La Comay of ‘SuperXclusivo’ Stirs Anger Over Comments on Man’s Death

It’s been a bad few months for puppets in the media.

WAPA-TV

La Comay, left, with Hector Travieso, co-hosts of “SuperXclusivo,” a Spanish-language program shown in some United States markets.

WAPA-TV

Jose E. Ramos, president of WAPA Television, said the network tried to use La Comay to keep the officials attuned to issues.

In October, Big Bird was dragged into the presidential debate over PBS funds and in November, Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind Elmo, left Sesame Street after allegations that he had sex with minors.

The latest puppet scandal involves a gossipy, big-haired crone puppet in Puerto Rico, known as La Comay, who has become one of the most controversial media figures on the island — and one of the most watched. On a recent show, the puppet commented on the murder of a 32-year-old publicist by pointing out that the victim was in an area frequented by prostitutes and wondered whether he was “asking for this.”

The reaction was swift. A Facebook page calling for a boycott of La Comay has drawn more than 72,000 signatures, and prominent advertisers like Walmart and AT&T withdrew their ads from “SuperXclusivo,” the program that features her.

The outrage was in part because of fears over a growing crime wave on the island and a reaction to La Comay, a puppet version of the television program “TMZ” with gossipy segments about celebrities, politics and crime.

La Comay (roughly translated as “the godmother”) was created by Antulio Kobbo Santarrosa, a former comedian and television personality. Since 1999 the show has been broadcast on WAPA Television, an independent Puerto Rican network owned by the private equity firm InterMedia. Before WAPA, Mr. Santarrosa had shows with similar characters on other networks including Telemundo.

“SuperXclusivo” is broadcast on the island but also on the mainland in states with large Puerto Rican populations like New York and Florida. On the hourlong show, La Comay frequently asks viewers to call her show with crime tips, which producers investigate. “We tried to use her to bring out issues that other mediums would not touch,” said Jose E. Ramos, the president of WAPA.

In the last Puerto Rican race for governor, two of the candidates visited the show the night before the election, Mr. Ramos said. “People will report incidents and things that happen on the island to La Comay instead of going to the police and going to the newspapers,” he said.

“She ensures that the police and the government cover the main issues and are on top of the issues, and she does it in a way that is very entertaining, that’s what offends some people,” Mr. Ramos said.

In an e-mail, Mr. Santarrosa said: “We respect our audience and it was never my intention to offend anyone with the information we presented, which had already been presented in other media.” The comments were similar to the ones made by La Comay on her show in the days after the controversy where she tried to apologize to the audience.

The uproar began when, on Dec. 4, “SuperXclusivo” featured a segment on the publicist José Enrique Gómez Saladín, whose disappearance had been extensively covered by local media. On Nov. 29, according to published reports, Mr. Gomez Saladín attended a meeting in San Juan and then called his wife to tell her he was on his way home.

Instead, Mr. Gomez Saladín’s body was found four days later. He had been doused with gasoline, burned and then bludgeoned to death. The case is being handled by the United States Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico. Four people were arrested on Dec. 4 in connection with the crime. They have been charged on two counts, carjacking resulting in murder and bank fraud. A preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday. The crime, which came less than two weeks after the shooting death of the boxer Hector Camacho, rattled the island.

After the news of the murder, residents began a social media protest for peace called “Todos Somos José Enrique” (We are all José Enrique).

Details of what happened that night remain unclear, with some reports saying Mr. Gomez Saladín had been a victim of a carjacking. But in her Dec. 4 segment, La Comay raised another issue: Mr. Gomez Saladín was on Padial Street in Caguas, a town near San Juan. The street, La Comay said, is “a center of male and female prostitution.”

Couching her statements with the phrase “apparently and allegedly,” La Comay asked, “Was this man, José Enrique, asking for this?” Of the four suspects in the case she asked, “Was he friends with these people? Did he used to be a client of these people?” At the end of her remarks she called for Puerto Rico to reinstate the death penalty.

The remarks created protests against the puppet, her show and the network.

“We didn’t know that this was going to explode the way it did,” said Carlos Rivera, an unemployed I.T. specialist from Puerto Rico who created the Facebook page calling for the boycott of La Comay by advertisers and viewers.

Mr. Ramos of WAPA said the boycotts have not hurt the show’s ratings. “If anything they have increased,” he said. “People want to see what’s going on.”

