January 2009 Archives

The little girl who belted out boleros after school at the donkey cart in Olvera Street is now fronting one of L.A.'s best new Latin bands. The band's called La Santa Cecilia - in tribute to the Catholic patron saint of musicians - and it switches from Boyle Heights norteño conjunto to Brazilian batucada and makes the girls swoon with romantic boleros.

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My cousin Margarita had a big smile on her face the first year she made salted cod for the holidays. Her father liked it a lot. He knew a thing or two about bacalao, as it's called in Mexico, it was one of his mother's signature holiday dishes. The other is an herb-seasoned, mole-drenched, shrimp cake dish called romeritos. She's made both for the holidays more than 50 years and she's gotten good at it.

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Two friends joined me recently to catch Steven Soderbergh's film about Ernesto "Che" Guevara at the Nuart. It'll be in wide distribution later but this was one of the last showings of the four and a half hour film in its entirety. Under the neon marquee during intermission - with Santa Monica Boulevard still busy but not as much as when we'd entered the theater - a few people shared their thoughts.

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In Torreon, Mexico: This is the Phoenix of Mexico. Like the Arizona city, Torreon´s become a boomtown in the last 80 years because of its crossroads location. It´s also unbearably hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Two major rail lines crossed here a century ago carrying products north-south and east-west. That attracted lots of people out to make money on the trade. Chinese and Middle Eastern immigrants did well out here. The phone book´s multiple columns of Sanchez and Garcia are peppered with Wong and Abularach. They´re largely assimilated. The big supermarket´s got a falafel shop and Chinese food is a staple.

My Mexico City relatives moved here about 40 years ago when there was still a shallow laguna, or lake, that fed the vast cotton fields and dairies. Massive industrial and housing developments have sucked up the last drops of that water. And free trade´s changed the look of this city in the last 15 years. Applebee´s is next to the Holiday Inn Express and Coors dukes it out with Corona at the bars.

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