Since the Guadalupe Cultural Center's new presidente arrived, R. Bret Ruiz , last summer in San Antonio, ten women have resigned, been fired, or terminated in some way. The Guadalupe Center, once the proud and mighty cultural leader of Mexican-American and Chicana/o art in the country, has no artistic directors left - except for dance. The Center is in serious debt - the rumors are that it could be as much as 1.2 million dollars in the hole, and from my records, this figure seems plausible. Ruiz has inflated his resume ; he has hired Anglo staff to replace the browns, and he has no track record for raising funds, based on the 990s I reviewed from his past employer, the Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico in Dallas, and from an interview I did with Mauricio Navarro, who was the ANM Board Chairman when Ruiz was hired. A number of the women who left the Guadalupe have stated publicly and privately that Ruiz made disparaging remarks to them, and about the neighborhood, calling the ...

R. Bret Ruiz submitted two resumes to the Guadalupe Cultural Center, and this is the earlier version. According to Claire Actander at Northwestern University, Ruiz received his M.A. in Art History in 1986 - four years later than what he states here, a significant discrepancy. I suspect that Ruiz back-dated his resume attempting to show a curatorial record he doesn't seem to have, based on telephone calls I made to his past employers. Artistic experience in a discipline is critical to the top job of a cultural center like the Guadalupe. http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=16714402&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=8

Last week after lunch, I went outside to throw the trash and there they were. Two muchachas from nearby Jefferson High school, making a picnic with a bottle of wine and some bottles of beer, besides my trash can in the alley. I live two doors from the high school, so the students are always trampling through my backyard, scaring the cats, searching for dope from my next-door neighbor, but I had never seen this. The two girls, dressed in their regulation khaki and white, immediately stuffed their liquor in their brown bags and stood up, embarrassed that I saw them, expecting a reganada. I wanted to preach to them, but looking at their pretty faces, a morena with ribbons in her hair, and the noodle-slim guerita with giant hoops, I wanted to reach through the years dividing us. How many years has it been since I was their age, thirty, thirty-five, and how could I possibly tell them all I've seen, the broken hearts that women have suffered, how could I tell them the drinking won...

From Elaine Wolff: Your website lists Michael Cary as a columnist with the Current. He is a former staff writer; his last day was May 17. I would appreciate it if you would add a note indicating that. FYI, the Current pays .13/word for reviews, and .15/word for stories for freelancers.

MEDIA WATCHATE! Look and See why the Alternative Newspaper, the San Antonio Current, isn't. Watch the video The San Antonio Current's Michael Cary. I think he has trouble with a bigmouth latina like me.

I have tried not to write anything critical about our alternative newspaper, the San Antonio Current. There was a time, when alternative newspapers really were, before they were bought out by publishers and alternative media moguls who live in Alamo Heights. There was a time when alternatives really were ass-kicking, raise-helling periodismo. Those days are gone. Most readers, I think, read the Current for its entertainment guide, and the occasional puff-piece, I know I do. There's no money, you see, after profits are made with the sex ads and restaurant reviews by the owners and publishers to invest in serious journalism. I'm sure the writers try, sometimes one of them succeeds, but it's hard out there for a girl to make a living for a dime a word - which is what the free-lance writers make, and that's most of the writers at the Current. Still, I don't know why the San Antonio Current wants to be the San Antonio Corriente with the likes of Michael Cary, thei...

Rod Davis, Senior Editor of D Magazine , that smart-sassy publication in Dallas, is following the Guadalupe story. Because R. Bret Ruiz, the Guadalupe's "Presidente," led the Anita R. Martinez Ballet Folklorico for several years, the story has resonance there. Mauricio Navarro, a key source of mine, was the Chairman of the Anita Martinez Center when Ruiz was hired, and he's the one who called Juan Aguilera, the Guadalupe's Chairman last summer, to tell him that Ruiz was "the worst director we've ever had." I looked at Ruiz's employment references for the Guadalupe Center, and he didn't list any Anita Martinez boardmembers as a reference - a curious thing when it comes to executive director positions. Elda Silva of the San Antonio Express-News asked me if I thought that all these stories were pushing Chairman Juan Aguilera and the Guadalupe Board into a corner. You know what, I told her, sometimes we make mistakes. The Guadalupe Board h...