Latino TV personalities juggle a bilingual stage

They say things like "Antes de la break" and "Mira que cute." One is a clownish, Puerto Rican-born 28-year-old who ditched studying engineering to pursue a career in entertainment, another is an outspoken SoCal native who once had a penchant for crashing cars. The Spanglish? It just comes naturally, reports Yvonne Villarreal.

They're a new generation of Latino television personalities: attractive, plugged in and conversant not only in Spanglish argot but in a complex, shifting culture. Their employers believe they are offering young viewers a cool, and marketable, connection to this culture. Don Francisco, cuidado.

Read more here.

Photo: Yasmin Deliz, Yarel Ramos and Melissa "Crash" Barrera dish out programming that bridges a cultural gap. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Fighting over Frida Kahlo

In Mexico, the emergence of work said to be made by the artist has led to a very public debate about its authenticity. The Times' art critic has seen the pieces.

Policing the legacy of artists can be a tough business. Nowhere is it tougher than in Mexico, where the magnetic, self-mythologizing painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54) shot from relative obscurity to iconic status only in the last quarter-century.

Now, a festering dispute over a little-known archive of ephemera attributed to Kahlo has erupted into open warfare. Despite the tantalizing possibility that some or maybe even all the material is authentic, a sharp line has been drawn in the art historical sand, writes Christopher Knight.

Read more here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Mexico's artistic community feels the economic crisis

For Mexico, which prides itself on a unique artistic tradition, the crisis resulting from the global economic meltdown and swine flu is particularly acute, and is being felt by the country's artistic community and museums.

See this report by Tracy Wilkinson for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: A model of a jaguar is part of a public art installation on Mexico City's Avenida de la Reforma. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

Recession hits Argentina's tango industry

Tango, Argentina's seductive, complex dance, isn't going to be able to hot-step its way through the financial crisis and the H1N1 flu outbreak. The country's tango industry has been badly hit by a drop in tourists put off by swine flu and the global recession, according to this report by the BBC:

"At the moment we are seeing a fall of around 70% in the number of people coming to see the shows," says Luis Veiga, president of Argentina's chamber of tango venues.

Some tango shows have been forced to close temporarily, and some might now have to close down altogether if things don't improve, he adds.

Read the rest of that report here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Mexico City mural makeover

 

To some, the graffiti that covers miles of walls and public spaces across Mexico City is a thing of beauty and something to be encouraged and celebrated. To others, such as the local government's Youth Institute, it's an ugly nuisance.

A government project mobilized more than 1,000 youngsters earlier this month to clean up and repaint a graffiti-covered wall in the south of the city, as part of an urban spruce-up scheme for the summer.

See the video for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Video: The Mexico City government recruited more than 1,000 young people in this to make over a graffiti-covered wall in the south of the city. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

The mystery of Lucrecia Martel's 'The Headless Woman'

Mark Olsen writes, for the Los Angeles Times:

It's an all-too-familiar situation: You're driving along, slightly distracted, and then a bump in the road brings that sickening feeling.

So begins 'The Headless Woman,' the third feature from Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel, opening in New York City on Wednesday and in Los Angeles on Sept. 4. A woman (played with masterful opacity by Maria Onetto) just keeps driving, and as the film unfolds it becomes increasingly unclear as to whether she hit something (a dog? a young boy?). Nevertheless, Onetto's character becomes increasingly disconnected from her upper-middle-class life, having seemingly left behind something of herself on that dusty stretch of empty road.

Read his full article here.

See the trailer in the video above

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

'Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler' at the British Museum

If you're anywhere in London in the next few months but in the mood for an injection of Mexican culture, head for the British Museum. The Financial Times reports on an exhibition opening there in September about the ancient Aztec ruler Moctezuma:

“All the days of my life I have seen nothing that has so rejoiced my heart as these things,” Albrecht Dürer wrote in his diary in 1521. “For I saw among them strange and exquisitely worked objects and marvelled at the subtle genius of men in distant lands.”

The strange and exquisite objects that so excited the German artist had come from Mexico: they were among the first spoils of Europe’s meeting with the civilisation we know as the Aztecs (they called themselves the Mexica). But even as Dürer wrote his admiring words, the Aztec empire’s endgame was being played out thousands of miles away. Besieged by Spanish troops and their Indian allies, the Aztec capital fell in August 1521, opening the way for the Spanish colonisation of Mexico. Two powerful, sophisticated and prosperous civilisations, previously unknown to each other, had met; within two years, only one – the one, in US scientist Jared Diamond’s memorable formulation, with guns, germs and steel on its side – survived.

From September, visitors to London will, like Dürer, be able to marvel at the works of the losing civilisation, as the British Museum mounts the last in its “Great Rulers” series of exhibitions. Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler will include more than 80 items from Mexico, together with treasures from the museum’s own collection, ranging from finely wrought jewellery to stone carvings weighing more than two tons.

Read more about the show here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Mexico's Diego Rivera murals get restoration treatment

Anyone with even a passing interest in Latin American art and culture will be familiar with Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter and muralist. Rivera, who is credited with being one of the founders of the Mexican muralist art movement, was also an active communist and husband of the equally famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo and Cuernavaca here in Mexico, as well as in San Francisco, Detroit and New York City. Mexico City's Palacio Nacional, or National Palace, is home to some of the paintings that Rivera did under government commission, and those works are currently the focus of a restoration project by the government.

Diligent specialists are touching up missing color with watercolor paints, and using a weak alcohol solution to wash away dust and grime that the murals have collected. The restoration is expected to be completed in September.

See the video for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Video: Specialists restore Diego Rivera's murals in Mexico City's Palacio Nacional. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

Guatemalan artists harness power of the web

Renata Avila, one of the authors of Global Voices, the international blog network, writes about how the web is being used by Guatemalan painters and artists, wherever they are in the world.

"Sebastián Sarti is Guatemalan, but was born in Costa Rica, where his Guatemalan father was exiled and married his Puerto Rican mother. He grew up in Nicaragua, lived for a while in Guatemala, and now he is dedicated to his paintings in Aix et à Marseille. He is sharing his works on his personal blog El Desorden de la Cabeza (The Mess Inside My Head)," writes Avila.

She goes on to feature Guatemalan artists in Antigua, New York and France - you can read about them and find links to their blogs here.

Global Voices was founded in 2005 by Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN bureau chief in Beijing and Tokyo, and Ethan Zuckerman, a technologist and Africa expert, while both were fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The idea for the project grew out of an international bloggers’ meeting held at Harvard in December 2004 and it began as a simple blog. (Here's a written report and podcast of that meeting).

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Jumex Collection owner says architectural choice not 'malinchismo'

You might remember last week we reported that the contemporary art collection, Coleccion Jumex, had appointed a British architectural firm, David Chipperfield Architects, to build its hot new gallery space closer to the Mexico City action.

At the time of writing the dispatch, we were also curious to know why owner Eugenio Lopez Alonso, heir to the Jumex juice fortune, opted for a British firm.

In Mexico, the term "malinchismo" is used to refer to the favoritism Mexicans sometimes show toward foreigners over other Mexicans. The term comes from the name given a woman who was adviser and lover to the leader of the Spanish Conquest, Hernan Cortez. The woman, Doña Marina, was called La Malinche by the Aztecs, who labeled her a traitor and harlot for her role as Cortes's ally as he conquered Mexico, her homeland.

Here is Lopez Alonso's response, sent via email (translated from Spanish):