LATimes.com | El Pachuco Zoot Suits

Demian Bichir plays it cool in ‘Zoot Suit’

By Daryl H. Miller/Contact Reporter – LATimes.com – Photo Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times – He holds out the sleek, black fedora for closer inspection. It is at once reserved and dandyish, with a brim that sweeps up in back into what look like...

The godfather of Chicano art — and the son who’s keeping his memory alive

By Deborah Vankin/Contact Reporter – LATimes.com – Photo Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times It was 1979 and Emigdio “Higgy” Vasquez was 11. His father, Emigdio Vasquez, often called the godfather of Chicano art in Orange County, drove him to a mural he was...

Study the colors and conflict that made San Diego’s Chicano Park

By Christopher Reynolds – LATimes.com – Photo Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times When state and local officials expanded Interstate 5 through San Diego and built the Coronado Bridge in the 1960s, they split the longstanding blue-collar neighborhood of...

‘They Shoot Mexicans, Don’t They?’ leads a monthlong look at Latino representation

By Vera Castaneda – LATimes.com – Photo Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times Just a couple of months after costarring in the hit L.A. revival of “Zoot Suit,” Rose Portillo is reprising the role of another matriarch — leader of the Ramirez family in “They Shoot...