Annotations for Communities: Women

We've gathered a group of Latino journalists to talk about the news of the week from their perspective. With us from Washington are Sandra Marquez, a reporter for Hispanic Link News Service; Zita Arocha, a freelance journalist and contributor to USA Today; and José Carreño, Washington Bureau chief of the Mexican Daily Newspaper El Universal. Thank you all for coming and welcome to Latino USA. I guess we should start off with this, Zita… the Clinton administration started off with a focus on multiculturalism. We saw Edward James Olmos at the inauguration along with Willy Colón and many other Latino artists and participants. Well, so far have the promises of Latino inclusion been met by President Clinton's appointments and hirings?

We've gathered a group of Latino journalists to talk about the news of the week from their perspective. With us from Washington are Sandra Marquez, a reporter for Hispanic Link News Service; Zita Arocha, a freelance journalist and contributor to USA Today; and José Carreño, Washington Bureau chief of the Mexican Daily Newspaper El Universal. Thank you all for coming and welcome to Latino USA. I guess we should start off with this, Zita… the Clinton administration started off with a focus on multiculturalism. We saw Edward James Olmos at the inauguration along with Willy Colón and many other Latino artists and participants. Well, so far have the promises of Latino inclusion been met by President Clinton's appointments and hirings?

He's taken a first step. I mean, we have Federico Peña as Secretary of the Department of Transportation, and we have Henry Cisneros who is the head of the Urban and Housing…and that's a good first step for him, but I would say that there's still really a long ways to go and also he hasn't really made most of the appointments he's supposed to make. All told we're waiting for about 1500 appointments. He's made about 150 or so, and just today the Associated Press came out with a little survey that they did saying that about 86% of the appointees so far, basically white males in their mid-forties. So we're looking at almost the same kind of configuration that existed when President Bush was president.

He's taken a first step. I mean, we have Federico Peña as Secretary of the Department of Transportation, and we have Henry Cisneros who is the head of the Urban and Housing…and that's a good first step for him, but I would say that there's still really a long ways to go and also he hasn't really made most of the appointments he's supposed to make. All told we're waiting for about 1500 appointments. He's made about 150 or so, and just today the Associated Press came out with a little survey that they did saying that about 86% of the appointees so far, basically white males in their mid-forties. So we're looking at almost the same kind of configuration that existed when President Bush was president.

So is there a lot of pressure coming down within the political circles of Latinos in Washington that possibly may make Clinton make some more appointments and hirings?

So is there a lot of pressure coming down within the political circles of Latinos in Washington that possibly may make Clinton make some more appointments and hirings?

Just last month, a group of Latinas, very powerful Latinas from across the country met here in Washington. They had the first ever national Latinas forum, and spontaneously what came out of that meeting was a real strong drive to push for Latina appointments to this government, and it was a very dramatic experience. Within 10 minutes, the women in the room decided to put their money where their mouths were, raising over $10,000 in less than 10 minutes to put an ad in the Washington Post. That ad has not materialized to this date because word got out to the White House. The women were invited back, and they've already had two meetings with personnel directors from the White House. They have been told to hold tight and to be very confident that they can see some very high-level Latina appointments to the new administration.

Just last month, a group of Latinas, very powerful Latinas from across the country met here in Washington. They had the first ever national Latinas forum, and spontaneously what came out of that meeting was a real strong drive to push for Latina appointments to this government, and it was a very dramatic experience. Within 10 minutes, the women in the room decided to put their money where their mouths were, raising over $10,000 in less than 10 minutes to put an ad in the Washington Post. That ad has not materialized to this date because word got out to the White House. The women were invited back, and they've already had two meetings with personnel directors from the White House. They have been told to hold tight and to be very confident that they can see some very high-level Latina appointments to the new administration.

Well, José, you covered the Bush administration during his tenure and what we've just heard is that, in terms of appointments and staff, the Clinton administration looks a lot like the Bush administration. So, what would you say is the most fundamental change you see from the Bush administration to the Clinton administration regarding the issues affecting Latinos?

Well, José, you covered the Bush administration during his tenure and what we've just heard is that, in terms of appointments and staff, the Clinton administration looks a lot like the Bush administration. So, what would you say is the most fundamental change you see from the Bush administration to the Clinton administration regarding the issues affecting Latinos?

Well, I could say that it is the willingness to do something about it. It's unfair, in a way, to say that the Clinton administration hasn't appointed too many Latinos… hasn't appointed too many of anything in terms of a comparison with the Bush administration. I think that mostly maybe the care that they're trying to go with, but at the same time it's nothing but projects at this point. It's nothing but words.

Well, I could say that it is the willingness to do something about it. It's unfair, in a way, to say that the Clinton administration hasn't appointed too many Latinos… hasn't appointed too many of anything in terms of a comparison with the Bush administration. I think that mostly maybe the care that they're trying to go with, but at the same time it's nothing but projects at this point. It's nothing but words.

Well, and in fact, regarding the words of President Clinton, we have his new economic plan on the table. Sandra, is the plan going to be a boom or a bust for Latinos? What areas do you think that Latinos will benefit most or be most hard hit from the Clinton economic plan?

Well, and in fact, regarding the words of President Clinton, we have his new economic plan on the table. Sandra, is the plan going to be a boom or a bust for Latinos? What areas do you think that Latinos will benefit most or be most hard hit from the Clinton economic plan?

Well, my concern about the economic plan is just that the majority of our community is comprised of the working poor, and so I wonder how much more they can give. So, I think Latinos, like the rest of this country, are ready for change and are really hoping to see a reduction in the deficit, and they've been giving disproportionately more than the rest of the society for the last 12 years. And so, I think that we're just watching closely to see what our role is going to be in this package.

Well, my concern about the economic plan is just that the majority of our community is comprised of the working poor, and so I wonder how much more they can give. So, I think Latinos, like the rest of this country, are ready for change and are really hoping to see a reduction in the deficit, and they've been giving disproportionately more than the rest of the society for the last 12 years. And so, I think that we're just watching closely to see what our role is going to be in this package.

Okay. Well, thank you very much Sandra Marquez, Zita Arocha and José Carreño for joining us here on Latino USA.

Okay. Well, thank you very much Sandra Marquez, Zita Arocha and José Carreño for joining us here on Latino USA.

President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton have begun presenting their proposals to Congress about how to revamp the American healthcare system. The idea is that in the future, all Americans working or not will be covered by some kind of healthcare, but what about Latinos in this country, citizens or not? Wilma Montañez is a longtime national healthcare activist. She's currently the director of the Latina Round Table on Health and Reproductive Health in New York City. Wilma, what is the biggest healthcare problem facing Latinos, and will the Clinton plan help out?

There is a situation that in many of the Latino communities, we don't have access to healthcare, period. It's just not there. It's not in our communities. The infrastructure has not been put in place. The few community-based clinics that maybe were there may have been defunded through the years or have not really kept up with the needs of the community. So that's number one…is access to healthcare. And then, we are concerned about access for everyone…undocumented. Will it take care of the needs of specific reproductive health needs for women? Will it cover contraceptive services? Will it cover prevention? Will it cover abortion services?

Well, will it cover any of those things? Let's take, for example, the question of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are Latinos. Does the Clinton healthcare plan do anything to address their needs, or are they simply forgotten?

There is a lot of emphasis on connecting this healthcare reform to jobs, which is wonderful if it means that everybody in the United States is going to be working, but we know that, one: we do have a high percentage of people who are unemployed, in particular in the Latino communities of the country. Also that if it's related to a job, will all jobs feel this obligation to really provide healthcare insurance? Many of the jobs where you do find undocumented workers, they're the type of jobs that usually fall through the cracks. They're the kind of jobs that nobody ever thinks about and nobody ever wants to recognize, and we're concerned that then, the folks working in those types of jobs still will be uncovered.

How much, in fact, were Latino healthcare activists included in the process?

I think it has been minimal. I don't think it has been a concerted effort, using many people in the community, using a variety of people on different levels. I think when you're talking about providing healthcare, you can't just talk to the policymakers. You have to talk to some direct service providers, to policymakers, even folks in the medical schools that provide the folks who are going to be working in the communities. Because I think what's…what’s happening is that there is this healthcare reform that's being established, which is very much middle-class oriented. When you're working with folks who have not had access to quality care forever or if they ever had it in this country, then you're talking about people who may not know how to maneuver themselves through that type of healthcare system that’s been…you know, that they're talking about. So I think that's more the issue. And ignorance, I think there is ignorance. I think that people really don't understand how different it is when you have no access to healthcare, that it is difficult to make your way through appointments and through large clinics and just finding an [unintelligible] provider.

Thank you very much. Wilma Montañez is the director of the Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Health in New York City.

This year, the Mexican cinema is enjoying a revival with such films as "El Danson" and "Como Agua para Chocolate", "Like Water for Chocolate". "Like Water for Chocolate" is a saying, un dico, meaning that something is near the boiling point. And in her film and the haunted narrative of her novel, screenwriter and author Laura Esquivel, finds the boiling point in the kitchen and in relationships between men and women. From Boulder, Colorado, Betto Archos prepared this report.

Tal parecía que en un extraño fenómeno de alquimia su ser se había disuelto en la salsa de las rosas, en el cuerpo de las codornices, en el vino y en cada uno de los olores...

It's the essence of love, femininity, and the affirmation of human nature that Laura Esquivel conveys through a novel which evolved when the author was cooking in her home in Mexico.

Bueno, me vino mientras cocinaba. Porque a mi me encanta cocinar... [transition to English dub] And it came to me when I was cooking my family's recipes. I would always go back to the past and clearly remember my grandmother's kitchen and the smells and the chats. And I always thought that it would be very interesting to adapt this natural human mechanism to literature. And in the same way that one describes how to make a recipe, be able to narrate a love story.

Set in a border ranch during the Mexican Revolution, "Like Water for Chocolate" is the story of Tita, the youngest of three daughters born to Mama Elena. It is a family tradition that the youngest daughter not marry, but stay at home to care for her mother. Soon, however, Tita falls in love, but her tyrannical mother makes no exception and arranges for Tita's older sister, Rosaura to marry Tita's love, Pedro. Tita's sister is played by actress Yareli Arizmendi.

