Stereotyping, biting satire and youth culture: Nacos vs. Fresas

Part of youth culture is deciding who´s in and who´s out. This is not new. And it creates culture clashes. It has to do with how young people dress and talk, the music and movies they like and how they spend their time.

In Mexico today, it´s about the Nacos and the Fresas. Here´s a video that makes fun of the mannerisms and tastes of both.



What do you think about these stereotypes? What kind of video would you make about other young people at your school? Satire is by its nature nasty. It demeans people. Would you want to make that kind of art?

Nothing new about the clashes

In the Broadway play and movie "West Side Story," the art form is not satire but musical tragedy, and its setting is New York City in the 1950s.

The two gangs that are battling each other are the Sharks, who are from families of Puerto Rican immigrants, and the Jets, who are from working class white families.

In the end the clashes lead to violence and death, just as they did in Shakespeare´s play "Romeo and Juliet," which "West Side Story" draws upon.

Featured in the newspaper

The Guadalajara Reporter, an English language newspaper here in the capital of Jalisco, recently did an article about the cultural phenomenon of Nacos and Fresas.

"From the dandies of the early 19th century to greasers, punks, teddies, mods, hicks, Goths, thugs and metrosexuals, social stereotyping has forever been part of our culture, says the Reporter.

"Mexico’s naco and fresa phenomenon is a societal chasm that accentuates two ends of the cultural spectrum. It’s also sprouted a rash of jokes and a now famous cartoon series on YouTube."



Art isn´t always pretty. Often it highlights the dark side of human nature.

What did you like or dislike about these videos?

Young Mexicans have few job prospects

A recent article in the daily newspaper La Jornada talked about how Mexico´s adolescents are among the most forgotten groups in society.

Academics at the National University (UNAM) blame this on the lack of public policies, family crises and the fact that staying in school doesn´t help one´s job prospects.

An estimated 7 to 9 million adolescents in Mexico are neither employed nor in school. In Mexico City, about half of all adolescents are in that category.

Even a student who graduates from high school or obtains a college degree has no guarantee of getting a job, according to authorities quoted in La Jornada.

In many families, one parent has left home to find work in another state or country, which means the young people don´t get the guidance they need.

As a result, many young people enter the informal economy, which means street vendors, casual labor in construction, housemaids, washing cars and other types of unstable employment.

In the building where I live in Guadalajara, a 16-year-old boy works as the caretaker and gardener for a small salary. He dropped out of school to work.

In some cases, adolescents get into illegal activities, such as the drug trade. Grafitti on a wall in Culiacán, Sinaloa, expressed the attitude of some who go that route: "I prefer to die young and rich rather than old and poor".

Street art and street events thrive in Mexico

A website called Arte Callejero in Mexico City is all about celebrating street art and street events.

The site says it is aimed at improving the quality of life in cities.

This wall painting, next to a downspout, was taken from the website. With the country´s war on organized crime and druglords, Mexicans see military vehicles and heavily armed soldiers all over the cities and countryside.

Street art, graffiti, murals or whatever you want to call these works bring popular expression into a public place. Art isn´t just in museums.

This painting of a lady, with its elaborately painted frame, is on a busy pedestrian walkway in Mexico where it´s designed to make people stop, look, think and maybe be moved.

This is one of several examples from the website of paintings done in broken-down buildings in Monterrey. The artists evidently are trying to add something beautiful to something ugly.

Hispanic students produce online news in Spanish, English

Hispanic students at California State University at Northridge publish their own multimedia web page and blogs, called El Nuevo Sol, with stories in Spanish and English.

Above is a screenshot from a blog on performing arts called Trendz LA that is part of the site.

Jóvenes indocumentados luchan por educarse from Jessica Retis on Vimeo.

Students produced a multimedia package, with video and text in Spanish, about the struggle of undocumented students to get an education in the U.S.

Another student blog, called AmericaTropical, has articles by students in both English and Spanish on a variety of topics. Here´s one in Spanish on the laws to prevent hate crimes.

A Mexican professor with a vision

El Nuevo Sol is the project of Professor José Luis Benavides, a native of Mexico City who left in the 1980s to get his master´s and doctoral degrees at the University of Texas.

California State already has a student publication in English, called the Sundial, but Benavides wanted to develop a news medium for the Hispanic students in his classes, many of them with Mexican heritage.

Multilingüe, multimedia y multicultural

His vision is to train Hispanic students to work in the many Spanish-language media outlets in Los Angeles, whose Hispanic population is 48%, and elsewhere in the U.S. To do this they must develop the skills to be, in his words, "multilingüe, multimedia y multicultural."

He offers courses in Latino Journalism and advises students on the El Nuevo Sol website.

Professor Benavides´s project serves an important need because many Spanish-language news outlets in the States have a difficult time recruiting journalists with the required language skills.

