Word: barrios
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...band members found another ingredient for its unique sound, as well as a further source of income: with a repertory of Mexican favorites, they could work the local wedding circuit. Eventually the coming of punk and the revitalizing of the Los Angeles music scene lured them out of the barrio and over to the Sunset Strip, where they found the beginnings of an audience that would turn them into a critics' favorite (they were 1984's Band of the Year in Rolling Stone) and a campus-radio cornerstone...
...first there was a bit of culture shock for both band and audience. The punkers, who held rather prescribed, even fashionable ideas about anarchy, were surprised to see a band of brooding barrio boys in plaid shirts who sang tunes with suspiciously literate overtones. The band, which includes guitarist-vocalist Cesar Rosas, bass player Conrad Lozano and sax man Steven Berlin, found itself looking out into a Chinese restaurant with black walls and a rankly aromatic carpet. So much for crossover dreams. But that grungy club gave them an enthusiastic constituency that remained faithful even as it grew...
Frantic family members and blinking squad-car lights surrounded Antonio Ramirez. Knocked down by a passing pickup truck, the six-year-old boy screamed in pain as he lay on a curbside patch of grass in a south Los Angeles County barrio. For paramedics Edwin St. Andrew, 27, and Walter Tayenaka, 32, summoned to an "unknown T.C." (traffic collision), the moment was routine yet unnerving. The boy briefly lost consciousness and appeared to have broken bones. They had to move him quickly to a hospital. "You never know about kids," explained St. Andrew. "They seem to be doing well...
...Mahon, blessed with a quick smile and caring eyes, gained converts to a program called De Madres a Madres -- from mothers to mothers. Her grass-roots scheme, hatched with a colleague from Texas Woman's University and underwritten by the March of Dimes, calls for training mothers from the barrio to reach out to the ghetto's endangered women. Texas mothers, particularly Hispanics, are among the least likely in the U.S. to receive early prenatal care. So Mahon has been arming volunteer moms with information to help them save their neighbors' babies. The volunteers not only persuade pregnant women...
...guns won't solve the barrio's problems, which include domestic violence. Mahon has discovered that wife beating is common. One volunteer mom knows this dark secret all too well. She has survived her own tormented marriage, but a teenage friend has a boyfriend who beats her. "No man that hits you loves you," the volunteer told her. But the advice did not take hold, for her friend, now pregnant, is back with the boyfriend. So the volunteer is determined to get her friend the prenatal care she never got. "I'm going to show her that she doesn...