Creo que tenemos pendiente una conversacion, no crees? Creo que fue desde que te casaste con mi novio. Empecemos por ahí si quieres... In this scene from the film "Like Water for Chocolate", the two sisters confront each other about the family tradition Tita refuses to uphold. Ya no hablemos del pasado, Pedro se caso conmigo y punto. Y no voy a permitir que ustedes dos se burlen de mí... But most of the action in "Like Water for Chocolate" centers around the kitchen. After the family cook dies, Tita takes over the kitchen responsibilities, and in her hands every meal and dessert becomes the agent of change. Anyone who eats her food is transformed by it, and sometimes in very surprising ways, according to Laura Esquivel.

Yo tengo una teoría que atraves de la comida se... I have a theory that through food, gender roles are interchanged and the man becomes the passive one and the woman the active one.

What drew my interest more in terms of this use of recipes and cooking and all of this, this presence of it, is really the issue that's been dealt with quite a bit by the feminists, which is female space.

Raymond Williams, professor of Latin American literature and coordinator of the novel of the America Symposium at the University of Colorado in Boulder says that "Like Water for Chocolate" is a novel that goes against a traditional literary point of view.

Departing from the female space of a kitchen rather than departing from, say, the great Western adventure stories that were typically kind of the male stories of the traditional novel. And I think that's that female space is one what really drew my attention in my first reading of the novel and my first viewing of the film.

The recipes in "Like Water for Chocolate", which range from turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds to chilis in walnut sauce, are far removed from fast food and frozen dinners. They require a lot of dedication and can take days or weeks to prepare. And in the age of microwave ovens and technology, Esquivel says, people have moved away from that which is naturally human.

Para nosotros, el elaborar la cena, es el carácter de una ceremonia... For us, cooking is like a ceremony and has nothing to do with a commercial. It really is a ritual, a ritual in which the family participates, and by doing so, one heightens his human quality.

Last year, the film "Like Water for Chocolate" received over 10 international awards, including one for best actress at the Tokyo Film Festival, and for Best Picture, Mexico's Ariel Award. The film is a collaboration between Esquivel and director Alfonso Arau, one of Mexico's leading filmmakers and Esquivel's husband. The novel has been published in English by Doubleday. The film is currently playing in major theaters across the country. For Latino USA, this is Beto Arkos in Boulder, Colorado.

[Ranchera music transition] The Chicana writer, Ana Castillo, had an abuelita, a grandmother who signed her name with an X. Castillo's father dropped out of high school. Her mother only finished primary school. But all three had an indelible impact on Castillo as a writer. They told her stories, or cuentos, and in her latest novel, So Far From God, Ana Castillo brings these cuentos to life.

An account of the first astonishing occurrence in the lives of a woman named Sophia and her four fated daughters, and the equally astonishing return of her wayward husband. La Loca was only three years old when she died. Her mother Sophie woke at 12 midnight to the howling and neighing of the five dogs, six cats, and four horses, whose custom it was to go freely in and out of the house. Sophie got up and tiptoed out of her room.

So Far From God is based in New Mexico, where Castillo who grew up in Chicago, has been living for the past two years. The book has been called a telenovela, a Chicano soap opera. In fact, Castillo deals with some pretty heavy topics in her book, among them women's rights, environmental racism, sexuality, Catholicism, and the Gulf War, just to name a few. Thanks for joining us on Latino USA, Ana.

In your book, what's interesting, what caught my eye was that you have a lot of Spanish phrases with no translation at all. Is that one way in which you wanted to kind of deal with that schizophrenia of being bilingual and bi-cultural in just saying, "This is who we are," and it's not going to be translated?

Yeah, well of course, that is our reality. Lots of times when I would go to universities to read and I'd see the flyers, Ana Castillo, poet. I always say, "Chicana in search of her identity." I stopped before I did anything. I said, "I want people to know that I'm very aware of my identity. What I would like to do is assert that identity to the public." And so, part of our identity is not so much as schizophrenia. It's the denial from society that this is our language. So if this is an oral storyteller, she or he would say this, would talk this way, would not be inclined to translate.

In literature, once you see that in print, obviously it would be very redundant to say, “Callate. Shut up," he told me, or something like that. I work at what I had to do to compromise for everybody. It's a compromise because some Latinos do not read any Spanish, and some Chicanos won't understand this particular Spanish, is then you work it into the text. Sophie put the baseball bat that she had taken with her when checking the house back under the bed, just in case she encountered some tonto who had gotten ideas about the woman who lived alone with her four little girls by the ditch at the end of the road.

It was then that she noticed the baby-

After growing up Chicago as I did, which is not necessarily a very magical realist place, although it has its moments, was magical realism a part of your moving to the Southwest? [laughing] Because you talk about the Southwest and New Mexico as an integral part of this novel of yours.

Let's just kind of deconstruct this magical realism catch word I think that's associated with Latin American literature, but also with the Latino reality I think. That's why I laugh, because I think it's more like this, this is a reality and magical realism is what motivates us. I did not have that intention at all to do that in my literature, in this particular book. What happened was that I think I was possessed, and I was there immersed, baptism by fire in Nuevo Mexico. Much of what comes out in here is material that is based on faith, whether it's Catholic faith, it's Pueblo Indian mythology faith, or the creation story that is told here.

It's sort of diluting to simply say it's magic realism. I'm not saying there's a, "Now what can I do that's very extraordinary?" Well everything around me is very extraordinary. What's probably... I couldn't beat the reality here. I wouldn't call it magic realism. I would call it a book based on faith.

[Reading] Esperanza let out a shriek long and so high-pitched it started some dogs barking in the distance. Sophie had stopped crying to see what was causing the girl's hysteria, when suddenly the whole crowd began to scream and faint, and move away from the priest who finally stood alone next to the baby's coffin. The lid had pushed all the way open and the little girl inside sat up just as sweetly as if she had woken from a nap, rubbing her eyes and yawning, "Mami?" She called, looking around and squinting her eyes against the harsh light. Father Jerome got hold of himself and sprinkled holy water in the direction of the child, who for the moment was too stunned to utter so much as a word of prayer.

[Reading] Then as if all this was not amazing enough, as Father Jerome moved toward the child she lifted herself up into the air and landed on the church roof. "Don't touch me. Don't touch me," she warned. This was only the beginning of the child's long life's phobia of people.

Highlight--music--Violin

There's been a lot of attention given to this book, So Far From God. You've gotten a lot of press, you've been doing readings, you've been traveling starting at 500 in the morning and ending at 900 at night, reading in many, many different places. But this isn't your first novel. You've written other novels and other books of poetry before. So why now? Why do you think there's this interest now? Is it because there's all of sudden this general incredible interest in Chicana/Latina writers, or what? Or do you think it's just because hey, it just was the right historical moment? How are you interpreting it?

Since I've been writing and publishing now for almost 20 years, I had that vision that it would take that long as a Chicana. I don't know how I had it, but I did have it. Unfortunately, that was an analysis that I understood in terms of racism, sexism, and classism, which that is something that we can say most Chicanas, Latinas, do experience in this country. You are not Native American. You are not European. What you are is a drone that should just go and work, and don't worry. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. When you're a writer, that's what it's about, is what you have to say.

And so, I worked for many years as a poet. People still see me primarily as a poet. Then I thought, how can I really get the word out? Well, not that many people read poetry, and that's when I started teaching myself how to write fiction. It took me a number of years before I did The Mixquiahuala Letters, which I thought I would die with it stuck between the mattress and the bedspring, and nobody would ever see it or want to see it. When it was accepted so quickly and so highly-acclaimed critically by the Chicano scholars, that literary audience, it really took me aback.

I guess, finally, what do you say to young Chicanos and Chicanas, but I guess primarily Chicanas, who are probably maybe even listening to this, who are sitting in their little casita who knows where, or in their dorm room if they're in a university and saying, "I don't have anything to say, and my voice is strange. No one understands me." How do you try to convince them to trust their voice as you have finally come to trust yours?

You have to have great tenacity about this, great personal conviction, that this is what you want to do, that you love to do. I would say, write, write, write, write, and read everything you can read, and brace yourself because we all get rejected. I still get rejected. Sandra Cisneros still gets rejections. You say, "Well in comparison the success or to acknowledge when who cares," but everybody at some point and continuously will get that when they're sticking by their convictions, and when you're trailblazing with a machete to try to make a little pathway there.

I would say to young Chicanos and Latinos who want to write, to read, read, read, write, and to believe in yourself. How can you go wrong when you're doing what you believe in?

Thank you for joining us on Latino USA. It's been a pleasure Ana, un placer. Ana Castillo's latest book, So Far From God, is published by Norton. Muchas gracias, Ana.

Thank you.

This is news from Latino USA. I'm Maria Martin. According to the United Nations, US Latinos and African Americans enjoy a lower quality of life than people in many developing countries. Franc Contreras reports.

The report from the United Nations studied quality of life for people living in 137 countries around the globe. It's called the Quality of Life Index and it examines life expectancy, education, and purchasing power. The report found that, as a group, US Latinos fall way behind the US as a whole. The report says the non-minority population in the US has the best standard of living in the world, but Latinos ranked 35th worldwide. Life for Latinos in the US compares to people living in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia. And according to the report, US Latinos do just a little better than people living in Russia. The number one country in the world, according to the report, is Japan, but that country drops to number 17 when the treatment of Japanese women is taken into consideration. For Latino USA, I'm Franc Contreras in Washington.

After stealing the show in movies like Do the Right Thing, White Men Can't Jump and Untamed Heart, actress and dancer, Rosie Perez will soon star in films with Jeff Bridges and Nicholas Cage. Perez is also starring in an HBO special which puts the spotlight on rap music. From New York, Mandalit Del Barco profiles Rosie Perez, the multi-talented Nuyorican.

Hi! Oh, I know where that is. That's in this neighborhood, babe. [nat sound]

At Fort Green Park in Brooklyn, up the street from Spikes Joint where filmmaker Spike Lee sells clothing and memorabilia, Rosie Perez sits on a park bench to talk about growing up not far from here. She remembers living with a big extended family in a low income area of Brooklyn called Bushwick. That's where she caught the dancing bug that eventually made her famous.

Because they used to go to the disco all the time with the hustle and everything. So, they used to use us as their partners and stuff and they would burn holes in our stockings and then our socks. They would twirl us around so much. I'm like, "All right, man, I'm tired." "Get up!" They wanted to be the king of the disco, you know, and stuff. And that's how we started.

