Home At Last, Floricanto and rrsalinas on Film

 Michael Sedano

Last January the fires of hell, aka Eaton Canyon, leveled miles of homes in Pasadena and nearly wiped Altadena off the map. My daughter's urban farm--where I'd taken residence following my wife's death with Alzheimer's Dementia--disappeared in the conflagration (link). 

We became nomads, finding shelter where we could. My granddaughter moved away to college leaving only my daughter and me in a painfully expensive, and profoundly unsatisfactory, rental house. I moved eight times since January 7, from motel to motel, city to city, rental to rental. 

From where I sit today, I can see forever. My daughter bought a beautiful home for me and my eighth move is the last one.

I'm home. I have a home. I have a place to call my own. There is life after Alzheimer's, here is some evidence.

After three days moving in and getting stuff fixed up, it was celebration time. My gente all showed up, and one, Margaret Garcia, presented me with her portrait of me, painted when I was only a few days out from losing my last known residence. Here's La Bloga-Tuesday's report  (link) on sitting for that portrait, which now will grace my walls in my new home. My art collection, reduced to ashes and memories, has begun again.

Guest Columnist Rey Rodriguez

Review: Un Trip: raúlrsalinas & the poetry of liberation, a film by Anne Lewis and Laura Varela, documentary screening, Q&A, Flor y Canto at Beyond Baroque.

By Rey Rodriguez

On October 4, 2025, I attended at Beyond Baroque (https://www.beyondbaroque.org/), a celebration of raúl “Roy” “Tapón” salinas, an extraordinary Chicano poet who has since passed away but who left a powerful legacy of revolutionary poetry. 

Curated by Iván Salinas, the event included the screening of Un Trip: raúlsalinas & the poetry of liberation, a film by Anne Lewis and Laura Varela, and a stellar lineup of poets.

The film credits La Bloga’s Michael Sedano for his photography. At the event, Mr. Sedano described how he located lost footage of raúl salinas as salinas reads his poetry at El Festival de Flor y Canto, the movimiento’s first large-scale literary festival, at USC in 1973. I highly recommend that the reader view rrsalinas’ reading at this link: https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/asset-management/2A3BF113JNMZ?&WS=SearchResults&Flat=FP . 

That first floricanto would have been lost to the passage of time, but for the efforts of Mr. Sedano to seek it out and ensure that videos of all the spotlighted artists are now available for viewing by a whole new generation of students, teachers, researchers, professors, gente en general.

Parts of the 1973 reading are included in Un Trip, a short documentary, which is still seeking distribution, despite winning an audience award in Texas. After watching the documentary, it is a film that definitely deserves to be distributed widely for its historical and educational significance in Chicano history and for filling in the gaps of rrsalinas’ contributions to poetry in general.

The event also included emotional and beautiful readings from: Abel Salas, founding editor of Brooklyn and Boyle, who was personally associated with raúl r salinas; Ben V. Olguín,

Professor, Robert and Lisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English, Director of The Global Latinidades Center at UCSB, who read of his experience with the poet; Luis J. Rodríguez, author of many books, essays, poems, and founder of Tía Chuchas Cultural Center along with his activist wife Trini Rodríguez, spoke movingly of his personal connection with this master poet and the power of poetry to transform lives that may have been lost to poverty, violence and drugs; Josiah Luis Alderete, San Francisco’s Poet Laureate and co-owner of Medicine For Nightmares bookshop, who performed a poem to tlaxcalli; Iris de Anda, who read her emotional poetry; and Soledad Con Carne, a self described casually Queer, intergalactic Oakland/Ohlone-based chicanx punk poet, who acknowledges that although they had never met Mr. Salinas, their poetry was in conversation with his.

It is this conversation that intrigued me, so when the evening was over, I was fortunate enough to meet Con Carne and ask them to sign their recently published chapbook, SFV or Die, Foo, published by Lilac Press (https://www.instagram.com/lilacpressdiy/?hl=en – requires Instagram registration). 

I went home and could not put the book down. Con Carne’s voice resonates so strongly throughout their writings with poems entitled, “Carne Poetics,” “Another Memorial for a Brown Man by Smiley’s Market,” and “everything I learned at CSUN.” 

Con Carne stands with the marginalized of the San Fernando Valley and proudly expresses their divinity in their work. They remind us through their work of all that is lost if their vital voices are not heard and honored. 

