Eugene Rodriguez's cheeks are framed by long, bushy eyebrows, a crop of curly hair and long, sharp sideburns. He's not remotely imposing or pompous, but charismatic? Yes. It's in his fast, thick fingers, his clear, resonant voice. The center he founded and runs, Los Cenzontles or "The Mockingbirds," doesn't have a shade of outward arrogance either. It's about the soul inside.

The center is located in San Pablo, an East Bay city surrounded on three sides by Richmond and best known for the Indian casino in the heart of downtown. It's in a undistinguished strip mall, hidden from the main road by an auto-parts store, identified by a sign that's hung too high and a single glass door hiding between a laundromat and a Smart and Final store.

"I feel like a lot of Latino organizations feel like they have to create these monuments to ourselves, as if the more expensive the building the more valuable we are," Rodriguez says. "Everybody goes to a strip mall. Everybody shops at Smart and Final. So why not have it here? It's like honoring who we really are."

Inside, the center is a surprisingly large space alive in sound and sensation. Parents lounge on new leather couches and sitting chairs, talking in Spanish about their families. There is a kitchen framed by a curved bar, and a velvet curtain behind which their 4-year olds are stomping out traditional dances on a polished hardwood floor. On the wide stage are guitarrons and other instruments, even a quijada, a horse-jaw. To the side of the stage is a production studio where students are learning guitar, an art studio where children are coloring images of birthday cakes, performance rooms, and a costume room. The walls are painted rich purple and warm yellow.

This center—where 800 youths take classes every year, mariachi masters hold court, and musicians such as David Hidalgo, Linda Ronstadt, and Carlos Santana perform for the community—is a culmination of Rodriguez's journey, begun two decades before. A third-generation Chicano born in Los Angeles, Rodriguez was raised on Mexican music and rock and came to San Francisco to study Bach and classical Spanish guitar. His elders mocked his pursuits and told him he could never really be truly Mexican. Art, he would tell them, is a way to solve problems. It's a way to look at things from different angles. It's a place where you can expand.

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