expectations

I didn’t know I was a poor Mexican until the day I started junior high

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salomon_y_carmenWhen you grow up in a segregated community and poor, often times, you’re not aware of your ethnicity and class status. Growing up in tight-knit Mexican communities, from Tijuana, Mexico, to East Los Angeles, I didn’t realize that I was Mexican and poor until my first day of junior high school.

As part of federal integration programs, I — along with classmates from Murchison Elementary School in East Los Angeles — was bused to Mt. Gleason Jr. High School in Sunland-Tujunga. Nervous about leaving the notorious Ramona Gardens housing project or Big Hazard projects for a strange place, I braced myself for the unknown.

Mas…I didn’t know I was a poor Mexican until the day I started junior high

Woman is told ‘Cup O Noodles is not fideo,’ then gets dumped

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noodles(PNS reporting from EAST LOS) Paola Lopez’ dreams were shattered and her heart was broken Friday after she prepared sopa de fideo for her boyfriend, Sunny Vargas.

“I just thought it would be nice to make him a quick snack before we went out,” the 28-year-old woman tearfully recounted to PNS. “Then all of a sudden he got all mad and left me. He broke up with me in a text that night.”

The tragedy began Tuesday when Vargas, a  sales representative for a Pico Rivera power tools importer and distributor, told Lopez that one of his favorite dishes (and thus a requirement to be considered “wife material”) was sopa de fideo, like his mom Victoria makes.

The shocking conclusion came Friday evening.

Mas…Woman is told ‘Cup O Noodles is not fideo,’ then gets dumped

Beverly Hills Mexican restaurant where Lalo got profiled shuts down

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Facebook announcement Tuesday evening

One night in February, POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz was waiting for the valet to retrieve his car outside a Mexican restaurant in Beverly Hills when a white lady repeatedly thrust her parking valet ticket in his direction.

Lalo was at the restaurant to speak on a panel for DigitalLA Latino Content professionals on the need for Latinos to create and control their own media content and channels because mainstream media stereotypes of Latinos are, you know, stereotypes.

And now that restaurant has abruptly closed. No more gigantic fresh three-way chips of blue corn, yucca and plantains with both salsa verde and salsa habanera. No more empanadas. No more $5 Happy Hour specials like ceviche shooters.

We don’t know why they closed (the website is all white.)  It’s a shame — they were berry berry nice to us.  In memoriam, here’s Lalo’s epic account of  that evening.  The headline?

Standing While Brown: A white lady tried to get me to valet her car

Mas…Beverly Hills Mexican restaurant where Lalo got profiled shuts down