"Real Women Have Curves" was a wonderful movie -- made for HBO, I think. I'm not sure about the SALSA clip: there are some indications that it's cuban/puerto rican rather than mexican. But. The dance is the same, and that music is on the radio stations here.
Which brings to mind ... in the San Diego area, on FM, I count 23 stations that come in clearly, and only 10 or 11 of them are english-speaking.
A coworker of mine was teaching me spanish once, back in norfolk. She was puerto rican. She kept pointing out the differences between mexican-spanish and puerto rican spanish. From the puerto rican point of view, the mexican turns-of-phrase are more vulgar. I'm in no position to assess that. But if I lived here, I would surely learn spanish -- I've always been shocked that mom and john haven't.
There's a pull/tension here. For example, John, retired navy/retired civil servant, feels it isn't his job to learn spanish: it's the mexican-american's job to learn english. The movement to which you see alluded in the initial pictures is experienced as a threat in the border states, culturally. (Other border states would be Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, perhaps Nevada.)
Me, I want to understand. There was a group of guys doing construction on the house next door last time I was here, for example, singing in spanish about a "rojo" - headed woman while they were looking at me. Might have been handy to know/understand the intent. That's not the only reason to learn: it just goes without saying that you can't have communication without the language.
More pictures and tidbits later.