Here´s another example of a student´s multimedia package, this one an audio slideshow about the language barrier.

Las barreras del lenguaje from Jessica Retis on Vimeo.

Mexican journalism student makes his mark

Jorge Tirzo, a 20-year-old journalism student at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, has managed to make a name for himself online.

In the photo above, he is showing a class of professional journalists the website that he and a group of fellow students launched. The site is now defunct, but Jorge has a blog called Cosas Imposibles 3.0, which is a lighthearted look at his explorations into literature, art, technology and journalism.

Jorge is also working with an environmental organization called Pronatura to publish video podcasts produced by students. He regularly posts items about journalism and culture on his Twitter feed.

I invited Jorge to participate with professionals in a course at the Digital Journalism Center (Centro de Periodismo Digital) because he has some skills and experience online that the veterans don´t. He also had shown some initiative in launching various projects and getting involved in activities outside the classroom.

The truth is that veterans and beginning journalists have a lot they can learn from each other.

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley

This post was written by Rosa Flores, our event host.

I'm a television reporter in Houston, Texas; but my roots run deep into the lands of Mexico. My grandparents on my mother's side are half Spanish and half Mexican. My grandparents on my dad's side are from Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

When I was born, my parents lived in Progreso, Texas; but I was born
in Rio Bravo, Mexico. Odd, hugh? My parents didn't have enough
money to pay a hospital in America; so my mother crossed the border and into Mexico to deliver her 4th of July baby.

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley was an amazing cultural experience. I remember going to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico to buy "tortillas," avocados, soap, "pan dulce". you name it, and my family found it two miles away in Mexico.

This was before September 11th so crossing the border was easy. Sometimes immigration agents didn't even ask us for our documents, or if we were United States citizens.

The only thing agents asked was "¿Que llevan?" Or, 'What are you bringing back from Mexico?" So, for me and for the people who grow up on the border between the United States and Mexico, there isn't much of a border. Like any other neighborhood, I had family, friends and acquaintances a few miles from my home, it just happened to be in Mexico.
Summers were always fun! My father would drive us to my grandparent's ranch in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. It was a blast! To my cousins and me it was an amusement park. We had natural water holes to play, a river to fish, and a forest filled with Mexican Indian artifacts. Among the many things we found were arrowheads, stone axes, stone bowls and pieces of pottery.

You have probably figured out that I like digging into the past.
That's why I'm working on a book about the history of the town where I grew up. The book, titled Progreso, is due to publish next year. I found that Captain James Baker, from Houston law firm Baker Botts invested in my hometown in the 1920s. The rumor in town is that infamous gangster Al Capone traveled the area during the Prohibition.

Before speakeasies on the Mexican side attracted people to Progreso, Texas, a visionary by the name of Juan Jose Hinojosa requested a land grant from the Spanish crown in 1776 and was given rights to the land in 1790.

Through the years the border changed on my town many times; it has belonged to Mexican Indians, the Spanish Crown, Texas and the United
States at different points in time. Even though the border has moved
many times, I am proud to say that my roots have survived the turmoil.

Journalists from Oaxaca serve an audience in the U.S.

Victor Ruiz and his wife, Olga Rosario Avendaño, are the publishers of a website that offers news about the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Victor says that their website, called El Olor a Mi Tierra (The Scent of My Homeland), has a large audience in the U.S. and in the metropolitan area of Mexico City.

The site gets 3,000 visitors a day, most of them from outside of Oaxaca. Many residents in their home region of Oaxaca, a relatively poor state, leave home to find work and want to find out what´s happening back home.

El Olor a Mi Tierra publishes news about town festivals and local people as well as coverage of politics, the environment, human rights and immigration.

A community service

Victor and Olga started thinking about starting their own web page during the elections of 2000, when they saw how foreign reporters were sending their stories back home by email. They themselves were still relying on a fax machine to transmit their stories.

Using their own money they paid a web designer about $300 to set up their page, bought a web domain for $75 and got started.

Today they are generating about $1,000 to $1,200 a month in ad revenues from governmental and nonprofit organizations, enough to cover their modest expenses. Their office is in their home in San Sebastian Tutla. They´re breaking even.

Victor and Olga earn their living as correspondents for international news agencies such as Agence France Press and EFE of Spain as well as newspapers such as El Universal of Mexico City.

Often the big news organizations will use only a few paragraphs of the stories, so Victor and Olga publish the rest on their website. They generate much of the content but sometimes will pay a correspondent 100 pesos (about $7.50) for a story or a photograph.

Both Victor and Olga have participated in the courses offered by the Center of Digital Journalism at the University of Guadalajara so that can hone their skills.

Their news service is a good example of how digital journalism manages to link people across the border.