[highlight hip hop music]

After high school, Rosie moved to Los Angeles to study biochemistry and ended up choreographing for singer Bobby Brown, rapper LL Cool J and Diana Ross. Her big screen break came in 1989 when Spike Lee cast her as Gloria, who danced like a prize fighter and cursed up a storm as his girlfriend in Do the Right Thing.

That's it. All right? [movie excerpt]

I have to get my money from Sal. I'll be back. All right? [movie excerpt]

Shits to the curb, Mookie, all right? And I'm tired of it, all right? Because you need to step off with your stupid ass self, okay? And you need to get a fucking life, Mookie, all right? Because the one you got, baby, is not working, okay? [movie excerpt]

After Do the Right Thing, Rosie landed a gig choreographing the Fly Girls on TVs In Living Color, where she brought hip hop dancing from the New York streets and nightclubs into mainstream America. After stints on TV shows like 21 Jump Street, Rosie's film career took off, playing rather loud characters like she did in the film Night on Earth. To avoid being stereotyped, Rosie says she fought hard to win roles like the Jeopardy! game queen in White Men Can't Jump.

Jeopardy! is going to call Billy. It is my destiny that I triumph magnificently on that show. [film excerpt]

Who is Peter the Great? Who is the Emperor Constantine? [film excerpt]

It's like when people think of Latin women, they think of kind of just sex-crazed maniacs that are kind of lightheaded and not really that smart. You know what I mean? And everything. And I hate that. And that's why I went after White Men Can't Jump with a vengeance because you got to be smart to get on jeopardy and win money. And, to my agents, I said, "I got to get this role, man. And I got to keep her Puerto Rican, man." I know they wanted a white girl, an Irish girl from Boston, initially for the role. I said, "But, yo, if I get in there, I got to represent, man. You got to keep her Puerto Rican, man." Look at films, look at TV. We're always the maid. We're always the one that's having the extramarital affair. Wearing the tight dress and ay... You know, all that and everything. That's fine, but don't pigeonhole us and don't have that represent us as a whole.

Soon Rosie Perez will be starring with Jeff Bridges in Fearless and with Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda in Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip. She's also producing her own projects, including a possible film about the Puerto Rican independence movement. Comedian David Alan Grier works with Rosie on In Living Color.

The thing I like about her is that she's a hustler. I mean, she has this plan. She's building this power base. And she's got her own company, she's managing groups. I'm going to be asking her for a job in just about two or three years. She's a powerful woman.

[hip hop music highlight] [nat sound]

Grier also calls Rosie the harbinger of hip hop, youth culture that includes street dancing, graffiti and rap music. HBO, in fact, is now airing a series on hip hop that she executive-produced. The show Rosie Perez Presents Society's Ride features cutting edge rappers before a live audience at a New York nightclub. While Leaders of the New School, Brand Nubian, and Heavy D and others rock the crowd. Rosie gives the flavor backstage and on the dance floor. [background hip-hop music]

Hi!

Hi!

Society's Ride means... Leaders of the New School, the Electric Records recording artists, they gave me the name. Because I said, "I want to take people on a ride to my world. I want them to see what I feel and what I do and how I be living and everything." And they were like, "Society's ride. Society's ride." And so it just stuck and everything. And the hip hop community gets it. Everybody else goes, "what?" But that's cool. But that's what the show is about. We're showing you real. We'll teach you. We'll take you on the ride. We're in the driver's seat this time.

Rosie says HBO was nervous about the rap special at first, thinking the material would be too racy for TV. But at a time when radio and TV waters down or sensors rap lyrics, she says she fought the network to let the artists show the real deal, uncensored. With this latest project, Rosie hopes to be taken seriously as a Hollywood producer because being boss is something she loves.

I feel great. I keep all the money.

The show Rosie Perez presents, Society's Ride is airing Friday nights on HBO. For Latino USA. I'm Mandalit Del Barco in New York.

An international labor union has begun a series of meetings nationwide to involve its Latino retirees in national healthcare reform. From Miami, Emilio San Pedro reports.

About 40% of the retired members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the ILGWU, are Latinas. That's why the union decided to create a series of nationwide meetings on Latino healthcare called Acceso or Access. At the first such meeting held in Hialeah, a primarily Hispanic industrial city northwest of Miami, about 100 retired Latinas expressed their healthcare concerns to a panel made up of national and local union representatives as well as representatives from the local congressional offices of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz Ballard.

The kickoff will be for our retirees, our Hispanic retirees across the country, to highlight the fact that for them the key issue, for our Spanish-speaking retirees, it's the access issue because they have the additional difficulty at times of not having linguistic access to this care, and particularly for women.

The retirees say they're concerned with how a new healthcare system would impact their ability to seek medical care from Hispanic doctors. For Latino USA, I'm Emilio San Pedro in Miami.

Recently, San Francisco-based comedian and performance artist, Marga Gomez received rave reviews for her one-woman off-Broadway show called Memory Tricks. Now, Gomez is working on a television adaptation of Memory Tricks, which looks back at her New York childhood with a showbiz family. From New York, Mandalit Del Barco reports.

Marga Gomez is the funniest simulated lesbian comic and performance artist who describes herself as somewhat of a misfit Latina.

My name is Gomez, and I look Latina and I feel that. I mean, I can eat spicy food, but I can't dance salsa or speak Spanish.

Marga is the daughter of a Puerto Rican exotic dancer and a Cuban impresario. Her solo show Memory Tricks is set in her precocious New York City childhood, when her flamboyant mom and dad were considered the Lucy and Ricky of New York's Latin vaudeville scene. [highlight music]

[background music] I thought of them as big, big stars. You know, you couldn't get to be bigger stars than my parents. Actually, they were stars in their community, and their community was a very poor community, so they were like poor stars, but I thought we were just like royalty. [highlight music]

In the 1960s, Marga's dad, Willy Chevalier, was a comic actor who produced theater reviews known as Spanish Spectaculars, [background music] featuring salsa stars like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, female contortionists, magicians and other acts. He put together sketches called La Familia Comica, which sometimes showcased her mom's Afro-Cuban dancing, they're pet chihuahua, and little Marga Gomez.

[background music] I had delusions of grandeur from a young age, because my father would just tell me all these fantastic things, I was going to be the next Shirley Temple and all that. You know? I couldn't sing, couldn't dance, but somehow I was going to be the non-singing, non-dancing, Puerto Rican-Cuban Shirley Temple.

[background music] Marga says when they got divorced, she had to choose between her dad and her mother, Margarita Estremera, also known as Margo the Exotic. Memory Tricks is Marga's tribute to a bleach blonde, fem fatal mom who used to try to teach Marga to be a perfumed lady, how to hold her pocketbook and glide, glide, glide on high heels. In a scene from a recent off-Broadway show, she remembers going on a picnic with her glamorous mom.

Let me tell you about the picnic. Remember the picnic, the one I sold my father out for? My mother promised that we would go that Sunday, right after church. I was so excited. I prayed extra hard in church. "Father, God, please, don’t let her see any stores on the way." When the priest said, "The mass is over. Go in peace," [snapping] I was gone. I ran all the way home, ran upstairs to my room, changed into my play clothes. That's what I wear all the time now, my play clothes. Then, I ran to my mother's room to see if she was awake. See, my mother couldn't go to church with me on Sundays. She was a good Catholic, but after a hard night of belly dancing, you need your rest.

In Memory Tricks, Marga talks about not wanting to grow up to be like her mom, who always wanted a Caucasian nose like Michael Jackson's. But she's found you can't escape your roots, even if they are dyed.

She'd sing all the time in the house, but she'd sing like this. [Singing] What a difference, la la la besame, besame la la She'd sing--She knew so many songs and none of the words. So that's sort of, the way I sing, too, so don't sit next to me at a rock concert. [Singing] I can’t get no la la la la la la.

Marga now lives in San Francisco where she began her adult career in show business with the feminist theater company, Lilith. She honed her comedy talents with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and is one of the original stand-up comics with Culture Clash. [Piano playing “I feel Pretty”] Not long ago, for the biennial celebration of New York's Whitney Museum, she performed her second show, "Marga Gomez is Pretty, and Witty and Gay", which deals with her sexuality.

[Piano playing] It has to do, some of it with my relationship and jealousy. My parents were very jealous of each other, and just because I'm not in a traditional relationship doesn't mean that I can't be dysfunctional. So, I talk about being a jealous girlfriend. I also have this little interlude where I'm reading from the Diary of Anaïs Nin, and I read from her Lost Diaries where she goes to Disneyland and has a tryst with Minnie Mouse.

Marga continues to do stand-up comedy and is reading for movie parts.

[background piano music] I've heard about a Frida Kalo project, and I'd like to do that because I got the eyebrows and everything, little mustache too. I'll just stop bleaching that sucker.

This summer, marga Gomez is writing the screenplay of Memory Tricks for the PBS series "American Playhouse". For Latino USA, I'm Madalit Del Barco in New York.

And finally, to get a poet's perspective on this year's National Association of Hispanic Journalist Conference, we turned to José Burciaga. He watched and listened as journalists mingled. Burciaga found a feisty network of Latino media professionals and evidence in the form of a fruit that there is still much more work to be done in consciousness raising.

It was a study of appreciation and diversity. Latino journalists could not take each other at face value. Blonde, blue-eyed, or African-American journalists could have easily been of Mexicano, Puerto Rican, or Colombian descent. The presence of women was strong, beginning with association president, Diane Alverio, who did express a lack of diversity in news media management. Only 3% of Latino journalists are managers.

At a noontime luncheon, Leonard Downie, executive editor of "The Washington Post," lamented the lack of training among all journalists. Despite the diversity of the term "all," he was taken to task for something Latinos hear a little too often: "You are ill prepared."

There was networking, interviewing for new jobs, old jobs, and workshops on everything from covering the Supreme Court to how to write a book. The conference was dedicated to the memory of Cesar Chavez with United Farm Worker Vice President Dolores Huerta giving a plenary session speech. Organizers had made sure no grapes would be served at the hotel, this to honor the United Farm Worker grape boycott. Nevertheless, an evening reception hosted by the "Chicago Tribune" featured the typical hors d'oeuvre fare crowned with a pineapple surrounded by two luscious mounds of forbidden grapes. Bothered by the hypocrisy and insensitivity, I placed the grapes on a silver tray, covered them with a napkin, laid the tray on the floor, and applied gentle foot pressure on the plump, juicy grapes. With a boycott sign over the squashed grapes, I placed the tray at the floor entrance, but this was not the end.

