As the parachutes pop open, the colors of the Mexican flag unfurl under a canopy of bright blue sky.

Sometimes the crowds go wild and young hearts flutter as the Chicano skydive team slowly drifts to Earth.

"It just looks like a beautiful blossom of flowers and the people, they go crazy," said Pete Rodriguez, spokesman for the Latin Skydiving Team.

"This group of gentlemen are seasoned skydivers who still have that young, vibrant, `I am having fun attitude,' " said Mike Williams, spokesman for the Perris Valley Skydiving School. "They want everybody to know that skydiving is a multicultural sport."

Formed in 1962, the parachuting team has performed skydiving exhibitions at fiestas, weddings, picnics, menudo cookoffs, Mexican political campaigns, bikini contests, baseball games, lifeguard competitions, rodeos and other events in Arizona, Nevada and throughout California. In Mexico, the group has jumped at Tijuana and the Yucatan peninsula.

Culture and language, plus the fellowship of parachuting, are common threads among the 14-member group said Rodriguez. The group jumps frequently out of the Lake Elsinore and Perris airports.

"Skydiving is really the glue," Rodriguez, 58, said. "It's very exhilarating. It's very frightening too. But that is part of the reason that you do it. I call it controlled fear."

The team members also want Mexican and Chicano youngsters to see them as role models, Rodriguez said. The group includes three generations of skydivers.

One of the Latins' founders, Ray "Pelon" Guerrero, 65, now leans his frail body on a cane. Being sidelined by poor health, however, doesn't stop Guerrero's vibrant humor.

"They call me the Evel Knievel of sports parachuting," the feisty Guerrero jokes. "I am gypsy of the group. I don't have a home."

Guerrero, a Korean War veteran, lost track on the number of jumps he's made.

"After a thousand jumps, I quit counting," he said.

His 36-year-old son, Rico, is on the team, as are Charles Pickett's four sons. Pickett's twin 17-year-old grandsons, Cory and Charles, made their first jumps with the team in July.

"It was fun. My grandfather talked us into it," said Cory, a senior at Rancho Verde High School in Perris.

Tom Vasquez's 26-year-old son, Greg, of Menifee, is also on the team.

When the members get together, the atmosphere is peppered with cabula (playful taunting and teasing), tales about broken bones broken, good times, and hair-raising jumps.

Vasquez, Guerrero and Rodriguez recall making a jump in downtown Merida, Yucatan, Mexico during the Dia de la Revolucion in 1991. Their hearts thumped hard as they looked down from their chutes, expecting to see a large clearing on main street.

"There were wall to wall Mexicans on the street," he said.

Vasquez, 60, of Hemet, said he tried desperately to find a spot to touch down without landing on top of people, live electrical wires or buildings. His adrenaline shot up as he made a quick, sharp turn with his parachute to avoid smacking into the cathedral.

"I was walking on the side of the cathedral with my feet," he said .

Rodriguez, of East Los Angeles, ended up dangling from telephone wires six feet off the ground.

"The Mexicans called me la pinata," said Rodriguez.

"We use to do a lot of crazy things," said Pickett, 59.

About 13 years ago, a little Mexican bar maid from Casas Grandes, a city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, insisted on jumping with the team, said Pickett a North Hollywood resident. After a short training course, team members watched as she flung herself out the plane toward the desert at about 150 miles a hour.

"I never did find her. Somebody else found her. She enjoyed it," said Pickett,. "Her brothers wanted to beat us up. They were just being protective."

Published 9/23/1998