Ok, so I got a call from a relative of Rina's, the woman who was beat up outside the Museo Alameda on Thursday, April 12th, during the VIP Gala in downtown San Antonio. Los chingazos were apparently given by relatives of Henry Munoz , the Museo Alameda Smithsonian's empresario, the Alameda Museum's founder, and resident star-maker. Rina Moreno, the social worker wife of Cruz Ortiz, artista, has filed a police report and intends to press assault charges against Peter Falcon, an actor. Falcon is married to Meredith, Henry Munoz's niece, and they brought their two young daughters to the Alameda VIP pachanga. Here's what happened according to Rina's familia: It was about 12:30 am on Thursday night, and Cruz was helping put an easel away a few feet outside the museum. While he worked on this, Rina decided to return to the dancing which was still rockeando the museum. On the way there, she wished outloud to no one "Goddammit, I want a fucking giftbag!...

Ok, so everybody I know is mixtiado about Henry Munoz, the (alleged, some say) founder and corporate fuerza behind the Museo Alameda Smithsonian, which celebrated an exclusive dinner for the hoi politicos in San Antonio before the public's opening night on Friday the 13th. The food was delicious and VIP. My good sources on the scene tell me that Rina, la esposa de Cruz Ortiz, a chicano artist of repute who was in Henry's Chicano! exhibit by Target some years ago, got into some chingolazos with la wifa de Peter Falcon (the niece of Henry Munoz) outside the Alameda's steps by the plush sofas close to the midnight hour. Hey, it was meant to be a let them eat cake night (check out the installation by Franco Mondini Ruiz with a Venus de Milo on a stack of pancakes) Emily Bueche also got into it, Henry Munoz's sister, throwing down puro alamierda style (as it is commonly referred to in barrioesque), according to very good and reliable chismosos working on the inside of ...

I can't believe the media hasn't even tried to tell the truth about the Duke University stripper so I will. I'm a writer, who's also worked as a social worker. Contrary to popular myth, las strippers don't w ant sex. They become strippers or prostitutes because they've been raped, sometimes by all the men in their family, and they have been socialized to believe this is what a woman does. They want to please men, and yet they hate them. Many times the stripper/prostitute will take drugs to escape the pain. Or she becomes an addict because that's how Daddy wanted it. I believe the stripper in the Duke University case was raped. Horribly. Likely with a broom. But she was too drugged-up and too unstable to tell her story. The rich white guys have so much power, and who's going to listen to this poor black stripped-down woman? Some of these guys will be judges someday.... I have seen prostitutes, strippers, abused women. It...

Let me count the haters: Coulter; Limbaugh; O'Reilly...and our own wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News. There's more but I don't listen to talk radio or watch TV because of their rhetoric. What Imus said isn't free speech, it's hate speech. He said it because he's gotten away with it but there are others who've said much worse. Imus is a symbol of Big Media that places profit over protest. The airwaves belong to all of us, not just to white men like Imus. We need real debate in this country. Diverse, informed, contextual, impassioned, but not racist, sexist... And we deserve to hear other voices besides the haters. Register your protest to the FCC. See the link below. http://www.stopbigmedia.com/minoritymedia.php artistic credits: http: www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cperaza320/555%20copy.htm

Have you seen this woman? Susan Yerkes disappeared from the San Antonio Express-News a couple months ago. Her society onda reported women's affairs with a progressive, sassy, beat. Sus columns just disappeared one day with no explanation given. A reporter from the paper assured me that she was still alive, but seemed nervous just mentioning her name. The chisme-mill says that Yerkes, a proud card-carrying feminista threatened by Executive Editor Bob Rivard with her job in the past, neglected to write about a party that retiring publisher Larry Walker hosted. Oops! Another friend emailed the so-called Public Editor Bob Richter at the San Antonio Express-News on February 14th, 2007. The response from Richter was along the lines of "I don't know and I can't talk about it." This is from the Public Editor who's supposed to represent the readers. With the disappearance of Yerkes, there are no out-feministas publishing columns at the paper anymore. Meli...

Henry Munoz, a vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Smithsonian and San Antonio native, is the driving force behind the Smithsonian-affiliated Museo Alameda, opening with fireworks on April 13th, and a free concert by Linda Ronstadt. The Alameda itself is a historic theatre in downtown San Antonio, a resplendant building that once hosted a milieu of Mexican stars and the films from the golden age of Mexican cinema. Now, it's a national museum. Here in San Antonio, where the Guadalupe Cultural Center is imploding from its corporate ambitions and wannabe-boardmembers, there is debate about the influence of corporate interests on the depiction of latino culture that the Museo Alameda represents. It is our story, yours and mine, after all, that has the power to change hearts. With this musuem, will we tell it, or will we ask permission from our corporate sponsor? You tell me. Below is a comment from Pablo Miguel Martinez, noted poet and cultural activist. He's from...

My good sources tell me that Russell Felan, Mud King Extraordinario , will be voted on tonight, April 10th, at the Guadalupe Theatre as the newest boardmember. There's something too about Mike de la Garza getting on the board, though I don't know who he is. Don't quote me, but I've also heard that both men are connected to Maria Elena Torralba-Alonso, via family or corporate ties. She's the one who got the Guadalupe into the mess they're in today. IF they are connected, this is bad news. In a conversation just now with Councilwoman Patti Radle, she expressed her frustrations with the Guadalupe Cultural Center, but stopped short of taking the steps necessary to force the Guadalupe Board to resign. Look, the Guadalupe Cultural Center is in deep debt and deeper denial. Program-stifling, board-silencing, macho-armoring, dinero problems. (Long story, review my past blogs if you want.) At this point, unless the community marches down Guadalupe Avenue, (during...