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A Sunday of Sorrow in Newtown

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Seeking solace amid overwhelming grief, residents of Newtown flocked to church services and vigils on Sunday, struggling to comprehend a tragedy that left so many children dead, even as the national conversation turned sharply toward gun control.

At the pulpit of the Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, the Rev. Peter Cameron looked out over the packed pews, which included the husband of a teacher killed in the shooting, and summed up the despair with a question: “How do we rejoice in the face of so much sorrow?”

It is a question that has been asked repeatedly in the two days since a gunman forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School here and then sprayed classrooms with bullets, hitting some children as many as 11 times.

All of the children killed in the massacre — 12 girls and 8 boys — were first graders. One girl had just turned 7 on Tuesday. The seven adults killed, including the mother of the shooter, were all women.

The state’s chief medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, said all of the 20 children and 6 adults killed at the school had been struck more than once.

He said their wounds were “all over, all over.”

“This is a very devastating set of injuries,” Dr. Carver said at a news briefing on Saturday. When he was asked if they had suffered after being hit, he said, “Not for very long.”

Condolences have been pouring in from around the world. In Moscow, Russians piled flowers outside the American Embassy. And on a beach in Rio de Janeiro, crosses were placed in the sand to honor the dead. At the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow and said he was praying for the families of victims.

President Obama is expected to arrive in Newtown later on Sunday to meet with the families of victims and to join in the mourning at an evening vigil, the White House announced.

But even before his arrival, there have been calls for the president to take more decisive action. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, an outspoken proponent of stricter gun regulations, criticized Mr. Obama on Sunday for failing to act on past promises made in the wake of other tragedies.

“The president should console the country, but he’s the commander in chief as well as the consoler in chief, and he calls for action, but he called for action two years ago,” Mr. Bloomberg said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. He urged Mr. Obama to order government agencies to enforce gun laws more aggressively and to press Congress into action, calling it “common sense” to place restrictions on assault weapons with large magazines. He also urged officials to break with the National Rifle Association, calling its influence a “myth.”

“It’s time for the president to stand up, I think, and lead and tell this country what we should do,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “This should be his No. 1 agenda.”

Also on “Meet the Press,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said she planned to introduce a bill on the opening day of the next Congress that would limit the sale of assault weapons and restrict high-capacity magazines.

“It can be done,” she said.

As families have begun to claim the bodies of lost loved ones, some have sought privacy. Others have spoken out. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among the dead, choked back tears as he described her as “bright, creative and very loving.”

But, he added, “as we move on from what happened here, what happened to so many people, let us not let it turn into something that defines us.”

There were reports that at least one funeral would be held on Sunday.

Amid the anguish and mourning, other details have begun to emerge about how, but not why, the devastating attack had happened, turning a place where children were supposed to be safe into a national symbol of heartbreak and horror.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said Sunday that the gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, had apparently used his weapon to blast through the entrance of the school and committed suicide after he heard police approaching.

Randy Leonard reported from Newtown, Conn., and James Barron from New York. Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from New York.

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Apple falls on lower shipment forecasts, muted China debut

(Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders to suppliers to balance excess inventory.

Shares of Apple suppliers Jabil Circuit Inc, Qualcomm Inc, Skyworks Solutions Inc, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc, Avago Technologies Ltd, and Cirrus Logic Inc also fell in early trading.

Apple shares have lost a quarter of their value since they hit a life high of $705.07 on September 21, as it faces increasing competition from phones using Google Inc's Android operating system.

Misek cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate to 48 million from 52 million and gross margin expectations for the company by 2 percentage points to 40 percent.

UBS Investment Research cut its price target on Apple stock to $700 from $780 on lower expected iPhone and iPad shipments for the March quarter.

The brokerage said it was modeling more conservative growth for the world's biggest technology company after making supply chain checks that revealed that fewer iPhones were being built.

"Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S," UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a note to clients.

Apple launched the iPhone 5 in China on Friday, a move widely expected to bring the Cupertino-based company some respite from a recent slide in market share in China, but early reports indicated that demand may not be as great as expected.

"The iPhone 5 China launch has been surprisingly muted but (we) are unsure how much weather (snow) or the required pre-ordering (to prevent riots) are factors," Misek said.

Apple shares fell as low as $508.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

(Editing by Supriya Kurane)

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'The Hobbit' tops box office with $84.8 million

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" led the box office with an opening of $84.8 million, a start better than the three previous "Lord of the Rings" films.

