Quetzal Flores: "We're not politicians but we definitely want to change things. That's what our music is about, even the music itself, melodically, harmonically, lyrically we push the envelope. We don't want to live our lives waiting for something to happen and then react to it. We want to take a different step. Which is to be proactive, to just build and keep building - utilizing the resources that we have in our own community to really demonstrate that we have everything that we need..."

Martha Gonzales: "...And that in itself is a Zapatista model, that they basically asses their situation and look at all the assets that they have as opposed to all the things that they don't have. That's kind of like what we're trying to build at home in LA. Whether it be teaching children music or whether it be playing, supporting other musicians and artists through our own medium, and helping each other out in terms of fundraising within our community."

Jime: What is your perspective, when you come up here, of the music community, poetry, spoken word, within the Bay Area? How do you feel when you come to perform here?

Quetzal: "The thing that intrigues me about the Bay Area, and has always intrigued me is the history of the social movements and the struggle here in the Bay Area. And it's tremendous and you can learn a lot from studying just this area. It's people of color, it's not just a Chicano thing, it's not just an Asian American thing, it's people who understand the importance of struggle, the importance of unity. So, La Peña for me is a resource of that energy. You know it really epitomizes that energy and so when we come to play here ­ there's not really another place we like to play in the Bay Area, I'll be honest with you, because like Martha said, "We feel like we're at home here."

Martha: "What I'm really impressed with is just looking at La Peña's calendar itself, you know we get it up in LA we're really excited to look through it every time. The variety of music and how much of different pockets of the community that they really service. The posters alone in here, whether it be Spanish music, or other types of Afro-Cuban music or Chicano music or Hip-Hop, spoken word. There's so many different genres of music and within those genres come all these different people from the community and I think that very few people know how to do that and do it well."