always thought of Teatro Campesino as being the mirror image of us.

There's a lot of theater all over the country, but there's only one, El Teatro Campesino.

El Teatro Campesino is now practically an institution for many Latinos, especially for Mexican-Americans in the Southwest.

That's because El Teatro Campesino, which has produced television programs and motion pictures, and has been the spawning ground for some well-known Latino actors, has its roots in the very beginning of an important historical movement for Latinos, the Chicano movement for social and political recognition.

For the Teatro Campesino, it all started back in 1965.

To whom it may concern, there is an interest in establishing a bilingual community farm workers theater.

The primary aim of this theater would be to belong to the workers themselves.

It is time the Raza landed the artistic blow it is capable of giving.

Those interested in attending an organizational meeting, please sign below.

The place was Delano, California.

This was the text of a leaflet which announced the formation of a theater troupe quite unlike any before.

It was influenced by La Barraca, the 1930s traveling theater of Spain's Federico García Lorca, by the Mexican burlesque style known as Carpa, and by the work of the German playwright Bertholt Brecht.

But the actual spark that led to the founding of El Teatro Campesino was something known simply as La Huelga, the farm workers movement for social justice.

[Chanting] Huelga! Huelga!

Farm workers had gone on strike in September of 1965, led by labor organizer Cesar Chavez.

Now the night that I left San Francisco for Delano, I was talking to this guy from the Free Southern Theater, which was also an inspiration because they were black actors from New York City touring the south in 1964-65.

And I was talking to one of them, a guy by the name of Murray Levy, and he said,

You're going down there to start a theater company? And I said, Yeah, you know. With what? Do you have any money? I said, No. No funding? No. Do you have a board of directors? No. Do you have any actors? No. Do you have any scripts? No.

He says, How are you going to do it? And I said, I don't know. But I'm going to do it.

If you believe in something, it becomes true.

We're at the Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers theater from Delano, California. And we've come here this evening to tell you the story of our strike, our huelga, and of our union, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO led by Cesar Chavez.

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.

Through music, song, and drama, the members of the Teatro gave the Huelga animo.

They kept the strikers' spirits up and even persuaded some of the strike breakers to join up.

Years later, Cesar Chavez recalled the impact that el Teatro Campesino had on his movement.

Teatro and the struggle really made a difference for us. Luis was able to get people who had been on strike three months, four months, six months a year to laugh at their own conditions, to look at themselves, and to join with us laughing about the injustices and the growers who were committing those injustices against them.

Teatro had a tremendous impact, and one of the factors why we won that strike, because it gave people the courage and the vision, and also made it possible for them to laugh at themselves during a hard, hard struggle.

The first striker to join the Teatro was Agustin Lira, then a 21-year-old migrant from Coahuila, Mexico.

Strangely enough, I was working in the fields around Stockton, Sacramento, and I bought a newspaper and I picked it up, and it said that there was a strike going on, you know, and I'm very sure that I, inside of my soul, I was looking for an opportunity to fight back, because my parents had been farmworkers.

And we had never had a chance to fight for better wages, but of course we were exploited.

35 years after the Huelga, I spoke with director and Teatro Campesino founder, Luis Valdez, at his theater in San Juan Bautista about the past and the present.

It was very inspiring to walk into the Teatro Campesino here in San Juan Bautista, and there was so much going on, there was so much energy here.

Is this the old spirit? Is there a new spirit?

Well, fortunately, it's both the old and the new, you know, coming together and meeting head-on, so to speak.

We have a new generation that was born into the Teatro. They're in their 20s, starting to push 30, which means that they're entering a real age of responsibility here, organizationally speaking, in addition to the creative impulse and spark. So that's real good for the company, you know.

You know, every organization is like a living organism, and like a human being, an organism, an organization sometimes has to take a break, has to take a rest, they have mental breakdowns, they have moments of exhaustion where they have to sleep. Organizations do sleep.

So the rhythms come and go, and it's been an amazing year. This is a real important year for us.

It's not just our 35th anniversary year, it's what comes after 35 years.

It's a certain kind of solidity and experience and patience and family cohesion and generational bonding, transgenerational bonding that you can actually harvest after many years of work.

When you look back at 35 years of the Teatro Campesino and all of its manifestation, what or how would you characterize what its continuing legacy is?