Studio estimates Sunday had the Warner Bros. 3-D epic as the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith's "I Am Legend," which opened with $77.2 million in 2007.

Despite generally poor reviews, the adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's first novel in the fantasy series was an even bigger draw than the last "Lord of the Rings" films, "The Return of the King." That film opened with $72.6 million.

While Jackson's "Rings" movies drew many Oscar nominations, the path for "The Hobbit" has been rockier. It received no Golden Globes nominations on Thursday. Its 48-frames-per-second, double the usual rate, also has been criticized.

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Dr. William F. House, Inventor of Cochlear Implant, Dies

Dr. William F. House, a medical researcher who braved skepticism to invent the cochlear implant, an electronic device considered to be the first to restore a human sense, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Aurora, Ore. He was 89.

The cause was metastatic melanoma, his daughter, Karen House, said.

Dr. House pushed against conventional thinking throughout his career. Over the objections of some, he introduced the surgical microscope to ear surgery. Tackling a form of vertigo that doctors had believed was psychosomatic, he developed a surgical procedure that enabled the first American in space to travel to the moon. Peering at the bones of the inner ear, he found enrapturing beauty.

Even after his ear-implant device had largely been supplanted by more sophisticated, and more expensive, devices, Dr. House remained convinced of his own version’s utility and advocated that it be used to help the world’s poor.

Today, more than 200,000 people in the world have inner-ear implants, a third of them in the United States. A majority of young deaf children receive them, and most people with the implants learn to understand speech with no visual help.

Hearing aids amplify sound to help the hearing-impaired. But many deaf people cannot hear at all because sound cannot be transmitted to their brains, however much it is amplified. This is because the delicate hair cells that line the cochlea, the liquid-filled spiral cavity of the inner ear, are damaged. When healthy, these hairs — more than 15,000 altogether — translate mechanical vibrations produced by sound into electrical signals and deliver them to the auditory nerve.

Dr. House’s cochlear implant electronically translated sound into mechanical vibrations. His initial device, implanted in 1961, was eventually rejected by the body. But after refining its materials, he created a long-lasting version and implanted it in 1969.

More than a decade would pass before the Food and Drug Administration approved the cochlear implant, but when it did, in 1984, Mark Novitch, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said, “For the first time a device can, to a degree, replace an organ of the human senses.”

One of Dr. House’s early implant patients, from an experimental trial, wrote to him in 1981 saying, “I no longer live in a world of soundless movement and voiceless faces.”

But for 27 years, Dr. House had faced stern opposition while he was developing the device. Doctors and scientists said it would not work, or not work very well, calling it a cruel hoax on people desperate to hear. Some said he was motivated by the prospect of financial gain. Some criticized him for experimenting on human subjects. Some advocates for the deaf said the device deprived its users of the dignity of their deafness without fully integrating them into the hearing world.

Even when the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology endorsed implants in 1977, it specifically denounced Dr. House’s version. It recommended more complicated versions, which were then under development and later became the standard.

But his work is broadly viewed as having sped the development of implants and enlarged understanding of the inner ear. Jack Urban, an aerospace engineer, helped develop the surgical microscope as well as mechanical and electronic aspects of the House implant.

Karl White, founding director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, said in an interview that it would have taken a decade longer to invent the cochlear implant without Dr. House’s contributions. He called him “a giant in the field.”

After embracing the use of the microscope in ear surgery, Dr. House developed procedures — radical for their time — for removing tumors from the back portion of the brain without causing facial paralysis; they cut the death rate from the surgery to less than 1 percent from 40 percent.

He also developed the first surgical treatment for Meniere’s disease, which involves debilitating vertigo and had been viewed as a psychosomatic condition. His procedure cured the astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. of the disease, clearing him to command the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. In 1961, Shepard had become the first American launched into space.

In presenting Dr. House with an award in 1995, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation said, “He has developed more new concepts in otology than almost any other single person in history.”

William Fouts House was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 1, 1923. When he was 3 his family moved to Whittier, Calif., where he grew up on a ranch. He did pre-dental studies at Whittier College and the University of Southern California, and earned a doctorate in dentistry at the University of California, Berkeley. After serving his required two years in the Navy — and filling the requisite 300 cavities a month — he went back to U.S.C. to pursue an interest in oral surgery. He earned his medical degree in 1953. After a residency at Los Angeles County Hospital, he joined the Los Angeles Foundation of Otology, a nonprofit research institution founded by his brother, Howard. Today it is called the House Research Institute.