The word spread, and grapes were spotted at another reception on the terrace of the Freedom Forum office building. Hispanic Link News Service publisher Charlie Ericksen, carefully dumped them over the side of the 25th-floor terrace. No grapes were reported to have survived. And still, this was not the end. At another reception given by the Organization of American States, grapes were again served. This time I gave them a gentle warning, and the grapes were removed.

The OAS reception and grape boycott were a fitting end to the NAHJ conference. As I looked across the Grand Halls bedecked with the many colorful flags representing our mother countries, we invoked the memory of Cesar Chavez.

Poet José Antonio Burciaga lives, writes, and paints in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The movement to restrict immigration is reaching new levels. According to a "USA Today" CNN poll, 65% of those questioned want curbs on immigration. Perhaps nowhere is the anti-immigrant movement stronger than in California. In that state, two longtime supporters of immigrants have recently called for measures to limit immigration.

Armando Botello reports.

California State Senator Art Torres, a longtime supporter of immigrants, said that because of the lack of resources, California and the United States have reached a point where we have to be much more restrictive in terms of legal and illegal immigration. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has proposed steps to curb illegal immigration, including restrictions of undocumented women's access to maternity care, an increase in the number of border patrol agents, and deportation of undocumented immigrants who are serving prison sentences. To pay for her six-point program, the Senator has proposed a $1 fee for each person who comes into the United States at one of the international borders.

Reporting for "Latino USA," I'm Armando Botello in Sacramento, California.

From acclaimed director, Alfonso Arau, a sensuous portrait of love and enchantment, change and revolution.

This year, the Mexican cinema is enjoying a revival with such films as el Danzón and "Como Agua para Chocolate," "Like Water for Chocolate."

Like Water for Chocolate is a saying, un dicho, meaning that something is near the boiling point. And in her film and the haunting narrative of her novel, screenwriter and author Laura Esquivel finds the boiling point in the kitchen and in relationships between men and women.

From Boulder, Colorado, Betto Arcos prepared this report.

Tal parecía que en un extraño fenómeno de alquimia su ser se había disuelto en la salsa de las rosas, en el cuerpo de las codornices, en el vino, y en cada unos de los…

It's the essence of love, femininity, and the affirmation of human nature that Laura Esquivel conveys through a novel which evolved when the author was cooking in her home in Mexico.

Bueno, me vino mientras cocinaba por que a mi me encanta cocinar…[transition to English dub] And it came to me when I was cooking my family's recipes. I would always go back to the past and clearly remember my grandmother's kitchen and the smells and the chats. And I always thought that it would be very interesting to adapt this natural, human mechanism to literature. And in the same way that one describes how to make a recipe, be able to narrate a love story…[transition to original audio] escribe como hacer una receta poder narrar una historia de amor...

Set in a border ranch during the Mexican Revolution, "Like Water for Chocolate" is the story of Tita, the youngest of three daughters born to Mamá Elena. It is a family tradition that the youngest daughter not marry, but stay at home to care for her mother. Soon, however, Tita falls in love. But her tyrannical mother makes no exception and arranges for Tita's older sister, Rosaura, to marry Tita's love, Pedro.

Tita's sister is played by actress Yareli Arizmendi.

"Creo que tenemos pendiente una conversación, no crees? Si. Y creo que fue desde que te casaste con mi novio, empecemos por ahí si quieres."

In this scene from the film "Like Water for Chocolate," the two sisters confront each other about the family tradition Tita refuses to uphold.

"Ya no hablemos del pasado. [unintelligible) Y no voy a permitir que ustedes dos se burlen de mi."

But most of the action in "Like Water for Chocolate" centers around the kitchen. After the family cook dies, Tita takes over the kitchen responsibilities, and in her hands, every meal and dessert becomes the agent of change. Anyone who eats her food is transformed by it and sometimes in very surprising ways, according to Laura Esquivel.

Yo tengo una teoría que, a través de la comida se invierte…[transition to English dub] I have a theory that through food, gender roles are interchanged, and the man becomes the passive one and the woman the active one…[transition to original audio] a traves de la comida penetra en el otro cuerpo.

What I drew my interest more in terms of this use of recipes and cooking and all of this, this presence of it, is really the issue that's been dealt with quite a bit by the feminists, which is female space.

Raymond Williams, Professor of Latin American Literature and Coordinator of the Novel of the America Symposia at the University of Colorado in Boulder, says that Like Water for Chocolate is a novel that goes against the traditional literary point of view.

Departing from the female space of a kitchen rather than departing from, say, the great Western adventure stories that were typically kind of the male stories of the traditional novel, and I think that female space is what really drew my attention in my first reading of the novel and my first viewing of the film.

The recipes in "Like Water for Chocolate," which range from turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds to chiles in walnut sauce, are far removed from fast food and frozen dinners. They require a lot of dedication and can take days or weeks to prepare. And in the age of microwave ovens and technology, Esquivel says, people have moved away from that which is naturally human.

Para nosotros el elaborar la cocina el carácter de una ceremonia…[transition to English dub] For us, cooking is like a ceremony and has nothing to do with the commercial. It really is a ritual, a ritual in which the family participates, and by doing so, one heightens his human quality.

Last year, the film "Like Water for Chocolate" received over 10 international awards, including one for Best Actress at the Tokyo Film Festival and for Best Picture, Mexico's Ariel Award. The film is a collaboration between Esquivel and director Alfonso Arau, one of Mexico's leading filmmakers and Esquivel's husband. The novel has been published in English by Doubleday. The film is currently playing in major theaters across the country.

For "Latino USA," this is Betto Arcos in Boulder, Colorado.

One of the torch-bearers at the US Olympic Festival, recently held in San Antonio, Texas, was a hometown favorite. 33 year old, Helena Gonzalez, took a silver medal in judo and as Rosalind Soliz reports, that's pretty remarkable when you consider that at an age when most competitive judo athletes are set to retire, Gonzalez is making a comeback.

Welcome to Our Lady of the Lake University and the United States Olympic Festival, '93 Judo appearance.

In a mat-lined University stadium, 43 men and women dressed in loose white jackets and pants stand at attention. Some are Olympic athletes, others want to be. Judo referees make their calls as the athletes try to score with wrestling-like holds and throws. One of the smallest contestants in the women's competition is Helena Gonzalez.

5'2", 99 pounds.

You're very strong, I take it.

I work out hard. [Laughter]

She's had to work hard. 14 years ago, Helena was a Junior National Judo Champion. Then she stopped competing to marry and raise two sons. Now at 33 years old, she's competing again in the 45 kilo, or 99 pound, weight class. Last year at the US Open in Colorado, she won a bronze medal. Here, Helena has her eyes on the gold.

Maggie Kahn wearing the red sash. Helen Gonzalez wearing the white.

Looking at the other judo athletes in the gym, many are in their teens or twenties. 30 is retirement age. Even one of Helena's coaches, Eddie Elizade, recommends quitting at that age. He had to himself.

You start training in Judo when they're about eight years old and when you get about 30, your mind wants it, but your reflex is not there no more. Your body now doesn't respond as quickly as it used to.

Come on. Helena. Get underneath her. Go, go, go, go.

To sharpen her reflexes and build stamina for this competition, Helena trained four days a week; running, lifting weights, and practicing judo in spite of problems with both knees. Coach Eddie Elizale.

One thing that keeps her going is her determination. If you got the determination she's going to make it. There's no doubt about it. She trains hard and she's going to make it. She don't want to retire yet.

Besides determination, Helena has inspiration: Her family. Watching her two sons, Blue and Golden, compete in judo, fed her own desires to make a comeback. She shared her dream with her husband, Ruben, a San Antonio policeman and Helena's at-home coach.

My two boys would compete and she would say, "I wish I was still competing." I would always tell her, "Hey, you've got the time. You might as well do it now while you're young. And if you don't make it, at least you tried. You say, hey, I was there."

Helena, come on Helen.

By the third match here at the US Olympic Festival, it looks as though Helena is on a winning streak. In-between matches, she watches her competitors move with a laser-straight focus. Experience gives her an edge. She's been competing since she was 10 years old. She's learned the value of developing physical and mental strength. Helena's passed her love of the sport onto her children. Also, it's a way for Helena and her husband to reach out to disadvantaged children living in San Antonio's housing projects. Her husband runs a judo club for these kids and Helena helps coach them.

Well. Judo gives you a lot of discipline and you have a lot of respect for other people on the mat and other people in general. So hopefully that's what'll help them in their lives. Just everyday lives, going to school and everything.

Some of the boys she coaches are here to watch Helena compete and watch her win a medal.

Our silver medalist. Is Helena Gonzalez from San Antonio, Texas. [Cheers]

With the Olympic Festival over Helena will rest for a few weeks. Her home life will seem normal for a while. Then she will start training again for the US Open in November, and if she keeps winning, she'll seriously start thinking about the 1996 Olympics. For Latino USA, I'm Rosalind Soliz in San Antonio.

The highest ranking Latina in the Clinton administration, White House aide Regina Montoya is leaving her position. From Washington, Franc Contreras has more.

Since January when Montoya was selected as White House liaison for intergovernmental affairs and made responsible for communications with state and local governments, she has made a regular commute between Washington and her home, Dallas. Just before Montoya announced her decision to leave, the Clinton administration named her husband Paul Coggins, US attorney for Northern Texas that Montoya said, helped finalize her decision to return to her home state and resume work as a private sector lawyer. During her time in Washington, Montoya's office had come under criticism and in May there were speculations she would be replaced, but White House officials corrected that and since then she's been praised for her role in flood relief efforts. I'm Franc Contreras in Washington.

Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States since 1987. The pontiff along with 170,000 Catholics from around the world came to celebrate World Youth Day. A commemoration of Catholicism and religious worship. American Catholic clergy are hoping that as a result of the fanfare, traditionally Catholic Latino communities will renew their interest in the church. But as Ancel Martinez reports from Denver, many Catholic parishes are confronted with apathy and a church parishioners feel is sometimes too conservative.

