Time Period Tags Used in Events

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.

You know, there was a time when Tejanos, Mexicanos were segregated, you know, in the state.

And for a lot of generations, say in the 40s and 50s and 60s, that music became something associated with something that you were running away from, meaning accordion-based Conjunto music.

For a lot of people who were assimilating into the United States, it represented something that they wanted to get away from.

I think now that we're in, you know, the 2000s, the young people are rediscovering, the music has always been there. It has never died. For a while, people thought it was going to be forgotten. Unfortunately, it has died in some other communities where accordion was real strong.

But it's these young people, the Tejanos, that have re-embraced this sort of as a cultural symbol of music, of an original music. It's sort of an identity that they're re-embracing. And now they're taking it to different limits and they're keeping it and maintaining it.

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.

Well, that's always the big question because I think since it is Spanish language-based music, people a lot of times say, well, is it ever going to go mainstream? And I think that's one of the key questions that people had with Tejano music when it was exploding, say in '95, 96, '97.

On June 3rd, actor Anthony Quinn died at the age of 86.

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

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

I spoke to Anthony Quinn then. Here once again is a part of that conversation.

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

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.

Oscar-winning acting legend Anthony Quinn died Sunday, June 3rd. He was 86 years old.

This interview originally aired on Latino USA in 1995.

Beginning June 1st, though, Bread and Roses will be released nationwide.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We did a 10-day run at the Mark Taper Forum with Carpa de los Rasquachis in the mid-70s.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.

For me, when I arrived in Houston in '78, I used to go to a club named the Acropolis. And I started getting to see Greek bands, Turkish bands, and all sorts of different foreign music. And I got really fascinated by it.

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.