Movie Miento

The assimilation of Gustavo Dudamel is playing well on the red carpet. Walking into Disney Hall Thursday night, Quincy Jones told me Dudamel reminds him of a young Leonard Bernstein. Andy Garcia said he's proud Dudamel's Hispanic but loves him for being a great conductor. Angela Bassett said she admires his humility and "of the earth" background. And Eli Broad gushed, "He's brought young people together, he's brought the Latino community together, he's brought us all together." And you know that Broad with his billions in philanthropy has as much power to anoint and legitimize as anyone in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Dudamel's Simon Bolivar- tinged declaration on Saturday opened the door even wider. Several on the red carpet repeated his words. Remember Dudamel said he's proud to be Venezuelan, Latino and American. And the echo of those words appears to be in a pinball machine bounce off the Hollywood Hills, the San Gabriel Mountains down to the Anaheim Hills.

But can we consider this list: Salma Hayek, Robert Graham, Gustavo Dudamel, Lupillo Rivera, George Lopez, Julieta Venegas. All are accomplished artists or performers, all either Latin American-born or Mexican American, and all at various stages of personal assimilation and mainstream acceptance. I suppose Lupillo Rivera is the one who sticks out the most. Is it because banda music remains on the fringes of American mainstream culture? When will it join zydeco? When do we wear our foreign nationalism proudly and when do we couch it in larger multi-ethnic terms? When is it OK to be Mexican first? How do the doors of mainstream acceptance open and close depending on how you express your national identity?

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The end is near. That's what my senses told me Sunday at Chavez Ravine. The cool air fluttered the flags to the east. The Santa Ana winds retreated to hibernation. Many of the seats on the west side of the stadium were in the shade. No sizzling sunburns on this day. The zig-zag canopy shading the top deck created a moon-curve shadow on the field below, just a few feet from the pitcher's mound.

The one o'clock game felt more like a late afternoon, early evening game. The top row in Reserve 14, above first base, had a tail wind from the ocean. Clouds form above the shark-tooth ridge of the San Gabriel Mountains. The winds and the clouds remind us that the coming winter rains will wash away the sins of summer. The trees in the hills where the parking lot ends plead for rain. Maybe the houses from 50 years ago left some roots. Maybe the trees think that with some water the neighborhood will return, and the kids will climb their branches.

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The Dude clinched it! And he did it an hour before our boys in Chavez Ravine.

Really, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic brought the house down Saturday night. He did it while conducting more than a hundred South L.A. students who'd feverishly rehearsed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" this summer through the L.A. Phil's new youth orchestra program. The performance wasn't up to par to the discriminating classical music ear but it was a great achievement given the cards they were dealt. And it was a seed planted in the arid working-class flatlands.

Dudamel had us 18 thousand people in his pocket leading the white-tuxed L.A. Phil musicians in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The composition is a plea to leave divisions and to embrace thy neighbor in brotherly love. It sounds to me like the composer's last gasp, knowing the end is near, and calling out what's important.

And did I tell you the Bowl's closest seats, the Pool Circle, the seats usually occupied by the crema y nata de la sociedad, nestled students' family members?

It was an unusual concert night at the Hollywood Bowl in several other respects, from the Mexican cowboy hats, yellow-blue-red Venezuelan shirts and hats, and a kaleidoscope of Spanish accents that joined French, Russian, and Armenian hovering toward the brush in the Hollywood Hills arm in arm.

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Manny, the Dominican, is up to bat in Monday's Dodgers game. What song blasts as he walks up? "El Rey" the classic, I'm-down-but-not-out, you'll-miss-me-when-I'm-gone song and which next to the Mexican national anthem stirs up the strongest emotions in Mexicans. That's how my Mexican Independence week started.

So does this mean the Mexican is now universal? In L.A. the embrace of the Mexican has been a rollercoaster ride. The minority Eastern seaboard immigrants who arrived in the mid 1800s loved Mexican culture, so they told their rich, future father in-laws. It kind of went downhill from there for Mexicans. In the mid 1900s "Spanish" food restaurants with sleepy, sombrero and serape wearing Mexicans symbolized the safe Mexican image. At around the same time, some giants of political and cultural thought spent time in the area, like Ricardo Flores-Magon and Octavio Paz.

There are so many layers of Mexican identity to peel back here, right? The 1932 anti-capitalism "American Tropical" mural - whitewashed after it was painted by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros - rises slowly. Mexican immigrants and the children of immigrants, like Antonio Villaraigosa and Antonia Hernandez, rise to the prominence of the offspring of L.A.'s other immigrants.

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Fernando Botero's disasters are ours too. From Colombia, a colonial country racked by violence and destruction for decades, Botero depicts images Southern Californians are all too familiar with.

One hundred of Botero's paintings, drawings and sculptures are on display through December at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

The rolling hills near Gorman could have easily inspired the landscape in the 1989 painting "The Picnic." In it a couple enjoys the outdoors; the man lays his cheek on the tablecloth across from two red nail-polished hands, one holding a drink, the other a cigarette. And in the distance - maybe fed by the Santa Ana winds - a plume of smoke rises from a mountaintop. The couple embraces nature's beauty, even as tragedy looms nearby.