[Church Bells]

One parish that wants to avoid the image of state Catholicism in apathy among Catholics is our Lady of Guadalupe. It's Adobe and Brick colonial style church and courtyard is just across the railroad tracks from Denver’s sleek office buildings. The pastor just ended a three-week fast to protest gangs that dominate summer street life around here. Our Lady Guadalupe is housing, hundreds of pilgrims celebrating World Youth Day. Church Deacon Alfonso Sandoval says for Mexican Americans it should be a time for reflection.

If anything, like I say, part of their culture is their faith in going to church. I think that the presence of the Holy Father is going to be significant for the youth in the sense that they were starting to drift away, not attending mass and not attending sacraments wasn't important for them, it just was not a priority. There's a lot of other priorities going on in their lives, but with this visit, I think it'll help a lot of them just take stock of what their faith's really all about.

The Pope chose Denver as the biannual World Youth Day site because it's a relatively young city and its Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. But the nearly all Anglo national conference of Catholic bishops only grasped in the 1980s how important Latinos are to the survival of the American church. Father Lorenzo Ruiz works these streets reaching out to Chicanos and Latin American immigrants.

This is an area where the American church, the Anglo-American church and the Hispanic church met. The American church took over this area and again, they were not sensitized or aware of the church already existing here, totally unaware of the fact that there was a church here and people with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

When Mexican Americans were ignored, that's when the separations began with the traditional Catholic Church, such as the new Mexican set known as the Penitentes decades ago. And even today, evangelical churches are making inroads to a once all Catholic culture.

[Church music and signing]

The Church of Christ Elam holds thrice weekly services in the basement of the circa 1900s Methodist church in the center of Denver's Latino neighborhood. Furnishings are minimal, fold up chairs, linoleum floor, and a small stage, several teenagers sing, a few dozen followers wave their hands and clutch Bibles, Pastor Manuel Alvarez, explains Catholicism simply isn't spiritual enough for many, so they seek other faiths.

They found something that is not a religious but a new experience with God when they can talk to God and have a relationship with God, not with religious or not with that organization, but a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Vatican is now paying special attention to Latinos in the United States because in part of their support of conservative issues like the ban on women serving as priest and opposition to artificial birth control and abortion, but there are even schisms among Latinos. Sister Irene Muñoz works for the Denver Catholic Archdiocese Hispanic outreach program.

I know women are speaking out and saying we want a fuller role in the church in many ways, and I truly see that. I truly believe that women are called to do more than perhaps what we're doing. And I know there are many of our sisters, my sisters that are called even more into become ordained priest and they were saying, look at us, listen to us.

The challenges facing the church in its quest to resolve these issues as well as retain Catholic Hispanics will remain long after the excitement of the pope's visit to Colorado in this continent subsides. For Latino USA I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.

A revival of traditional Mexican mariachi music is taking place across this country and many Latino youth are participating. Marcos Martinez of Radio Station, KUNM prepared this report on the Mariachi celebration held recently in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now in its fourth year.

[Mariachi Music]

Albuquerque's Mariachi Spectacular brings together groups from throughout the southwest who bring their instruments and their devotion to the music for four days of workshops and concerts. On a Saturday afternoon, some eight mariachi groups alternate between six different stages along Main street of the New Mexico State fairgrounds. This is called Plaza Garibaldi modeled after the original Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City where Mariachis gathered to play and find work. This year, about half the groups at Plaza Garibaldi are high school students. 17 year old Nick Watson plays with Mariachi Oro Del Sol from El Paso, Texas. He says Mariachi music is complex and fun to play

Well because it's challenging. It has more than three chords. It's basically what I think rock and roll is. And not that I'm knocking, I like rock and roll, but it's challenging. It's more challenging to play, you know, learn a lot more from it.

[Mariachi Music]

With this music, you can express your feelings more.

How?

Um, with the songs, the words and stuff, they're very powerful words.

Jennifer Luna is the leader of Mariachi Oro del Sol and shares Watson's enthusiasm. She says in her part of Texas, young people are very drawn to this style of music.

A lot of young people play in El Paso. That's mostly what there is there. The groups are younger kids. Cause over there it's in the schools they teach it to you, so it's pretty common over there.

The word mariachi comes from the French word for marriage. According to history, French people who came to Mexico in the 1800s became interested in the Mexican string bands of the time and invited them to play at French weddings. Today, mariachis typically include guitar, violin, trumpet, and the vihuela, which is a small guitar, and the guitarrón, which is a very large guitar. While they carry on traditions, youth mariachi groups like Oro Del Sol are also different from the older generation of mariachis in that they tend to be more gender balanced. Nick Watson says his mariachi group is all the better for including young women musicians.

They're good. We just picked who’s good and they're good. So we take them, it doesn't matter. Sex has nothing to do with it. If you're good, you're good, you play.

[Mariachi Music]

There's no doubt that among the young people attending this year's Mariachi Spectacular is some great future talent. Alex De Leon is a vocalist for the Mariachi Azul y Blanco from Adamson High School in Dallas. This 17 year old has already received high praise for his vocal talents.

[Mariachi Music]

People keep giving me comments, I'm good and stuff. So now I want to get better.

Young Mariachis, like De Leon have a chance to learn from more experienced mentors like Al Sandoval, who teaches music in the Albuquerque public schools and is director of Mariachi Romántico. Sandoval says, attendance at the Mariachi Spectacular workshops has tripled since last year. Sandoval says because of its expressiveness, mariachi music is a big part of Southwest Hispanic culture.

It's the most addicting music of all. I mean Southwest, it's the most addicting music. It grows on you and once it's in your blood, you'll never get it out. It's worse than the worst habit you can ever have because I mean, you grow to love it and you can never get away from it.

[Mariachi Music]

Everything about Mariachis hearkens back to Old Mexico from the ornate charro outfits and broad brimmed hats to the instruments and the old songs. But on the final night of the Mariachi Spectacular, as the teenage musicians joined the world's most famous mariachi groups on stage for a grand finale, the tradition seemed certain to continue for a long time to come. For Latino USA, I'm Marcos Martinez in Albuquerque.

Northern New Mexico is almost another country, a place of great natural beauty where los llanos y las montañas, the plains and the mountains, have for many years kept communities isolated but also close-knit and friendly. Producer Deborah Begel recently moved to Northern New Mexico. She sent this report about one local custom.

Really, I could be going down the road and if I see a car coming, I just wave at him. It just comes out automatic. It just wave.

Let's see, here comes Vanji from the clinic and she waves. Yeah, she wiggles her fingers. Hi, how are you guys?

Seated on a turquoise wooden bench on the front porch of the old Adobe Mercantile Building in Los Ojos, New Mexico. Joanna Terrazas waves at passing friends.

There goes Mapo, he smiles and waves at everybody,

A few paces down the street. Retired Marine Elipio Mercure is standing outside Pastores feed and general store.

We're so far apart, our communities, and sometimes you don't get to see each other for two or three or four days, so when you meet each other on the road, you wave at each other and say, hi, how you doing? And it's contagious.

Loyola Archuleta, the manager of the store, explains that most Chama Valley locals practice three waves, a kind of scale of friendliness.

One is for people that you don't really know too well. You just pick up one finger and for people that you really know a little more, you pick up your whole hand. But if you really know somebody that you really, really like, you really shake your hand back and forth [laughter]. Let's see, this is going to be {unintelligible]. Let’s see, hi. See he waves and then he shakes his finger at me, that what am I doing? [Laughter].

All the history of a family, a community, a friendship are revealed in a wave.

And this is her now. She's my, she's my comadre I baptized her daughter when we're ex sister-in-laws. So she'll wave and say hi, and that's as much as it goes.

John Nichols, author of the Milagro Bean Field War, describes his return to Taos after a long trip in his book, If Mountains Die. "When I raised my hand in greeting to a car driven by a stranger", he writes "and received a salutation in return, I knew I had a arrived to a place worth trying to call home". Pedro Archuleta of Tierra Amarillo, or TA as the locals call it, couldn't agree more.

The moment you see somebody just wave at you, as you come [unintelligible]. It's a different feeling because hey, I'm home. Finally home feel better.

My husband was telling me that one time he was coming down the grotto. And we have a tradition that when we pass the grotto, we cross ourselves. And instead of making the sign of the cross, he waved to the grotto.

For Latino USA. This is Deborah Begel.

[Highlight--Music--El Vez] You're pretty el vez, stand in line, make love to you baby, till next time. Cuz I'm El Vez. I spell 'H' hombre, hombre...(Cover of I'm a Man--Bo Diddley)

16 years after the death of Elvis Presley. Elvis lives in many forms. For instance, the dozens of Elvis impersonators out there, the teen Elvis, the Black Elvis, the Jewish Elvis, flying Elvis's galore. Pues, what do you think of an Elvis con salsa, or the Elvis for Aztecs? With us on Latino USA is someone who's been called, not an Elvis impersonator, but an Elvis translator. He's Robert Lopez of East Los Angeles, also known as El Vez, the Mexican Elvis. So tell me about it, Robert Lopez. Why Elvis for the Latino community?

Well, I'll tell you, there are more than dozens. There's actually thousands of Elvis impersonators. There are more Elvis impersonators than people realize. Elvis impersonators in all United States and all over different countries. So, it's like we're our own minority.

[Está Bien Mamacita--El Vez]

I would say about 15% of Elvis's impersonators are Latino. You'd be surprised because all over California and all in Illinois, there are many other Latino Elvis impersonators. But I'm the first Mexican Elvis, I take my heritage and make it part of my show.

So when and how did el espíritu, the spirit, of Elvis possess you?

[Laughter] Well, I used to curate a art gallery in Los Angeles called La Luz de Jesus we were a folk art gallery. And I curated a show all on Elvis Presley. And I had always been an Elvis fan, but all this Elvis exposure just kind of made me go over the edge. And I had met some friends and they were saying, "Well, Robert, you should go to Memphis because every year they have this Elvis tribute," which is kind of like Dia de los Muertos for Elvis. It's like a big festival of swap meets, fan clubs, Elvis impersonators galore. And so I said, "Okay, I'm going to go." I had dared myself to go to Memphis and do the show. I would say, "Okay, I'll do El Vez, the Mexican Elvis." And I wrote the songs on ... Rewrote the songs on the plane, and my main idea was to play with the boombox in front of the people waiting in front of Graceland. But as luck would have it, I got on a Elvis impersonator show, and the showrunner was so big, by the time I got back in LA it was already in the LA Times. So, El Vez, the Mexican Elvis had been born.

