These are more photos of Mexican dances. I have written articles about the history of Mexican dance, which I attempted to publish. I once wanted to write a book illustrated with my photos about the history of Mexican dance. I decided to try and write an article on the dance history of each region. I did get three articles published in a very small Latino California magazine Saludos and also in the Sept, 97 issue of Vista Magazine. It is a Sunday supplement for Latino readers. Some larger metropolitan news paper inserted it into their Sunday newspapers. I haven't attempted to publish anything any more, until now on my blog.

The Saludos magazine bought 2 of my articles. One was beautifully illustrated with my photos. It was about the Aztec dances of Mexico. They used the two black and white photos I have published here of the single male and female dancer. The other wasn't about Mexican folk dances, but about a Brazilian African dance the Capuerra. I wasn't that happy with the photos I took, but I was more interested in the history of the dance. It came with Angolan Africa slaves and is a ritualist marchial art ballet. It is danced to music that is played on original Angolan instruments. Break dancing came from the Capuerra.

The above black and white dancer was from a color original, which I can't find. The others are of a dance entitled Los Moors y Los Cristainos. I shot this when I was in Mexico in the 1970's. I forgot the year. I took a car trip with some friends from Sacramento, CA to Mexico City. I took these photos in the Sierras of Michiuacan, Mexico. It re enacts a battle between Christian Spain and Moorish Spain. And of course the Christians win. It is interesting how Spanish colonialism even imposed on the Indian populations of Mexico a history that still glorifies their Spanish conquerors. However the indiginous populations like those here in these photos have taken this story and recreated it in their own terms, even if it was just the costumes. They were all hand made and the close up of the helmet was to illustrate how they cut them and painted them from tin cans.

Barry says I should copyright my photos. Anyone can copy them and use them. But I doubt if anyone, outside of friends and family that will be interested in them. They are very ordinary descriptive scenes. They don't qualify as fine art, and I have tried to sell them.

Once in the 1970s when I was trying to get a job in San Francisco at United Press International as a stringer. I took a portfolio filled with scenes like these: Mexican dances in Sacramento and Mexico, people in the Latino Mission District of San Francisco. At that time I was photographing my community, in every city that I lived. While I was waiting in the reception area I saw a recent photo essay of the zoo with gorrillas hanging on tires from a tree. When the photo editor looked at my portofolio, he didn't say my photos were technically bad. Since I developed and printed them in a darkroom, I could see how the gray scale was off on some of them. No, he said, "Mexicans don't sell." He noted that I should look at their recent photo essay of the zoo. Yes, Mexicans don't sell, but gorrillas did.

It takes a lot of time to download and write a blog. I still have to do my lesson plans for the week. Also the editing screen I use to post my blogg, takes forever to type, proof read, and edit what you have written. The only way I have figured out how to save what I have written is by saving the entire document as a draft, which also takes more time. Well I'm learning. Now I am experimenting with writting this on Notepad and seeing if I can do a block copy to post on the blog. Let me see how this works. It works!