ABSTRACT
The rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.A. offered all Americans of color an alternative to feeling like foreigners in their own country or simply seeking assimilation into the mainstream. It provides a language of upward mobility and advancement without deracination, seeking the rewards of inclusion into American society but not the cultural erasure that seemed to presume. Barretto started playing jazz at the Orlando Club in Munich and introduced musicians from all over the world to Puerto Rican Afro-Cuban conga drumming. The rich cultural life of the barrio has been virtually invisible to the rest of Los Angeles, even when it has exerted enormous influence on important aspects of "mainstream'' Anglo-American culture. Comedian, film actor, and director Cheech Marin has argued that all of the subcultural practices celebrated within James Dean's Rebel without a Cause originated in Chicano communities, even though that film depicted a Los Angeles with no Mexicans in it.
