Hola. I’m Lalo Alcaraz. You might know me.
I have been a Chicano political cartoonist forever. I know, I know, it’s God’s work, you’re welcome. Now, all of a sudden I’m a primetime TV writer and producer. Huh? Yes, the last two years in my life have been a super WTF. With ten percent LOL. #facepalm
Like it or not, I am now part of a historic pop culture moment: the first season of the first animated primetime TV show featuring a large cast of Mexican and Mexican-American characters: Bordertown.
“You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard, some that you recognise, some that you’ve hardly even heard of. People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame, some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain,” according to the Kinks.
But artist Ramiro Gomez Jr. — whose art installations make the invisible visible — will have none of that. That’s why, on Sunday, Oscar Day, on Hollywood Boulevard, he positioned an image of one of the ubiquitous but unacknowledged Latinos who survive on the fringes of “The Industry.” One of those dudes you see hanging out on corners selling tourists “Maps to the Stars’ Homes.”
Mas…You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard