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

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.

Well, as you said, I wasn't accepted as an American. I mean, I wasn't accepted as an American, having been brought up in the east of Los Angeles.

And the Mexicans wouldn't accept me as being Mexican because I had the name of Quinn, my father being Irish.

Then I wasn't accepted as an American.

And I mean, Jimmy Cagney and Spencer Tracy tried to get me involved, so did John Wayne, with the Irish people.

But then I felt that if I became involved with the Irish, I would exclude the Mexican.

And I was in between. And so when I went to Italy, I realized I wasn't either. I was neither a Mexican nor an Irishman.

And I'll tell you, very interesting enough, I worked in every nationality there is. So I really feel as a spokesman for the world.

You're a painter now. Now I learned you wanted to be a priest. You were a preacher.

I mean, you have no, there is no constraints on you. There are no and never have been any constraints.

Well, I mean, there were early on put on by the social groups that I had to face. But I think that, no, no, there are no constraints on me. I'm starting my life all over again.

As a matter of fact, I'm moving to another state, a state that I would never think I belonged in, a New England state.

And I'm surrounded by New Englanders who, interestingly enough, that is a strange thing. Because they all are very happy that Quinn is moving in. Quinn the Irish actor, you know.

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.

As a group, immigrant workers are rarely seen and seldom heard in modern U.S. media.

He'd just arrived from his state of Scotland in the early 90s when thousands of janitors, mostly from Mexico and Central America, were beginning to demand better pay and benefits.

I went along and I met the people. I met cleaners who were activists and trade union organizers.

And they were fantastic people. And there was a kind of a spark to them that really got to me, you know, the way they organized and a real depth of human experience.

You know, and there was a determination to organize and change their lives without making a fuss or playing victim.

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.

I don't know. I cried during the whole movie because it does have several things that those of us from other countries have been through.

For the three and a half years it took to organize the union at her company, Sanchez says she went to work every night fighting her fears of a confrontation with the boss or of losing her job.

During the three and a half years, I'd ask myself, if you lose your job, how are you going to support your kids?

Now Sanchez says the sacrifices of those years are paying off. She couldn't have a much wanted third child until she got family health insurance. Now she's got it and her baby's due late this summer.

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.

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.

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.

At the beginning, it was very much a David and Goliath scenario. Farm workers had no political voice, the growers were very powerful. It was just the inspiration that an optimistic young Chicano playwright needed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For one reason or another, it didn't happen, has not happened yet. There isn't a single regional-level style theater that relates to Latinos in the state of California.

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

Zoot Suit told the story of racism against Pachucos in Los Angeles.

Pachucos were young Mexican-Americans who'd adopted the Zoot Suit style of dress during the time of the Second World War.

It was, said Valdez, a very American play. Zoot Suit is about American identity. The Zoot Suit phenomenon was something that was of the period of the early 40s.

The whole country became Zoot Suit crazy. And of course I'm talking about the young people, those young people that were just about getting ready to go off to war.

What it meant for Chicanos is that they were identifying with the average American kids who were wearing Zoot Suits and saying, Hey, we're American. We love this music. We love this style. We're here, and we're doing it in our own way.

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.

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.

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.

It was a time which saw what some call the Latinization of the United States. Everyone, from Linda Ronstadt to George Bush, it seemed, discovered their Hispanic connection.

At last, the American cultural climate seemed to have caught up with the work of El Teatro Campesino.

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.

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.

There are certainly playwrights out there who have, from the Chicano community, who have not necessarily been influenced by Luis Valdez per se. But without Luis Valdez having opened the doors in many of these institutions, then they would not even be listened to. They wouldn't be heard from.

Lots of desert animals would raid it if they could. They can't because cacti, like desert succulents everywhere, defend themselves with spines.

Nopal cactus, also known as devil's tongue, may not immediately come to mind when you're looking for something new for lunch. But in Mexico and the southwestern United States, the prickly pear cactus has been cooked and enjoyed for generations.

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

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.

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.

So it's kind of like crunchy, slimy and salty. [Laughter]

But it's a wonderful botana and it's really, really good for you.

The nopal is excellent for the salud.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

She has since conquered Broadway, Hollywood and television, despite the in-her-face barriers that her brown skin created.

Rita Moreno is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the only woman to have won all four of show business' top honors. An Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

She became a pioneer for both women and people of color when she won an Academy Award for West Side Story. The first and only Latina to ever win that award.

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.

Why are you speaking out on something so, I mean a lot of people are going to say, what do you mean Rita Moreno speaking out about osteoporosis?

I found that I had a low bone mass when I had a bone density test about a year and a half ago and I was shocked.

Now that's not osteoporosis but it's on the way and I was astonished to find that I have been athletic all my life.

And originally would have been the poster girl for good bone health and good all kinds of health had this potentially debilitating and crippling disease.

So I've gotten on this campaign to make women aware of the importance of having a bone density test.

It's a disease that is really horrendous because it has no symptoms. It is not arthritis.

You don't get pain in the joints. You don't have trouble getting up or sitting down.

If you don't take the bone density test when you go into menopause, your one symptom may be a serious, serious fracture.

And that's something that can be prevented. So here I am.