Con Carne carries on the work of Mr. Salinas, and I hope you will all support their work by buying this chapbook. It is deeply profound poetry that stands on the shoulders of so many others who understand that it is the system that is corrupt and needs to be rebuilt around our mutual humanity. 

Those living in poverty or on the margins do not need fixing. They need to be expressed and heard, and they are, through the work of Soledad Con Carne and all of those who participated in the evening to celebrate raúl r salinas. 

About the writer:

Rey Rodriguez and Laura Varela

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program. His poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Chapter House's Storyteller’s Blog, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review.

Fotos, Ése: Floricanto at Beyond Baroque 

foto: Rey Rodriguez

soledad con carne

Iris de Anda

Josiah Luis Alderete

Luis J. Rodriguez

Abel Salas

Ben V. Olguin

Michael Sedano

I was pleased to be a Special Guest at the film showing and floricanto. When I walked into Beyond Baroque's Wanda Coleman Auditorium, the video of rrsalinas' reading at the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto played. As the evening's guest, I related briefly the surprise I experienced in 2009 as I was leaving the world of work: a video I thought did not exist!

That video of Oscar Zeta Acosta set me on a detective search for all the other poets and readers videotaped at the movimiento's historic first Festival de Flor y Canto. I found them at UC Riverside where Juan Felipe Herrera helped me secure use of a rare U-Matic Cassette player. The ¾" format, long since abandoned by broadcasters and universities, required access to the sole surviving player in the Inland Empire. Thanks to Herrera and the UCR Tomás Rivera Library, I returned the floricanto to USC, whose institutional memory had completely erased the floricanto from local history!

My goal in digitizing the U-Matics is to make an important historical resource widely available so poets, students, teachers, familias, can see and hear some of la raza's foundational writers in their youth. Here's La Bloga-Tuesday's column on the digitizing process (link).

Coinciding with my 2010 presentation to USC of the digitized videos, I organized a reunion floricanto, Festival de Flor y Canto: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. I invited veteranas and veteranos from that 1973 festival for the "yesterday" element, and artists with publication history for the "today" element, and emerging voices just launcing their careers for the "tomorrow" element. USC's Digital Library also shares videos of that 2010 reunion, documented by Jesus Treviño's Barrio Dog Productions. Latinopia.com includes numerous videos from that 2010 reunion floricanto (link).

Here's the link to USC's digital collection that includes my photographs of the 1973 artists and the full performance videos from 1973 and 2010. You can request photographs via the library, and download the videos for non-commercial, fair use:

https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/asset-management/2A3BF15MA253?Flat=y&WS=SearchResults

Here's a compact index to the videos:

https://calisphere.org/collections/27333/

Late-Breaking News: From the Producer of Un Trip

You and a guest are invited to the special LA Screenings of the moving documentary - AMERICAN SONS  produced by Laura Varela, directed and produced by Andrew James Gonzales,  with producers Elizabeth Avellan, Fernando Cano, and Ray Telles.  AMERICAN SONS is a profoundly intimate documentary that traces the enduring scars of war through the story of Cpl. JV Villarreal, a Mexican American Marine from Texas, who was killed in action in Afghanistan. Told through raw, never-before-seen combat footage and the decade-long emotional journey of his Marine brothers and family, the film is both a tribute and a courageous exploration of grief, resilience, and love. 

Location: VIDIOTS (4884 Eagle Rock Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90041)
Date and Time: Monday, October 6 - Doors/Drinks reception 7:00 PM | Film 7:30 PM
Q&A with Filmmakers and Film Participant 

Moderated by Claire Aguilar

Drinks reception to follow

Location: BOB HOPE PATRIOTIC HALL (1816 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015)
Date and Time: Wednesday, October 8 - Doors 5:00 PM | Film 5:30 PM
 
Location: PBS SoCal (3080 Bristol Street #100 Costa Mesa, CA 92626)
Date and Time: Thursday, October 9 - Doors 6:30 PM | Film 7:00 PM
Q&A with Filmmakers and Film Participant 

Location: Film Independent (5670 Wilshire Blvd 9th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Date and Time: Friday, October 10 - Doors 6:30 PM | Film 7:00 PM
Q&A with Filmmakers and Film Participant 
Moderated by Matt Carey
Reception to follow

RSVP at AMERICANSONS@DMAGPR.COM. Please advise which screening you'd like to attend and if you are bringing a guest.