[Transition--Music--El Vez]

Some people have called you a cross-cultural caped crusader singing for truth, justice and the Mexican-American way. So for you, it's more than just musical entertainment, you've got a message here in the music that you're bringing.

Yeah, well, first of all, I do love Elvis and I'm the biggest Elvis fan, and you can see that when you see the show. But it's like I do try to show the cross-culture. Elvis is the American dream or part of the American dream. I mean, there's many American dreams, but Elvis was part of the American dream. But I feel that American dream, poor man, start really with nothing to become the most famous, biggest entertainment tour of all the world is not just a job for a white man. It's for a Black man. It's for a Chinese man. It's for an immigrant. It's for a Mexican. It's for a woman. It can happen to anyone. And so rather than just say, "Okay, this is a white man's dream in a white United States," I change it and I show everyone they can make it fit to their story too.

[Singing] One two three four, I'm caught in a trap, do do do do. I can't walk out, because my foots caught in this border fence, do do do do do. Why can't you see, statue of liberty, I am your homeless, tired and weary...

[Immigration Time--El Vez]

What do you think Elvis would've thought of you singing and changing the words to the songs?

Oh, he would've enjoyed it very, he'd say, "El Vez, I like your show very much." He would like it.

Some of the songs that you've changed, I just want to go through some of the names because I think that they're so wonderful. I mean, instead of Blue Suede shoes, you have ...

Huaraches azul. Instead of That's Alright Mama, Esta Bien Mamacita. One of my favorites is [singing] ‘You ain’t nothing but a chihuahua, yapping all the time’. We start the show with the lighter easy songs, the familiar ones, and then we get them with the one-two punch and get them talking about political situations, sexual situations, and rock and roll situations.

[En el Barrio--El Vez] En el barrio, people dont you understand, this child needs a helping hand, or he's going to be an angry young man one day. Take a look at you and me-

Robert Lopez, also known as El Vez, is now negotiating with the producers of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for a possible TV sitcom. He'll also be playing Las Vegas for the first time.

For four days, recently, more than 150,000 young people gathered in Denver to see Pope John Paul II. Among them, many Latinos from across the country. Producer Betto Arcos, spoke to the young Hispanics about what was on their minds, issues ranging from the future of the Latino community to abortion, President Clinton's performance, and gays in the military.

The Hispanic community is not getting very well educated, okay? We need to push more for education.

We're working our way up, and I want to see us in power, not let everybody else walk all over us. We're going to be doing a lot of the walking, and we've got a lot to do.

President Clinton, up to this day, I feel that he takes in a lot of information from his public, from his staff, and he later he comes up with the plan out of that.

I think he's done a good job so far. I think he's the best president ever since John F Kennedy.

I'm sure he has good intentions. He can't please everybody all the time. He's looking out for the general welfare of the whole United States.

I do like the fact that he has let gays and lesbians in the army and stuff like that because I mean, that's their own private life, and nobody should get into that because it's theirs and it's personal. So I mean, we shouldn't hold that against them. Their preference is their business as long as they can do their work right. I mean, I think that's cool.

That's a tough situation. And the way it is right now there, we know that there are some gays in the military, but we don't know who they are, if they keep it quiet or ... Once you do know, I do know of one, a guy that was in my unit, and he seemed just like any other guy. So on a personal level, it's all right, but when you think about the overall picture, it's kind of an eerie feeling.

I don't know if you can say maybe the sixties, free love, everything like that was a part of it. And some of the people took that wrong as to what free love was, and they took it to the extremes with sex. And nowadays, you have a generation that holds nothing sacred.

Yeah, I believe that it's women's choice, even though in the case of rape, they should have an abortion, like incest and stuff like that. But I do believe it's women's choice.

Abortion is not a word for me. I don't believe in it.

Sex is not a game. It's not something we should play with. Responsible sex is knowing that you're going to have sex and knowing that the possibility of having a child is there and taking that responsibility if a child is in your womb.

I work in a neighborhood where the dropout rate is 75% of our high school and 75% of that, 45% of that is due to pregnancy. And I can't justify telling a kid for whatever reason, not to have abortion, not to have abortion, but I think it should be there to be addressed correctly.

The total number of Latinos in the US workforce has been doubling every 10 years since the 1950s. But while Latino employment has expanded, the average quality of their jobs has declined. Latino USA's Maria Martin has more.

Just a short while ago, the Census Bureau issued a report saying Hispanics are disproportionately represented among the nation’s poor and make up a large part of the working poor. This finding came as no surprise to a group of sociologists and political scientists who studied Latinos in the American labor market. According to economist Raul Hinojosa Ojeda, one of the authors of the study, Latinos in a changing US economy, the study's most important finding was the dramatic downturn in economic opportunity for Latinos beginning after the mid 1970s.

Whereas the gap in earnings was closing throughout the most of the post-war era until about the mid 1970s, that gap has been increasing very rapidly. And in fact, that gap is very large part of the explanation of the increasing inequality in the United States.

The study's authors say downsizing of government programs during the 80s along with a lack of higher educational achievement by Latinos are among the factors which contribute to a decline in their economic situation. Perhaps the biggest factor, however, has to do with the restructuring of the US economy, from manufacturing to a greater focus on the service sector. Again, Raul Hinojosa.

So what was going on is just when Latinos were beginning to move into the capacity to take advantage of good-paying union jobs, these jobs became more and more scarce as the ability of the United States to compete in world markets and maintain the growth in those jobs begins and begins to erode.

Some of the study's authors say they were surprised to find that immigration had not played a significant role in the downturn in the relative income of US Latinos. Native born and immigrant Hispanics they say, generally compete for very different jobs. In a few cases, recent Hispanic immigrants and new native born job seekers do compete, but this is not a major factor in determining the overall income level for US Latinos. Sociologist Frank Bonilla is the executive director of the Inter-University Program on Latino research.

Whether or not immigration in itself is promoting more inequality, the reality is that both immigrant and native-born Latinos of all nationalities are facing new conditions of low wages. And that the number of working poor, that is people who have jobs but who receive the salaries that are below the poverty standard, are very much concentrated among the immigrant population and in some parts of the countries such as Los Angeles, principally among Mexican-Americans and new Mexican immigrants, particularly women.

When looking at the various Latino communities, the authors found regional differences. For instance, Miami did not experience the loss of manufacturing jobs that New York did. Still says political scientist, Maria Torres, it's hard to say that no Latino group remains unaffected by the trends in the American economy.

When we look within communities within these regions, there are no clear winners and no clear losers. It depends on the industries. For instance, in Chicago, Mexican-Americans do relatively well in comparison to Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and even South Americans when you're talking about manufacturing and public administration. When you're talking about the high services, Cuban-American males do very well. When you're talking about retail, Cuban-American women do very poorly. So I think that one of the lessons that we are learning in this study is that there really is a need to look at a joint community-based agenda that emphasizes Latino workers, because if there is and across the board lesson for all Latino workers is that there is an impoverishment of Latino workers in every community and throughout the United States. And that even when we compare Latinos to African Americans and to Anglos, Latinos are at the bottom of the pail when we look at all workers.

Dr. Maria Torres of DePaul University, one of those participating in the study on Latinos in a changing US economy. For Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin.

[Mexican folk music] The Chicana writer, Ana Castillo, had an abuelita, a grandmother who signed her name with an X. Castillo's father dropped out of high school. Her mother only finished primary school, but all three had an indelible impact on Castillo as a writer. They told her stories or cuentos. And in her latest novel, So far From God, Ana Castillo brings these cuentos to life.

[Reading] An account of the first astonishing occurrence in the lives of a woman named Sofia and her four faded daughters, and the equally astonishing return of her wayward husband. La Loca was only three years old when she died. Her mother, Sofi, woke at 12 midnight to the howling of the five dogs, six cats, and four horses whose custom it was to go freely in and out of the house. Sofi got up and tiptoed out of her room.

So Far From God is based in New Mexico where Castillo, who grew up in Chicago, has been living for the past two years. The book has been called a telenovela, a Chicana soap opera.

[Reading] Sofi put the baseball bat that she had taken with her when checking the house back under the bed just in case she encountered some tonto who had gotten ideas about the woman who lived alone with her four little girls by the ditch at the end of the road. It was then that she noticed the baby...

After growing up in Chicago as I did, which is not necessarily a very magical realist place although it has its moments, right? [Laughter] Was magical realism a part of your moving to the Southwest and was that part of, I mean, or because you talk about the Southwest and New Mexico is part of an integral part of this novel of yours?

Well, let's just kind of deconstruct this magical realism catch word. I think that's associated with Latin American literature, but also with the Latino reality, I think, and that's why I laugh because I thought I think it's more like this. This is a reality. Magical realism is what motivates us, and I did not have that intention at all to do that in my literature in this particular book. What happened was that I think I was possessed and I was there immersed, baptism by fire in Nuevo Mexico, and much of what comes out in here is material that is based on faith, which whether it's Catholic faith, it's Pueblo Indian mythology faith, or the creation story that is told here and would be... So it's sort of a diluting to simply say it's magic realism. I'm not sitting there and saying, now what can I do that's very extraordinary? Well, everything around me is very extraordinary and what's probably, I couldn't beat the reality here. I wouldn't call it magic realism. I would call it a book based on faith.

[Mexican Folk music] [Reading] Esperanza let out a shriek, long and so high-pitched that started some dogs barking in the distance. Sofi had stopped crying to see what was causing the girls' hysteria. When suddenly the whole crowd began to scream and fainted and move away from the priest who finally stood alone next to the baby's coffin. The lid had pushed all the way open and the little girl inside sat up just as sweetly as if she had woken from a nap, rubbing her eyes and yawning, "Mami?" She called, looking around and squinting her eyes against a harsh light. Father Jerome got hold of himself and sprinkled holy water in the direction of the child, but for the moment, was too stunned to utter so much as a word of prayer. Then, as if all this was not amazing enough, as Father Jerome moved toward the child, she lifted herself up into the air and landed on the church roof. "Don't touch me, don't touch me." She warned. This was only the beginning of the child's long lives' phobia of people.

