Generacion Latino >BY Helene Stapinski

American Demographics, July, 1999

Every weekend, 21-year-old Jovan Flores drives his black Volkswagen Jetta-with oversize, shining chrome tailpipe-from his house in Norwalk, Connecticut, to the tony town of Ridgefield. On this particular Saturday, with hip hop bleeding from his tinted windows, Flores is driving to the town's new skate park to meet some of his clients-30 little white boys who are learning to be just like him.

Flores, known as Face in hip hop circles, is one of the premiere break dancers in the New York area. In its second coming, the nationwide break dancing charge is being led by Latino youth. Flores, whose family hails from Puerto Rico, teaches break dancing to Ridgefield teens with the help of his friends Juni from Chile, Hydro from Colombia, and Double, an Anglo from Connecticut.

"When you're Latin, you're taught to dance differently because of the different rhythms," says Guillermo Perez, a 19-year-old trend watcher from San Francisco who's seen Latin-style break dancing spread to the West Coast. "There's different hip movement, different leg movement. You're moving so much that it's easy to just throw yourself on the floor and continue."

As Flores cruises into the Ridgefield skate park, it's easy to spot the nervous looks on the faces of many of the adults observing the scene. Clearly, the kids feel differently about his arrival.

"Face!" they yell, gathering around and practically breathing him in, molecule by molecule. Like Face, they wear their baseball caps turned backward, plus beaded necklaces, Esco and Puma shirts, and big Nikes.

In Ridgefield and across the country, it's not just dancing the white kids are picking up on. Young Latinos like Flores and his crew are redefining the way teens talk, walk, and dress.

"The music I used to listen to was lame," says 14-year-old Matt. "I listened to what was on MTV. I was into rock-Metallica, Rage Against the Machine." Now he and his friends prefer Nas, the rapper who endorses the hugely popular Latin-flavored Esco clothing line. "My mom was like, 'Don't get too much into that rap stuff.' But we break it out."

One 19-year-old of Norwegian extraction searches a mix tape for "that Mexican thing"-a song peppered with horn blasts. Another boy, wearing a colorful, South American-style woven hat, practices his head spin.

Flores shakes his head and smiles at the Spanish slang like "moms" and "pops" that colors his students' vocabulary. "If you talk to them now, you'd think they were one of us," he says, shrugging. "And the transformation only took six months."

According to Juan Faura of Cheskin Research, it was just a matter of time before Latino youth began to change the mainstream cultural landscape. "I've been screaming my head off for quite a while that Hispanic teens are the future of marketing," says Faura, director of transcultural research for the California-based market research company. Currently 4.3 million strong, Hispanic youth ages 12 to 19 account for more than 14 percent of the total Hispanic population in the United States, and 13.6 percent of all teens. By the year 2020, the number of Hispanic teens will grow by 62 percent, according to Census Bureau projections, to 7 million, compared with a 10 percent growth in the number of teens overall.

When it comes to spending money, Hispanic teens don't hold back. They blow an average of $320 a month, 4 percent more than the average teen does, according to Teenage Research Unlimited. Overall teen spending was a whopping $141 billion in 1998, and Hispanics contributed $19 billion, or 13.4 percent of the total.

Already, because of their growing numbers, Latino teens are no longer a minority group in some areas of the country. "They don't view themselves as minorities, so their influences kind of rule the school," says Faura. "They're saying, 'You know, there are a lot of us here.' So they're mainstreaming their customs."

In fact, by 2005, Hispanic youth will be the largest ethnic youth population in the country. And the trend will only keep growing. By 2001, 18 percent of all babies born in the United States will be of Hispanic origin.

Even slow-to-change, whitewashed places like Hollywood are beginning to acknowledge the existence of the Latino community-at least when it comes to how much they spend on entertainment. According to a recent report by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont, California, Latinos spend 6.5 percent of their entertainment budget on movies, theater, opera, and ballet, compared with 4.7 for Caucasians. That economic power is finally beginning to translate into starring roles for young Latino actors, although the gains are still relatively small. A May report by the Screen Actors Guild on Latino employment in Hollywood found that the number of film and television acting jobs going to Hispanics has actually declined since 1997. But it's no longer acceptable for someone like Madonna to play a famous Latina on screen, like she did in Evita just three years ago.

Though she wanted the role of Frida Kahlo in the upcoming film on the fabled painter's life, Madonna lost the part to Salma Hayek, who is also starring in one of the summer's biggest releases, Wild, Wild West. And Broadway star John Leguizamo, whose one-man show Freak! drew thousands of Latino and Anglo fans, has a starring role in Spike Lee's summer blockbuster, Summer of Sam. Hayek and Leguizamo are further proof to Latino kids that they are part of the big picture and part of the mainstream.