Hispanic Heritage Month is officially in full swing.

Yesterday, Nike celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by sponsoring an event with world-class athletes Paul Rodriguez Jr. and Felix Sanchez, elite runner Gracie Torres. Nike footwear designer Kiki McGehee join students from Franklin and Marshall High Schools to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.

PAUL RODRIGUEZ JR. IN ACTION

 

OLYMPIAN FELIX SANCHEZ

 

Check out the kicks below.

[Photos courtesy of Gustavo Galindo]

To commemorate HHM, Nike footwear designer Kiki McGehee designed a shoe inspired by the many faces of the Hispanic culture. Using the Nike All Court shoe, the design incorporates a technique known as piteado, a popular method used on leather belts and boots throughout Latin America. The word “Pride” is displayed on the shoe to reflect the lifestyle of Hispanics living in the United States and the font used was made famous by the low rider culture of the southwest. The ornate floral details also encourage freedom of expression while the rich jewel tone colors of brown, yellow and green combine to give the shoe a unique appearance.

Latino hip-hop artist Malverde, Nike skating phenom Paul Rodriguez, Jr. along with Josh Sonntag, Martin Chan and Luis Tamblay of the band Volumen Cero celebrate their “Pride” at Nike’s Hispanic Heritage Month event, which included the debut of a limited edition Nike All Court shoe (pictured above) inspired by the many faces of Hispanic culture. Students from Franklin and Marshall High Schools participated in a series of interactive workshops that included footwear design, skate demo with P Rod, stretching exercises with Olympian Felix Sanchez and a futsal clinic. The celebration took place at the LA River Center and Gardens, the future site of a Nike futsal court as part of Nike’s Let Me Play community effort to build or refurbish 84 play spaces throughout Los Angeles to benefit young sports enthusiasts.

 

Special thanks to all the folks who helped make this event possible, including the students from Franklin and Marshall highschools.

What do you think of when you imagine revolution? If you came up through American schools, you probably think about muskets and redcoats, armed struggle and minutemen. That's how the American Revolution went down, and for the last 250 years, we've been enjoying sovereignty in the states, thanks to a successful revolution. But these days, it would be near impossible to pull off any kind of defection from the ruling power of our National Government. And bloody battlefields are so 50 years ago, anyway... our ideas about revolution should probably get updated for the twenty-first century.

One group that's doing just that are the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas is one of the poorest regions in Mexico, and in 1994 when things were looking bad, a group of rebels tried to engage in armed conflict to take control of Mexico in the name of the poor and underrepresented. However, they engaged in military conflict with the state and couldn't win. Eventually a ceasefire was brokered by local churches, and the Zapatistas reconsidered their approach.

The Zapatistas as a group now "demand that the revolutionary armed forces not intervene in matters of civil order", in other words, they are opposed to violence that could injure or disrupt people from their day to day activities. As a group, this means that they need to find nonviolent ways to spread their political ideas. One way to do that is by holding tight to the small amount of land that they control and asserting autonomy, independence from other forms of government, insistence upon self-rule. Fighting against a nation-state is a game that most revolutionary groups simply can't win.

But some games (and now I mean 'games' more literally) are actually really productive for a group like the Zapatistas. For instance, a Zapatista-Milan soccer match. In a letter to the manager of Italy's Inter-Milan soccer team, one of the region's most popular teams, Zapatista leader Subcomadante Marcos wrote "I challenge you to a match against a team from the Zapatista national liberation army, at a time and a place to be determined. Given the affection we have for you, we're not planning to submerge you in goals". The team in Milan has been supportive of Zapatistas efforts toward self-government, donating food and water in the past. Soon they may allow the revolutionaries to step onto an international stage, making their efforts known to potential supporters around the world, making their movement more powerful without firing any weapons.

September 15 through October 15 is Latino Heritage Month. I decided to do a bit of research on salsa, a popular ballroom dance that fuses elements from Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican music and movement.

The New York Times said that the basic salsa rhythm came from Cuba, but the dance itself originated in New York in the 1970s when a convergence of jazz musicians from all over the world began developing a unique new style. Salsa began as more of a street dance, and wasn’t really taught in the studios or on a professional level until the late 80s. Now you can find Salsa Congressos all over the world (multi-day salsa workshops and performances that often bring in thousands of participants).

There’s a cool activist dance company in LA known as Contra-Tiempo. They teach salsa, hip-hop, Afro-Cuban, abstract theatrical movement, and other dance styles. Contra-Tiempo’s classes “address social, political and race issues through movement and through traditional cultural dance forms....[W]orkshops focus on how the body can be used as a tool for communication....[Our] mission as a company is to create dialogue and greater understanding across populations, in particular around issues of resistance and power.” The company reaches out to underserved youth and communities of color throughout Los Angeles.

And now some salsa inspiration from Contra-Tiempo:

The month from September 15 through October 15 is Latino Heritage Month.  I already investigated a little bit of Mexican history with my post on Luchadores last week, and today I'm going to keep looking into the history of sports in Latin America.  In the region of 'Mesoamerica', which stretches from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, there are a number of giant, mysterious athletic stadiums where Mayans, Aztecs, and other pre-Columbian civilizations played what scholars have come to call "The Mesoamerican Ballgame".  In reality, the ballgame was probably a family of similar ballgames played throughout the region that elements in common with soccer, volleyball, and racquetball.