There's been a lot of attention given to this book, So Far From God. I mean, you've gotten a lot of press. You've been doing readings. You've been traveling starting at five in the morning, ending at nine o'clock at night, reading in many, many different places. But this isn't your first novel. I mean, you've written other novels and other books of poetry before. So why now? Why do you think there's this interest now? Is it because there's all of a sudden this general incredible interest in Chicana-Latina writers or what? Do you think it's just because, "Hey, it just was a right historical moment."? How are you interpreting it?

Well, since I've been writing and publishing now for almost 20 years, I had that vision that it would take that long as a Chicana and I don't know how I had it, but I did have it. And unfortunately, that was an analysis that I understood in terms of racism, sexism, and classism, which is really, that is something that we can say most Chicanas-Latinas do experience in this country. You are not Native American. You are not European. What you are as a drone that should just go and work and don't worry, nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

And when you're a writer, that's what it's about, is what you have to say. And so I worked for many years as a poet. People still see me primarily as a poet. And then I thought, how can I really get the word out? Not that many people read poetry. And that's when I started teaching myself how to write fiction. And it took me a number of years before I did The Mixquiahuala Letters, which I thought I would die with. It stuck between the mattress and the beds spring, and nobody would ever see it or want to see it. And when it was accepted so quickly and so highly acclaimed critically by the Chicano scholars and that literary audience. It really took me aback.

I guess finally, what do you say to young Chicanos and Chicanas, but I guess primarily Chicanas who are probably maybe even listening to this, who are sitting in their little casita who knows where or in their dorm room if they're in a university and saying, "I don't have anything to say and my voice is strange and no one understands me."? And I mean, how do you try to convince them to trust their voice as you have finally come to trust yours?

You have to have great tenacity about this great personal conviction that this is what you want to do, that you love to do. So I would say write, write, write, write and read everything you can read, and embrace yourself because we all get rejected. I still get rejected. Sandra Cisneros still gets rejections. I mean, you say, "Well, in comparison to the success or to acknowledgement, who cares?" But everybody, at some point and continuously, will get that when they're sticking by their convictions. And when you're breaking, when you're trailblazing with the machete, it makes to try to make a little pathway there. So I would say to young Chicanos and Latinos who want to write, to read, read, read, write, and to believe in yourself. If you do it out of the love for what you're doing, you can't go wrong. How can you go wrong when you're doing what you believe in?

Thank you for joining us on Latino USA. It's been a pleasure. Un placer. Ana Castillo's latest book, So Far From God, is published by Norton. Muchas gracias, Ana.

Thank you.

In Arizona, the scene of a number of alleged incidents of human rights abuse against Mexican nationals, a US border patrolman has been charged with the rape of an undocumented woman. Manuel Arcadia reports from Tucson.

According to a news release issued by the Nogales, Arizona Police Department, 31-year-old border patrolman, Larry Dean Selders arrested two Mexican women who had entered the country illegally. He then dropped one off, kidnapped the other and raped her in a remote location. Selders was arrested after the woman reported the incident to the Mexican consulate. This incident follows a sequence of human rights violations against Mexican undocumented workers in Arizona, like the notorious Michael Elmer case that ended up in the shooting death of 22-year-old Mexican National Dario Miranda Valenzuela and the exoneration of charges. Cases like this have prompted Arizona Congressman Ed Pastor to introduce legislation calling for the commission to investigate charges of human rights violations by US officials along the border for Latino USA. This is Manuel Arcadia reporting in Tucson, Arizona.

For over 400 years since New Mexico was settled by Spain in the 16th century, Hispanic folk artists in that state have created wooden statues called Santos, representing figures of Catholic saints. They've also made retablos, images of the saints painted on wooden panels. The practitioners of these carving arts or santeros were exclusively men until the last 20 years or so, but today, women are some of the best-known santeros and their contribution is the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Catalina Reyes reports.

Though documentation is hard to find, it may be that New Mexican men and women have always collaborated at Santo making just as they often do today. Helen Lucero curated the art of the Santera exhibit.

Women have said all along are the keepers of the faith in New Mexico, and so they will put up these images to decorate their homes to pray, to carry in processions, to dress, and so it makes sense that they would eventually start carving and painting them themselves.

[Natural sounds of Museum] 40 objects representing the work of 26 Santeras are on view in the small exhibit room. There's a bulto tableau of Noah's Arc by Marie Romero Cash and her tin Smith husband, complete with wooden animals, a tin arc and foot tall carvings of Noah and his wife With Hispanic features and early 20th century dress, popular saints are rendered in various media Santo Nino de Atocha, a Christ child who helps prisoners. Dona Sebastiana or La Muerte, a skeleton in a two-wheeled wooden cart who represents death and of course our Lady of Guadalupe and Indian Virgin Mary who's especially venerated throughout the Americas.

I haven't seen anything quite like this that the men have done.

We are looking at a carving by Monica Sosaya Halford, a crucified woman who looks strikingly cheerful, smiling in a bright blue and white Basque peasant dress. She's an apocryphal saint named Santa Librada. A legend says she wanted to devote herself to God, so she prayed he would make her ugly to prevent her marriage. When God granted her wish and gave her a mustache and beard. The brother's enraged father had her crucified, but he converted to Christianity as she prayed from the cross. In New Mexico, Santa Librada goes without the beard in mustache. She sent to intercede on behalf of women with troublesome husbands.

She is the only crucified woman that we know of. This is the saint that women would pray to, and I just find it real interesting that her name is Librada also, which is basically translates as liberated. She is the one who helped women before there was a women's movement.

It was during the civil rights movement of the 60s says Lucero, that Hispanic men in New Mexico began to revive the dying Spanish colonial Santero tradition. About 10 years later, women artists began to emerge from behind the dominance of men in public arenas, making saints images in such a variety of media that Lucero decided to include more than bultos and retablos in the exhibit broadening the definition of santera.

I chose to expand it to include other media as well. In other words, images of saints produced on straw applique on tin, on culture, embroidery, weaving, hide paintings, and even one woman's work, Rosa Maria Calles, whose work is all decorating ceramic face.

[Natural sounds of woodworking] What I'm doing now is the actual roughing out taking the excess wood away.

Marie Romero Cash began carving and painting saints in the seventies when she was in her mid-thirties, the daughter of two famed Santa Fe tinsmiths. She's gone on to become one of the region's most recognized Santeras. Today she's working on a favorite figure, La Senora de Guadalupe.

[Natural sounds of woodworking] After all the excess wood is gone, I'll be able to start working on the face and the hands and toning it down, and then it'll be ready for sanding and gesso and painting.

Romero Cash has traveled throughout northern New Mexico studying Santo carvings in villages like Chimayo, where people still venerate figures hundreds of years old, but she'd rather be called a wood carver than a santera, which to her mind means a holy person. She says her goal isn't religious.

Mine happens to be learning everything that I can about specific things, including the santeros and what they did and how they did it and trying to get all our traditions in one bundle and then saving them and perpetuating them.

But Helen Lucero believes that for most of the Santeras in the exhibit, honoring the spirit of tradition is connected inseparably to the life of the soul.

And I asked the women what this meant to them to be producing saints. And quite often the spiritual aspect of it was much more dominant than any I would've ever expected. If you are busy representing God, then you have a real direct link if you are a Hispanic, Catholic, new Mexican to what your work is so that these people really see themselves as a bridge almost between a holy place and a secular place.

The art of the Santera continues at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico until January of next year. The exhibit will then travel throughout the country for several years, starting in Dallas, Texas for Latino USA. This is Catalina Reyes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A bill introduced by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus seeks to remedy the lack of statistical information about Latino health. The Minority Health Opportunities Act would increase funding for the National Center on Health Statistics on whose information healthcare monies are largely allocated. Democratic Congress member Lucille Roybal-Allard says the measure will be especially beneficial for the health needs of Latinas.

Latina women are more likely to have diabetes than other groups of women, and there's a whole series of diseases that impact Latino women disproportionately from other population.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus say their bill is not meant to compete with the administration's healthcare plan, but to compliment it. This is news from Latino USA. The leaders of the nation's environmental justice movement, organizations representing African, Asian, and Native Americans along with Latino groups gathered in the nation's capital. It's the first time all these organizations have come together. According to Richard Moore, coordinator of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice based in Albuquerque.

One of the agenda items will very clearly be the relationships between our networks. We have been working together in the past on several issues. One of the primary pieces that will be on the agenda, for example, is a letter that was sent requesting an emergency environmental justice summit because of the urgency of the poisoning of communities of color, and in our case in the southwest Latino communities, that we called for a meeting with the president and vice president and also that a emergency, I say environmental summit take place, environmental justice summit.

The Southwest network coordinator says though many Latinos may not consciously make the environment a priority, Latinos have been involved in the movement for environmental justice for a long time.

We've been involved, for example, with pesticides issues with farm workers for many, many years. We didn't perceive that as an environmental issue, we perceived it as a labor issue. Housing and tenant organizing. Over 900,000 housing units today still have lead based pain in them with many children eating the chips off those walls and Latino housing projects and other communities in the southwest. Never perceived it as an environmental issue, we perceived it as a tenant's rights issue. And as we're all unfortunately very aware, our communities are located in and around slaughterhouses, dog food companies, industrial facilities, landfills, incinerators, whatever it may be, and that's not anything recent. Matter of fact, that's been for the last many, many years.

The environment and its impact on Latino communities from Bayamon Puerto Rico, to El Paso, to the South Bronx was one of the issues addressed in Washington recently during the Latino Issues Forum sponsored by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I'm Maria Martin, you're listening to Latino USA.

From the barrios of the southwest to the gang turfs and immigrant enclaves of the inner cities to middle class Latino neighborhoods from Kansas to Washington state, drug and alcohol abuse are a troubling part of everyday life for many people. To better deal with this reality, Latino social workers who specialize in substance abuse recently came together in Denver. Ancel Martinez reports they're forming a new network called HART, Hispanic Addictions Resources and Training

[Background--Natural Sounds--University Campus] On the manicured campus of the University of Denver there's no hint of the troubles of South Central Los Angeles, the barrios of El Paso or the gang turf of West Denver. Yet the 200 people who have come here to attend seminars must return to those areas with strategies on how to address increasing social problems among immigrants as well as US born Latinos. Paul Cardenas, who specializes in alcohol abuse, co-founded the nationwide group called Hispanic Addictions Resource Training, also known as HART. Because, he argues, not only do Latinos have different needs than Anglos, but their numbers cannot be ignored.

