Cruising Around the Historic Bloc

1) Subjects:

2) Review:

3) Summary:

This work begins with reference to a lament by Octavio Paz in the Labyrinth of Solitude describing the minimal impression he received from the Hispanic (particularly Mexican) influence on the city of Los Angeles. The dilemma of assimilation for immigrant minorities was presented as: failure leads to exclusion in vital economic and political processes versus success leading to annihilation of prized traditions. Mass communication and cultural industries are described as leading to a context-free society. Thus, the dominant social groups and cultural minority face alienation in the confusion of contemporary cultural.

Post-on in the confusion of contemporary cultural.

Post-modern culture reveres ethnic minorities since they have developed strategies of ambiguity, appropriation, juxtaposition and irony. This gives them a bifocality. It is on the level of the commodified mass culture that acts of cultural Bricolage happen.

The Los Angeles Chicano community preserves its past identity. It even resources a complicated cultural strategy of adapting to current needs. Traditionally the Afro-Americans were limited to the South Central region while the Mexican-Americans lived in East Los Angeles. After World War. After World War II, small entrepreneurs catered to local markets with reasonable success until the large corporations like RCA realized the commercial potential.

Don Tosti Band's 'Pachuco Boogie' is documented and analyzed to contain Mexican speech with Afro-American scat-singing and blues harmonies. It sold in excess of two million. This is the germ of the movement that peaked with Los Lobos in the 1980s. The core components of postmodern sensibilities [Fischer, 1986] like bifocality, intertextuality, inter-referentiality, comparisons of resemblance, juxtaposition, reciprocity of perspectives, and multiple realities are shown to exist in the local music of Mexican-Americans of Los Angeles. This fusion addresses the invisibility of the community.

4) Comments:

I rode on three buses and the population of the riders was at least 80% Hispanic. The drivers were black males or white females. The signs were often redone in Spanish although there were signs exclusive in Spanish.

Graffiti was Spanish-like. Wall murals were a transformed Latin style with colours somewhat subdued, more angularity and Hollywood-like references. I tuned to a Spanish station as many were heard:

Nina Bonita Nida Fernandez
??Spanish ??? heavy rock?
Wonderful World Louis Armstrong
??Spanish ??? female love song?
??Spanish ?? light rock?
Black and White Sarah McLachlan
??Spanish ?? light rock?
Per Fortuna Purtroppo Irene Grundi

I stopped in three video stores.

All of this showed me that the strategy was working and the community had presence and a voice.

5) References:

• Fischer, Michael M.J. (1986) 'Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory', in James Clifford and George Marcus (eds) Writing Culture, Berkeley: Uarcus (eds) Writing Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Page Created March 10, 1998

Page Last Updated April 2, 1998