Many at the time thought ear surgery was a declining field because of the effectiveness of antibiotics in dealing with ear maladies. But Dr. House saw antibiotics as enabling more sophisticated surgery by diminishing the threat of infection.

When his brother returned from West Germany with a surgical microscope, Dr. House saw its potential and adopted it for ear surgery; he is credited with introducing the device to the field. But again there was resistance. As Dr. House wrote in his memoir, “The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries” (2011), some eye doctors initially criticized his use of a microscope in surgery as reckless and unnecessary for a surgeon with good eyesight.

Dr. House also used the microscope as a research tool. One night a week he would take one to a morgue for use in dissecting ears to gain insights that might lead to new surgical procedures. His initial reaction, he said, was how beautiful the bones seemed; he compared the experience to one’s first view of the Grand Canyon. His wife, the former June Stendhal, a nurse, often helped.

She died in 2008 after 64 years of marriage. In addition to his daughter, Dr. House is survived by a son, David; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

The implant Dr. House invented used a single channel to deliver information to the hearing system, as opposed to the multiple channels of competing models. The 3M Company, the original licensee of the House implant, sold its rights to another company, the Cochlear Corporation, in 1989. Cochlear later abandoned his design in favor of the multichannel version.

But Dr. House continued to fight for his single-electrode approach, saying it was far cheaper, and offered voluminous material as evidence of its efficacy. He had hoped to resume production of it and make it available to the poor around the world.

Neither the institute nor Dr. House made any money on the implant. He never sought a patent on any of his inventions, he said, because he did not want to restrict other researchers. A nephew, Dr. John House, the current president of the House institute, said his uncle had made the deal to license it to the 3M Company not for profit but simply to get it built by a reputable manufacturer.

Reflecting on his business decisions in his memoir, Dr. House acknowledged, “I might be a little richer today.”

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As Gold Is Spirited Out of Afghanistan, Officials Wonder Why

Zalmai for The New York Times

A Kabul jewelry shop. Officials are concerned about gold being flown out of Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country.

Most of the gold is being carried on commercial flights destined for Dubai, according to airport security reports and officials. The amounts carried by single couriers are often heavy enough that passengers flying from Kabul to the Persian Gulf emirate would be well advised to heed warnings about the danger of bags falling from overhead compartments. One courier, for instance, carried nearly 60 pounds of gold bars, each about the size of an iPhone, aboard an early morning flight in mid-October, according to an airport security report. The load was worth more than $1.5 million.

The gold is fully declared and legal to fly. Some, if not most, is legitimately being sent by gold dealers seeking to have old and damaged jewelry refashioned into new pieces by skilled craftsmen in the Persian Gulf, said Afghan officials and gold dealers.

But gold dealers in Kabul and current and former Kabul airport officials say there has been a surge in shipments since early summer. The talk of a growing exodus of gold from Afghanistan has been spreading among the business community here, and in recent weeks has caught the attention of Afghan and American officials. The officials are now puzzling over the origin of the gold — very little is mined in Afghanistan, although larger mines are planned — and why so much appears to be heading for Dubai.

“We are investigating it, and if we find this is a way of laundering money, we will intervene,” said Noorullah Delawari, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. Yet he acknowledged that there were more questions than answers at this point. “I don’t know where so much gold would come from, unless you can tell me something about it,” he said in an interview. Or, as a European official who tracks the Afghan economy put it, “new mysteries abound” as the war appears to be drawing to a close.

Figuring out what precisely is happening in the Afghan economy remains as confounding as ever. Nearly 90 percent of the financial activity takes place outside formal banks. Written contracts are the exception, receipts are rare and statistics are often unreliable. Money laundering is commonplace, say Western and Afghan officials.

As a result, with the gold, “right now you’re stuck in that situation we usually are: is there something bad going on here or is this just the Afghan way of commerce?” said a senior American official who tracks illicit financial networks.

There is reason to be suspicious: the gold shipments track with the far larger problem of cash smuggling. For years, flights have left Kabul almost every day carrying thick wads of bank notes — dollars, euros, Norwegian kroner, Saudi Arabian riyals and other currencies — stuffed into suitcases, packed into boxes and shrink-wrapped onto pallets. At one point, cash was even being hidden in food trays aboard now-defunct Pamir Airways flights to Dubai.