I think the reality of El Teatro is cultural, and I understand it a lot better now than I did, you know, when it started. It was an impulse then that came from a 25-year-old on my part, you know, and you can only really see so far when you're 25. You've got a lot of energy and a lot of faith,

but I couldn't see the future beyond a certain point. So I did it anyway, and I jumped into the grape strike, and the idea of starting and maintaining a farmworker's theater was a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month challenge.

After a while, the process itself began to raise questions of how long we were going to survive and how we were going to survive.

When members started to get older and develop families, it became a much more serious question of how we were going to maintain and support everybody.

We couldn't all just live on the wing, you know, as we did back when.

So the struggle all along has been to create and maintain the context that's going to support the Teatro.

You've got to understand how the Teatro looked at the very beginning. People can say, okay, the Teatro started in 1965, but it wasn't just the Teatro. The farmworker's movement was going on. The Chicano movement started at that time as well, as far as I'm concerned.

The Teatro was a way to change our country, the country that we lived in, to make some room for us, give us some opportunities in education, in politics, in the commercial world, you know, in the corporate, whatever.

That's what began. And in order for the Teatro to exist as, say, a regional theater, you had to have all those elements that support regional theaters.

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.

In Hollywood, they call it the Hispanic market. We know it to be simply the presence of millions and millions and millions of people that are attuned to the new realities of the Southwest.

Ten years ago, Luis Valdez had this to say about his experience as a Hollywood filmmaker.

Hollywood is an ongoing carnival, you know, deal-making. It's a game that can wear you down, and literally I think it wears people to the ground.

Ten years later, Valdez still has an uneasy relationship with the movie business.

I don't think the general public really understands completely how Hollywood works, and they only understand what they see, and what they see are movies that make it to theaters, but they don't understand it.

Not only is it a competitive business, but it's also a corporate business with corporate structures and multimillion dollar investments made by individuals in some cases, but more often than not by corporate combines, corporate investors.

Both inside the studio system and outside the studio system that expect a quick return for their money, and that quick return, if you look at most movies, is generated in the first couple of weekends.

And what is becoming the frightening norm for filmmakers that are attempting to work in LA or Hollywood slash planet Earth, because it's really a worldwide business, is the frightening thing is that if you don't make 20, 30 million dollars on your first weekend, you're not in competition.

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.

They forced the scholars to recognize that there is more than Western European theater. And as long as the companies that have been spawned by the Teatro Campesino and the playwrights that have been inspired by the Teatro Campesino continue to write and express their reality concerning their own communities, then the impact will continue to be felt.

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.

You guys say that the Electronica comes from an inspiration, from a long way back like Kraftwerk and like the original techno-technos.

So there was a radio station and some DJs and some programs, for example, a program called Listen to This and we grew up influenced by those special programs on the night and they put electronic music. So we grew up mostly with that. [Music]

And then the word spreading out too fast because when the name came out of the compilation, the people start calling us the Nortec Collective or Collectivo Nortec, the Nortec guys, and then even clubs that invite us to play, they say, 'are you going to play your techno stuff or you're going to play Nortec?' You know, like they say, like if it is, you know, some kind of style or whatever. [Laughter] [Music]

And even like what we were doing today, like with these people now as Nortec, with fusion, it's happened before with Santana, you know, Santana, which he was mixing the music of their age, you know, of the seventies with all the Mexican stuff that were there, you know.

And earlier than Santana was, you know, like Herb Alpert, you know, fusioning the jazz, the American jazz with all the sounds happening in that moment in Tijuana.

We've been speaking with Pepe Mogt, who is part of the Nortec Collective, a CD with the Nortec compilation called The Tijuana Sessions Volume 1 is out on the Palm Pictures record label. [Music]

Ojala is a Spanish word that, I was surprised to learn, has its roots in the Arabic word inshallah, which means God-grant or God-willing.

And Ojala is also the name of a unique duo that combines both Spanish and Middle Eastern influences.

When I moved into Austin, the first band that I got to see that had a Middle Eastern music was 1001 Nights, which is the band that Kamran had in those days.

We're talking to Kamran Hooshmand and Javier Palacios, who formed the duo Ojala, which is also the name of their first release.

You can find more information on their web page, Ojalamusic.com.