In "The Earthquake" Botero turns the viewer into a witness of destruction in progress: colonial churches topple, wood balconies fall, a woman screams from a window for help. The buildings may differ from those destroyed in Northridge in 1994 or Long Beach in 1933 but the piles of rubble and lives lost are the same.

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The Stars and Bars is dancing a reluctant merengue with the flags of Simon Bolivar.

A nice vacation earlier this summer to visit the in-laws in North Carolina revealed this interesting juxtaposition: along my daily morning walk I passed by the old cemetery in Statesville, set aside in 1756 to inter the remains of the town's pioneers and the dead from the Indian Wars and later the brave men who died in Civil War battles defending the Confederacy.

The burial ground is in the old part of this small town, across the street from the massive Greek-revival Presbyterian Church and a stone wall away from the still-active 19th century synagogue that's cute in its modest design and size, compared to the nearby churches.

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At MOCA, L.A.'s poetry old-guard held out the torch to the young bucks and said... psych!

It was youth's night at the museum's auditorium several weeks ago. That's what the young poets said. Then Luis Alfaro stepped up to the podium, saying he had inaugurated some of the first poetry readings at the museum in the early 1990s and that he was there to represent the youth. Some of the night's poets weren't in kindergarten when Luis first read at MOCA.

Luis's poem sped the audience into the driveways and crashed through the fences of his Pico-Union, Mexican/Chicano upbringing and reminded you why he's decided to write plays for a living. His poem ended with a shaving of the mustache that reminded him of his Mexican father.

19 year-old Dante Mitchell threw down a poem that zipped the audience from "gangsta Bush," to women's basketball, to mother's angel eyes. Dante's a recent high school graduate who's cut his teeth in the Leimert Park scene with Project Blowed. Dante and several of the other poets who read at MOCA credited L.A.'s Mike the Poet with inspiring them to write and perform.

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Six year-old Nathan Zamora is mad at his dad. Both are soccer fans. Nathan cheered for Mexico. His father, Juan Zamora, rooted for the U.S. saying it played more cohesively as a team, not as a group of individual, prima donna soccer stars.

Juan wants me to know he's not a Malinchista, the reference to the ultimate traitor in Mexican culture: La Malinche, the indigenous woman who translated for Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and became his lover. He's from Mexico City, Juan adds, a metropolis with four (Right? America, Pumas, Cruz Azul and Atlante) professional soccer teams.

The Zamoras: Juan, his wife, and four kids took in the game at Guelaguetza restaurant in L.A.'s Koreatown. The kids did a good job of keeping the mole off their clothes, Nintendos, and cel phones. And Juan stayed cool as Mexico shut out top U.S. forward (and L.A. Galaxy star) Landon Donovan and beat the U.S. two goals to one.

Guelaguetza is huge. For nine years it has occupied a former Chinese restaurant near the corner of Olympic and Normandie. The high end mezcal and the michelada beers were flowing and the tacos de chapulines crackled in the molars.

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The wisest Latina in L.A. County according to my unscientific poll is... Mamá. Aww, isn't that sweet. A couple of others got about as many votes: Latino civil rights advocate Antonia Hernandez, now head of the California Community Foundation, and L.A. County labor chief Maria Elena Durazo, and L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina trailed behind Mama.

There's a lot of talk about "wise Latinas" in the middle age crowd, Pasadena activist Roberta Martinez tells me, after Judge Sonia Sotomayor defended her comments and apologized that sticking up for wise people like her may have offended some people. Sotomayor looks headed to the marble halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Senate confirmation hearings may be remembered for inserting the "Wise Latina" phrase into the lexicon, alongside "Yo Quiero Taco Bell." The words are there, maybe devoid of context.

Southland Latinos I've interviewed over the years mostly complained about the confirmation hearings. The whole thing was off-key to East L.A.-based composer Geoff Gallegos. "A Supreme Court Justice needs to have the freedom to state their interpretation of the law without feeling shell shocked about expressing a semantical word. I thought she was just trying to bring some levity to the process. Has she put any pubic hairs on any soda cans? That didn't prevent another justice from getting confirmed."

He snickers that he knows a lot of wise-ass Latinas, and I'm sure they all know one big wise ass Latino (sorry Geoff, I couldn't resist). He nominates two wise Latinas, one in art and one in public transportation: Angelica Loa Perez in L.A.'s Department of Cultural Affairs and Monica Rodriguez at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "...who was one of the architects at the beginning of the eastside MTA Gold Line extension. Once again, someone who is behind the scenes, and doesn't get much press, but nonetheless, has earned my respect with her brain."

If this were a real contest, with beer company sponsorship for example, I'd have some Wise Latina girlie tees to give out. Too late, Roberta tells me.

UCLA Chicano Studies professor Marissa Lopez believes ex-L.A. first lady Corina Villaraigosa is the wisest Latina, "por que cheaters never change; they just get more crafty."

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