Last year alone, Afghanistan’s central bank says, roughly $4.5 billion in cash was spirited out through the airport. Efforts to stanch the flow have had limited impact, and concerns about money laundering persist, according to a report released last week by the United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The unimpeded “bulk cash flows raise the risk of money laundering and bulk cash smuggling — tools often used to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the report said. The cash, and now the gold, is most often taken to Dubai, where officials are known for asking few questions. Many wealthy Afghans park their money and families in the emirate, and gold dealers say more middle-class Afghans are sending money and gold — seen as a safeguard against economic ruin — to Dubai as talk of a postwar economic collapse grows louder.

But given Dubai’s reputation as a haven for laundered money, an Afghan official said that the “obvious suspicion” is that at least some of the apparent growth in gold shipments to Dubai is tied to the myriad illicit activities — opium smuggling, corruption, Taliban taxation schemes — that have come to define Afghanistan’s economy.

There are also indications that Iran could be dipping into the Afghan gold trade. It is already buying up dollars and euros here to circumvent American and European sanctions, and it may be using gold for the same purpose.

Yahya, a dealer in Kabul, said other gold traders were helping Iran buy the precious metal here. Payment was being made in oil or with Iranian rials, which readily circulate in western Afghanistan. The Afghan dealers are then taking it to Dubai, where the gold is sold for dollars. The money is then moved to China, where it was used to buy needed goods or simply funneled back to Iran, said Yahya, who like many Afghans uses a single name.

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Mandela Has Surgery to Remove Gallstones

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s ailing former president, had surgery to have gallstones removed on Saturday as he began his second week of hospitalization, the government said.

Mr. Mandela, an icon of the struggle against apartheid, was South Africa’s first black president, elected in 1994 after being released from prison, where he spent 27 years for his efforts to end white rule.

Mr. Mandela is now 94 and frail; this is the second time he has been hospitalized this year. Officials said that Mr. Mandela was flown to Pretoria on Dec. 8 to be treated for a lung infection.

“Tests revealed that there was a recurrence of the lung infection and that Madiba had developed gallstones,” the government said in a statement released Saturday, referring to Mr. Mandela by his clan name. “The medical team decided to attend to a lung infection before determining when to attend to the gallstones.”

An endoscopic surgery to remove the gallstones was successful, the statement said.

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Apple falls on lower shipment forecasts, muted China debut

(Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders to suppliers to balance excess inventory.

Shares of Apple suppliers Jabil Circuit Inc, Qualcomm Inc, Skyworks Solutions Inc, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc, Avago Technologies Ltd, and Cirrus Logic Inc also fell in early trading.

Apple shares have lost a quarter of their value since they hit a life high of $705.07 on September 21, as it faces increasing competition from phones using Google Inc's Android operating system.

Misek cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate to 48 million from 52 million and gross margin expectations for the company by 2 percentage points to 40 percent.

UBS Investment Research cut its price target on Apple stock to $700 from $780 on lower expected iPhone and iPad shipments for the March quarter.

The brokerage said it was modeling more conservative growth for the world's biggest technology company after making supply chain checks that revealed that fewer iPhones were being built.

"Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S," UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a note to clients.

Apple launched the iPhone 5 in China on Friday, a move widely expected to bring the Cupertino-based company some respite from a recent slide in market share in China, but early reports indicated that demand may not be as great as expected.

"The iPhone 5 China launch has been surprisingly muted but (we) are unsure how much weather (snow) or the required pre-ordering (to prevent riots) are factors," Misek said.

Apple shares fell as low as $508.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

(Editing by Supriya Kurane)

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Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock 'n' roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you'd normally expect to hear.

"They were Latinos who weren't afraid to break the mold of what's expected and what's traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren't that familiar with their catalog," said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still "just another band from East LA," the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos' 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That's, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos' life, there was power-chord rock 'n' roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.

"I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15," says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

"I sat right down front," he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. "That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells."

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver" that profiled Jaime Escalante's success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

"Cesar had played in a power trio," Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

"It's a serenade to someone on their birthday," Perez explains, and the group members' mothers had birthdays coming up.

"So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents' homes and did a little serenade," Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock 'n' roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

"They said, 'Well, that's not what we hired you for,'" Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn't much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin's group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

"It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing," the saxophonist recalls. "By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos."