[background sounds cont.] The Hispanic community is growing. In the last 10 years, we've doubled in size. By the year 2020, we will probably be one out of every four individuals in the entire United States. So there's a great economic force that we're all going to have to cope with whether we know it or not, whether we're prepared for it or not.

[bg sound cont.]The symposium was designed to address the myriad of issues facing Latinos. One problem begins here. [Microphone noise] There are not many Latinos in social work. For instance, hundreds finished Denver University's graduate school of social work every year, but only a handful are Hispanic Americans. HART wants more minorities to enter the field. Another problem arises when Latino professionals apply for government grants. There's little information on alcoholism or drug abuse among Hispanics. So justifying grants, say for aiding Latinas, is difficult. So the goal for many is tailoring programs for those they serve.

[bg sound] Women from El Salvador, from Puerto Rico, from Mexico, and they're like so separated because they don't know a thing about one another.

[bg sound] Mary Santos is a program director for the Boyle Heights Family Recovery Center in Los Angeles who works with the growing Central American population,

And I must educate them to share their cultures so that we can find the similarities so that we can get on with the process of recovery. I believe 98% of Hispanic women have a lot of core issues such as sexual abuse, domestic violence, alcoholism. It might not have just started with them, there's a history of alcoholism or chemical dependency, so to speak, that that has been embedded in the family.

[bg sound] Besides organizing comprehensive treatments, much work remains in the area of intervention before people become addicted to violence or drugs. David Flores, an LA-based gang counselor, warns society needs to offer treatment and not simply jail time for risk-prone youth. Flores has spent years documenting gang life in Southern California.

[bg sound] The number of gangs are continuing to grow. The number of kids getting involved in gangs are also growing, and what's kind of scary is that we're seeing the development of new gangs, which will probably dramatically add to the membership unless we intervene and do something about it like right away.

[bg sound] What are the differences between those new gangs and established gangs?

[bg sound] Well, the majority of the new gangs are really tagger/bangers, what we call tagger/bangers or kids who are tagging, then forming groups that tag as a group or a set and then become an actual gang. So we're seeing a significant increase in taggers, which will then add to the number of gang members that we will see in the future.

[bg sound] Flores workshop on how street gangs get a boost from young blood was one of the best attended during the three day symposium. Every workshop stressed the need, that the 3,800 members of HART from across the country need to map out their strategies on say how traditional spiritualism and Chicano or Caribbean cultures is part of the healing process. Or how non-profit agencies can stabilize a community confronted by low wages. By forming a nationwide group HART members say they're dedicated to changing what medical and social services will be available to Hispanic Americans for years to come. For Latino USA, I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.

For years, Latino poetry in New York City was dominated by the Nuyorican School of Poets. Theirs was and is a street-wise poetry characterized by strong cultural pride presented in dramatic urban settings by poets such as Miguel Algarín, Pedro Pietri and Bimbo Rivas. Today, another crop of Puerto Rican poets is making waves in the Big Apple. But what's different about this group is that they're all women from New York City. Mario Murillo prepared this report.

Women have been traditionally storytellers and have been in a very close relationship with the oral tradition because they were the grandmothers and the mothers that told us stories and sang us songs and recite poems to us when we were small.

The wives of the dictators do not sit home and embroider, nor do they answer when their husbands return in full uniform from a kill and ask and what have you been doing? I have been doing the secret things that witches do. They are busy cutting ribbons.

You tried to kill the wild woman fused into my little girl, the one you couldn't love while claiming to. So you held me down and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with your sharp Swiss knife while whispering seductively in my face.

Myrna Nieves, Maritza Arrastia and Ana Lopez Betancourt, three Puerto Rican poets living and working in New York City. Together they're carving a niche for Puerto Rican women writers in an arena traditionally dominated by men. The three poets founded the Atabex literature collection, which publishes the work of Puerto Rican women writers. Atabex comes from the Taino word meaning mother of the universe. Myrna Nieves says they're celebrating the diversity of writers coming from the community.

Now, when we talk about the Boys of Women writers, we are not talking about a voice, we are talking about really about the chorus. So it's not one voice that only presents a strong and potent women, but women in different stages of development, women from different social classes, women that has been recent in the immigration experience from Puerto Rico. It is very important that the leadership produced by women is made public.

I explore grief, anger, rage in safe settings at home with Lynn, surrounded by books and African relics. But I don't feel safe. I'm afraid. I'm afraid my rage will.. One of the things my grandmother would say to us as was children speak when the chicken takes a leak. Never. Chickens don't take a leak.

Poet and educator, Ana Lopez Betancourt.

So children have no voices. Girl children have less voices and women should never be heard. So there's a lot, of course there's rage and there's a lot of stuff to explore.

Among the things to explore is the challenge of being an immigrant woman in a male-dominated culture. Once again, poet Myrna Nieves.

She has to defend this culture and at the same time in her work, she has to reexamine the culture with a critical eye and produce alternative cultural forms that are more harmonious and that give her a more just and better place in society.

[Reciting poetry] When you finally let me into your games, I was the Indian and you the cowboy. Yours were the newfangled pistols, the cherry's batch which authorized your kicks and punches. Yours were the bows and arrows you lent me because you didn't like to play the Indian.

Theater Director and poet Maria Mar.

We are powerful. We are doing things. We're really the ones, the women are shaping the community and keeping it alive and the structure of community alive. But we don't perceive our power and strength because there are a lot of ghosts between our powerful self and our self-image. [Reciting poetry] Come and cross over to this side of the ocean. But you are like I am. One more Indian destined to lose in the mortal game played in the wild west north of the Americas.

The Atabex literature collection will publish the work of many other Puerto Rican women in the coming months, including an anthology of poetry expected to be released this winter. For Latino USA, I'm Mario Murillo.

[Background--music--regional Mexican] Thanksgiving for commentator Bárbara Renaud González has never been a traditional type of holiday. Sometimes she goes out cumbia dancing in Austin's east side with friends and her swinging mom. So she was very surprised when her 60-something proud to be single mother called her recently to ask what she wanted with her turkey.

Pero, mami, why are we having turkey? I demanded. We never had turkey when we were growing up, when I wanted to play pilgrim fathers. "No, yo queiro plato de enchiladas con pollo, por favor. “No te entiendo, mijita she said in that superior Interior de Mexico, and you are just a pocha Spanish. You went to college, didn't you? And that school up north, what did you learn? I'm making pan gravy con giblets, cornbread dressing, the green beans Del Monte, cranberry relish, the potato salad too, the jello salad with real fruit cocktail, and the pumpkin pie. But I'll make rice and beans on the side if you want. The boys want their turkey. Mira, I am making 50 dozen tamales because I know how you love them, engordan." I was insulted by now. They make me fat. "I only use Crisco," she said, "that's not fat, that's Crisco." I still do not understand Thanksgiving. It doesn't translate well into Spanish. When I patiently explained about the pilgrims to my mother after a third-grade lesson, seeking some confirmation of our role in this event, she reminded me that every celebration has two faces.

Vaya, she said, "we don't celebrate it in Mexico, but I'll make a special guisada tomorrow just for you and you can have that 'Tricks are for kids' you like for breakfast." Perhaps I realized even then that no amount of turkey would make me belong with the pilgrim's descendants I sat with at school. Everyone but me seemed to have an ancestor on the Mayflower. Though I knew, I knew that the sepia skin of Texas with its sunset strung with a thousand pinatas embraced me too. Especially me.

Thanksgiving is not a day of giving, but of taking. We are grateful for another's tradition of generosity. One we cannot ever hope to match. A generosity that I liken to the Mexican Guelaguetza, that celebration of community founded in an ancient reciprocity that ensures the survival of the people. It is a ceremony of compadrazgo and more. It recognizes a solidarity that is symbolized with exchanges of the earth's bounty, which sustains us. It is not a day of thanksgiving, but a commitment to each other that we cannot survive alone. So let's celebrate that we are Americans and give thanks that there is room at the table for all of us.

Commentator Bárbara Renaud González is a writer living in Dallas, Texas.

A group of dislocated Levi Strauss employees from San Antonio, Texas is intensifying its campaign for a boycott of Levi's products. The members of Fuerza Unida say they deserve better from the company, after it moved a plant to Costa Rica. From San Francisco, Chuy Varela has more.

[Background--natural sound--protest] This week, Fuerza Unida brought their campaign to San Francisco, California where Levis is headquartered to intensify pressure on the company to negotiate a fair settlement for the dislocated workers. Irene Reina is the co-coordinator of Fuerza Unida.

[Background--natural sound--protest] We know that they're very, very proud of their lily-white reputation, and that's what we're going to do, to make the public aware that they are not the progressive responsible company that they claim to be because it's obvious.

[Background--natural sound--protest] Levi's management has met twice recently with the dislocated workers, and are still willing to negotiate. But at this point, they say they feel they've gone beyond the requirements of the law to help their formers workers make the transition to other work opportunities. For Latino USA, I'm Chuy Varela in San Francisco.

I never thought I'd be me, a California Chicana, turning 30 in New York.

The occasion of this momentous milestone, her 30th birthday, gave California-born Gloria Cabrera pause to meditate on her life, and to compare it to that of other women in her family. "Turning 30 for them," she says, "Was a very different story."

Turning 30 to my mom meant being alone, divorced, raising three children on welfare to pay the rent, while working as a housekeeper on the side to survive. My mother, denied a college education because in those days her brothers, my uncles, said women were meant for marriage and not for college degrees. Turning 30 to my sister meant being alone, raising four children in a subsidized apartment, juggling it all while trying to finish college. My sister at 30, willing to give it all she had for herself and her children.

So here I am, trying to understand how I fit into this familial paradigm. Turning 30 for me means being alone, by choice, single and childless by choice, living and working in New York City with two university degrees, a career-bound Chicana transplanted in this far off land miles away from friends who after graduation from college settled into comfortable lives, and to new jobs, new cars, new relationships in the same city. So with autumn's changing leaves, I'm thinking about the changes in my life, how after all my struggles, my tears, my triumphs, I am actually turning 30 in New York, the Big City, on my own.

What's even more exciting, even more significant to me? Turning 30 means redefining the paradigm, changing the future for my daughter one day.

Gloria Cabrera lives and writes in New York City.