Dear Readers: Since it’s the end of the year and the Mexican is on his eighteenth tamal (made by the mujeres in his family, of course), behold some letters from angry readers (and one fan), along with my answers. Enjoy your champurrado, gracias for a great 2013, and may your…
PAINT THE TOWN READ! Latest Word is taking a long winter’s nap — until early Thursday, December 26. Until then, enjoy our continuing look back at the last year. Happy holidays!…
I have had the pleasure of writing about Ken Gordon when he was a public defender; when he was a member of the Colorado House of Representatives and the Colorado Senate; when he was a candidate for Colorado Secretary of State and then as founder of cleanslatenow.org, an organization devoted…
Dear Readers: Behold your favorite Mexican’s annual Christmas gift guide, where I give shout-outs to some of my favorite books that deserve your money this holiday season! And for once, I won’t recommend my books — ¡Ask a Mexican!, Orange County: A Personal History, and Taco USA: How Mexican Food…
Dear Mexican: You mocked and didn’t answer the legitimate questions raised in a letter to you a couple of weeks ago, about the guy who didn’t see a rosy future for a Mexican-led America. The writer correctly referred to serious problems in the Hispanic community such as poor academic performance…
Five-time congressman, two-time gubernatorial candidate and one-time presidential aspirant Tom Tancredo has never smoked pot. But he doesn’t need to have used marijuana to recognize that the federal campaign against it has failed — and to support Amendment 64. A former schoolteacher and regional Department of Education head under President…
The fifteenth annual Sand Creek Massacre Healing Run was full of moving sights and sounds — from its start at the actual massacre site, which is marked by a sign advising visitors of the “sacred ground” where over 150 Cheyenne and Arapahoe were killed on November 29, 1864, to the…
Shortly after sunrise on Thanksgiving morning, we spot the eagles a few miles from the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, standing sentinel over the rolling prairie where more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho — most of them women, children or elderly men — were slaughtered by volunteer troops led…
Dear Mexican: I find myself at odds with my peers because I don’t like coffee or coffee drinks. I need to find a substitute beverage that will be tasty yet somehow hip. I’ve heard that Mexicans have magical chocolate drinks called atole, champurrado and chocolate, but I don’t know what…
In 1980, Manny Salzman and his wife, Joanne, moved to LoDo from Hilltop before lower downtown had even been nicknamed LoDo, much less turned into a hot entertainment/residential area. They took over a four-story warehouse on Wynkoop Street, turning the 3,500 top-floor space into their home and even installing a…
“This place is full of Indians!” said one of them on Thanksgiving morning at the Comfort Inn in Limon, base camp for the Sand Creek Healing Run. From there, the caravan headed south past Hugo, through Cheyenne County — which just voted to secede from Colorado — and on to…
Dear Mexican: My father and mother were able to come to the United States because once the “yellow scare” was over, no one seemed to mind that Chinese were coming here by the boatload. Since my parents were given visas and green cards pretty easily, my father was able to…
State senator Evie Hudak will resign, as Fox 31’s Eli Stokels first reported this morning. In the process, she will save her district the cost of a recall election, save Colorado Democrats from losing their Senate majority, and save Coloradans a week more of the rancorous actitivites that have bedeviled…
History Colorado opened its phase two exhibit, Living West, this past weekend. It’s right across the hall from the phase one exhibits that debuted with the museum in April 2012: Colorado Stories, or what’s left of them. The sections devoted to Bent’s Fort, Camp Amache, Steamboat skiing, mining and Lincoln…
Dear Mexican: Long time reader, first-time writer about this noble Aztlán. I watched the Brown Pride marches of the early 1970s and heard the shouts of La Raza and how it was going to be different now that the “Chicano” had arrived. The Mexicans were going to change things for…
Central City is used to making history. The Rush to the Rockies got its start in May 1859, when John Gregory made the first lode discovery on Clear Creek. The town sprang up right above that find and grew so fast that it almost became the state capitol; today it’s…
We’re now number two! It was big, big news in November 2011 when the Denver metro area suddenly topped the list of the country’s “cool cities.”That was according to William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, who studied the numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and…
The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant has been out of the business of producing plutonium-triggers for atomic bombs for two decades now; after a $7 billion cleanup, it was transferred to the Department of Fish & Wildlife, which one day will reopen the property sixteen miles upwind of Denver as…
The Colorado Republican Party wants Denver to host the 2016 GOP convention, ideally with a Republican governor in the State Capitol. But to do that, the party will have to do a lot better in next year’s election than it did in 2010, when, after a bruising primary, candidate Dan…
On the last Saturday before Daylight Savings Time ended, a motley crew was sitting around the bar at the Lakeview Lounge, watching the sun rise over Sloan’s Lake and lamenting how the sun has set on too many Denver watering holes. Only a handful of true dives remain in this…
Dear Mexican: Could it really be possible for a terrorist to sneak into the U.S. through the southern border, or is that just more fear-mongering from the conservatives? Not Crazy about Quds Dear Gabacho: Of course it’s possible, but we’re really not going to know until we find out, right?…
Developer and urban preservationist Dana Crawford is a landmark in this city, so it’s not surprising that a landmark would be named after her. But two? Next week, the Crawford Building will be dedicated in Larimer Square, the Victorian-era block she saved from the wrecking ball. And today, Sage Hospitality…