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group's first true rock album, 1984's "How Will the Wolf Survive?" At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune "La Bamba" for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens' rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of "Kiko," the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos' cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

"All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group," said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum's recent "Trouble in Paradise" exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn't fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we're not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it's like, 'Well, what are you?'" he mused.

"So if that's the case," he added brightly, "then, hey, we belong everywhere."

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School Yoga Class Draws Religious Protest From Christians

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times

Miriam Ruiz during a yoga class last week at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School in Encinitas, Calif. A few dozen parents are protesting that the program amounts to religious indoctrination.

ENCINITAS, Calif. — By 9:30 a.m. at Paul Ecke Central Elementary School, tiny feet were shifting from downward dog pose to chair pose to warrior pose in surprisingly swift, accurate movements. A circle of 6- and 7-year-olds contorted their frames, making monkey noises and repeating confidence-boosting mantras.

Jackie Bergeron’s first-grade yoga class was in full swing.

“Inhale. Exhale. Peekaboo!” Ms. Bergeron said from the front of the class. “Now, warrior pose. I am strong! I am brave!”

Though the yoga class had a notably calming effect on the children, things were far from placid outside the gymnasium.

A small but vocal group of parents, spurred on by the head of a local conservative advocacy group, has likened these 30-minute yoga classes to religious indoctrination. They say the classes — part of a comprehensive program offered to all public school students in this affluent suburb north of San Diego — represent a violation of the First Amendment.

After the classes prompted discussion in local evangelical churches, parents said they were concerned that the exercises might nudge their children closer to ancient Hindu beliefs.

Mary Eady, the parent of a first grader, said the classes were rooted in the deeply religious practice of Ashtanga yoga, in which physical actions are inextricable from the spiritual beliefs underlying them.

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort. They’re using this as a tool for many things beyond just stretching.”

Ms. Eady and a few dozen other parents say a public school system should not be leading students down any particular religious path. Teaching children how to engage in spiritual exercises like meditation familiarizes young minds with certain religious viewpoints and practices, they say, and a public classroom is no place for that.

Underlying the controversy is the source of the program’s financing. The pilot project is supported by the Jois Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Krishna Pattabhi Jois, who is considered the father of Ashtanga yoga.

Dean Broyles, the president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law and Policy, a nonprofit law firm that champions religious freedom and traditional marriage, according to its Web site, has dug up quotes from Jois Foundation leaders, who talk about the inseparability of the physical act of yoga from a broader spiritual quest. Mr. Broyles argued that such quotes betrayed the group’s broader evangelistic purpose.

“There is a transparent promotion of Hindu religious beliefs and practices in the public schools through this Ashtanga yoga program,” he said.

“The analog would be if we substituted for this program a charismatic Christian praise and worship physical education program,” he said.

The battle over yoga in schools has been raging for years across the country but has typically focused on charter schools, which receive public financing but set their own curriculums.

The move by the Encinitas Union School District to mandate yoga classes for all students who do not opt out has elevated the discussion. And it has split an already divided community.

The district serves the liberal beach neighborhoods of Encinitas, including Leucadia, where Paul Ecke Central Elementary is, as well as more conservative inland communities. On the coast, bumper stickers reading “Keep Leucadia Funky” are borne proudly. Farther inland, cars are more likely to feature the Christian fish symbol, and large evangelical congregations play an important role in shaping local philosophy.

Opponents of the yoga classes have started an online petition to remove the course from the district’s curriculum. They have shown up at school board meetings to denounce the program, and Mr. Broyles has threatened to sue if the board does not address their concerns.

The district has stood firm. Tim Baird, the schools superintendent, has defended the yoga classes as merely another element of a broader program designed to promote children’s physical and mental well-being. The notion that yoga teachers have designs on converting tender young minds to Hinduism is incorrect, he said.

“That’s why we have an opt-out clause,” Mr. Baird said. “If your faith is such that you believe that simply by doing the gorilla pose, you’re invoking the Hindu gods, then by all means your child can be doing something else.”

Ms. Eady is not convinced.

“Yoga poses are representative of Hindu deities and Hindu stories about the actions and interactions of those deities with humans,” she said. “There’s content even in the movement, just as with baptism there’s content in the movement.”

Russell Case, a representative of the Jois Foundation, said the parents’ fears were misguided.

“They’re concerned that we’re putting our God before their God,” Mr. Case said. “They’re worried about competition. But we’re much closer to them than they think. We’re good Christians that just like to do yoga because it helps us to be better people.”

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