Durham fire and police personnel worked well into the evening to keep the situation under control, and Diaz's horrified family and friends from the local Hispanic community gathered to watch the blaze.

Annnnnnd ... scene.

The fire will make for a hot season-opener when Durham's "Nuestro Barrio," a Spanish-language soap opera with an educational twist, makes its debut early next year on either WB 22 or UPN 28, both owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Monique Velasquez of Digital Media Communications in Durham helped coordinate the shoot with Durham's fire marshal and police department, and worked with city officials to temporarily close a portion of Main Street to stage the fire at Guajillos Mexican Grill. Some Durham firefighters even took cameo acting roles. At one point during the shoot, which lasted from 8 p.m. until 3 a.m., Mayor Bill Bell walked over to help straighten out some permit issues.

"Nuestro Barrio," modeled after sexy Spanish telenovelas, is the creation of director Dilsey Davis, an actress who decided in 2004 to educate Hispanics about the dangers of predatory lending and other financial issues through the medium of television.

Davis was working as media director for the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina in downtown Durham. The nonprofit organization monitors lending practices of financial institutions and promotes building wealth in minority communities.

The pilot episode of the show, which dealt with housing discrimination, was shot at the real-life Latin Grill, a now-defunct restaurant where Guajillos Mexican Grill now stands. It premiered on Time Warner Cable Channel 24 in April 2004, and mortgage underwriting company Freddie Mac was so impressed with the show that it financed three more episodes. Those premiered in March at a red-carpet event at Durham's Carolina Theatre.

Much of the footage for those episodes was shot at Durham's Montas Lounge, a venue that has now been replicated on a TV studio set in a warehouse on North Duke Street. The show is still being financed by Freddie Mac, but Davis says that commercial time will be sold to other sponsors as well once the show hits the air.

Things have been moving fast for the cast and crew of "Nuestro Barrio" since the abrupt end of a production hiatus that began in January, when Davis went to study acting in Los Angeles.

She came back in May to work in the D.B. Sweeney film "Dirt Nap" in Wilmington, then went back to the West Coast.

Making the sale

Then, in June, she and the show's unit publicist and writing team member Martina Guzman shopped the show to Neal Davis, general manager at WB 22.

Neal Davis agreed to air 13 shows, first-run and one repeat, for 26 weeks. He says he's tentatively planning to put them on Sundays on WRDC UPN 28, back-to-back with "American Latino" which airs at 11:30 a.m.

"What makes ["Nuestro Barrio"] different for WB and UPN is that it's in Spanish," says Dilsey Davis. "That's cutting edge, I would say." Davis says the show will be subtitled in English, and some of the dialogue will be in Spanglish. "Nuestro" will also touch on issues, such as domestic violence, suggested by viewers who participated in focus groups.

Since getting the local deal with Sinclair, Dilsey Davis and Guzman say seven more stations in the Southeast have signed on, in markets including Greensboro, Charlotte, Greenville, S.C., Atlanta and Las Vegas.

"I applaud their professionalism and their great attitudes getting this show done," says Neal Davis, who helped establish those contacts for the show. "It's great to have something produced locally like this."

"Nuestro Barrio" is awaiting word from the Azteca Television network about a deal that could put the show all over the Southwest as well.

On Friday, Dilsey Davis and Guzman met in Tampa with regional Sinclair representatives to discuss a possible deal to blanket the Northeast, too.

"What's amazing about it is that this sort of homegrown, nonprofit project has turned into a nationally distributed soap opera," Guzman says.

Staff writer Danny Hooley can be reached at 829-4728 or dhooley@newsobserver.com.

© Copyright 2005, The News & Observer Publishing Company, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company