Panegyric

Born of Mexican-Salvadoran parents and raised in Los Angeles, Martinez seeks to reconcile his disparate selves--Mexican, Salvadoran, middle-class Angeleno, barrio dweller, poet--in this uneven collage of journalism, diary entries, poetry and criticism. The strongest sections include a searing account of an El Salvador rocked by an earthquake, death squads and poverty; a tribute to a friend who died of AIDS; a survey of Mexico City's rock 'n' roll and pop groups battling for the cultural soul of Mexico's youth; and a portrait of Tijuana's young painters and performance artists, who negate that city's image as ``backyard whorehouse to the States.'' In some pieces, Martinez takes a lot of time to reach obvious conclusions. ``How far can kids really go with it?'' he asks of L.A.'s graffiti artists after offering an aesthetic analysis of their scrawls; in a spirited report on a Havana film festival in 1988, he determines that Castro's glasnost -like campaign is a sham. Illustrated. (June)