Slice of the Old Country
At first blush, the neighborhoods of weathered wood-frame homes and tiny warehouses surrounding La Puente’s aging civic center seem an unlikely place for a cultural renaissance. Yet there, by the Southern Pacific’s main line, no fewer than three Spanish-language dance clubs have taken root in recent years.
The clubs’ birth and apparent success are the predictable results of nortena and banda music’s burgeoning popularity, a popularity that inspired the quebradita dance craze and briefly made KLAX-FM Southern California’s most listened-to radio station.
It’s unlikely that the crowds that pack Armando Gallarzo’s A Mi Hacienda nightclub--La Puente’s largest--concern themselves much with popular sentiment, however. After all, they’ve been filling the boxy dance hall for 16 years, unmoved by such Latin American dance fads as the lambada, punta and macarena.
And once inside, it’s easy to see why. For homesick Mexican immigrants, or even U.S.-born Latinos rediscovering their heritage, A Mi Hacienda offers a big slice of the Old Country that other clubs will be hard-pressed to match.
The club’s long, narrow bandstand, for example, is backed by a colorful mural depicting a 19th century adobe hacienda with rugged, dusty hills stretching to the horizon. The nightclub’s male patrons--dressed unfailingly in neatly pressed jeans and western shirts, accented by expensive boots and wide-brimmed cowboy hats--add to the frontier flavor. (The women favor more eclectic ensembles, ranging from jeans and boots to tight mini-dresses and heels.)
But it’s the intangible elements--like the club’s warm, friendly atmosphere--that truly make visitors feel as if they’ve stumbled into a small-town fiesta somewhere deep in Mexico. From the nonthreatening (but serious) phalanx of security guards at the door to the busy cocktail waitresses, a genuine Latin hospitality abounds. Don’t expect to hear any English spoken, though; for its patrons as well as its employees, A Mi Hacienda is a refuge from the outside world. Inside the club’s walls, Spanish is the official--and only--language.
Although the club proudly touts its Mexican food, the tiny menu is decidedly uninspired, featuring $2 hamburgers, popcorn and nachos of the kind served by neighborhood convenience stores. The well-stocked bar is expensive, but a beer can be had for $2 a bottle.
But then it’s not the food or drink that draws turn-away crowds each weekend; it’s the music and the camaraderie it engenders. Although Gallarzo has experimented some with quebradita music, the club has built its considerable reputation on nortena and banda music, featuring such well-known Mexican groups as Los Rieleros, Los Tucanes and Los Huracanes del Norte en vivo every Friday through Monday evening.
Banda music originated in the last half of the 19th century, when Germanic immigrants brought the brass band to the U.S.-Mexican border, where it mixed with traditional Mexican music. Updated with electronic instruments in the 1980s, banda surged to new heights of popularity among Mexican and Mexican American youth, and dance clubs soon sprang up on both sides of the border to meet the pent-up demand.
On a typical Saturday night at A Mi Hacienda, the ample dance floor is so tightly packed by 11 o’clock that couples spill out into the carpeted aisles in search of some open space. Meanwhile, groups of men gather along one wall or beside the bar, eyeing the unaccompanied women filling rows of tables in the middle of the room.
Eventually, a young man will overcome his shyness long enough to tip his hat and politely ask a young woman to dance. Just as they’ve done for centuries in the Old Country.
* BE THERE
A Mi Hacienda, 16253 E. Old Valley Blvd., La Puente. Open 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., Fri.-Mon. 21 and over, $10 cover. Limited menu, full bar. (818) 968-8854.
