Nosotros Honors Latinos Picked From Richer Field of Movies, TV

This year, when the Nosotros organization set about to laud performers who had advanced the image and visibility of Latinos in Hollywood, the task was far easier.

Event organizers and honorees who gathered Friday at the group’s 18th annual banquet bash agreed that they had rebounded from a year noted for its negatively stereotyped portrayals of Latinos to one in which a handful of TV shows and films, such as last summer’s box-office sleeper, “La Bamba,” had offered positive and critically acclaimed Latino images.

“This year, there’s more of an air of optimism,” said Julie Carmen, who played Nancy Mondragon, the wife of a stubborn bean farmer in “The Milagro Beanfield War.” “Now we have proven ourselves at the box office with several movies. We don’t have to jump through as many hoops to be recognized now.”

For Richard (Cheech) Marin, director and star of last summer’s Universal Pictures comedy, “Born in East L.A.,” the newly won recognition came from an unexpected quarter. Marin said his film swept best picture, screenplay and art direction awards at December’s Havana Film Festival, a first for a U.S.-produced film.

Still, he said, true integration into the film and television industry is being hampered by a scarcity of Latino writers. “When we get to tell our own stories with our own unique voices, then things will really begin to change,” he said.

The lion’s share of honors went to “La Bamba,” with most promising actor and actress awards going to Lou Diamond Phillips and Rosana de Soto, who starred in the story of Ritchie Valens’ mercurial rock ‘n’ roll career. Los Lobos, the band whose version of the Valens hit “La Bamba” topped the record charts last year, won the Golden Eagle music achievement award. Luis Valdez was named outstanding director for the 1987 Columbia release.

Other winners announced during the evening banquet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel included “Wall Street” star Charlie Sheen, who was named outstanding actor. Garfield High School mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante received a lifetime achievement award for his teaching success dramatized in the “Rocky”-like classroom movie “Stand and Deliver.”

Nosotros President Richard Yniguez, who sits on the seven-member board of directors that selected this year’s award winners, said he hoped this year’s banquet would mark a new start for the organization. Yniguez said Nosotros was creating its own production, directing and writing staff to launch its own in-house productions, for which he was seeking investors. “I’m tired of waiting for Hollywood to cast us,” he complained. “It’s time to put our money where our image is.”

But if Nosotros has set new targets for itself, it has also had to postpone an earlier goal of building a performing arts center. Yniquez said half of a $250,000 Coors grant that Nosotros set aside in 1986 for the center project “was not a realistic amount.” Instead, he explained, the nonprofit organization’s previous administration used the funds to mount several theater productions.