Latino Immigrants are Transforming South Central … and That’s a Good Thing

LATINO PERSPECTIVE-I moved to Los Angeles in August of 1992, but I remember I had a trip planned to visit LA in April of that same year, just a few days after the riots broke. The friend I was going to stay with suggested I cancel my trip for a later time because of the riots. And so I did. 

When I arrived in LA and decided to live on campus, I had heard that the neighborhood wasn’t very good. But I didn’t care -- I just wanted to live on campus and have the whole USC college experience. 

The first year I lived on the main campus (Birnkrant Residence Hall), sophomore year I moved in with three friends I made at Birnkrant to another resident Hall outside of campus. The last two years of college I moved with another friend to a two-bedroom apartment on 31^st street just a few blocks off campus. I lived in South Central for my entire college years, (1992-1996) and I never had a problem with the neighborhood. I never felt unsafe. After all, I came from one of the largest cities in the world. 

I also heard that USC had been offered the land in Malibu where Pepperdine now resides, but decided to stay in South Central to contribute to the betterment of the neighborhood and the community. Fight on! 

More than twenty years have gone by, and I have seen the transformation of the area surrounding USC. It’s true that South Central became a national symbol of rage in a poor black neighborhood. But the population of the area has changed dramatically in the time since the acquittal of four white police officers in the Rodney King beating. 

I read in an article from the New York Times that “in the 1990s, black residents made up roughly half the population in South Central. Today, Latinos account for about two-thirds of the residents in what is now called South Los Angeles — ‘Central’ was officially scrubbed from the neighborhood’s name by the City Council in 2003. In the 20-some square miles that make up the area, stretching southwest of downtown from the Santa Monica Freeway to the Century Freeway and as far west as Inglewood, there are 80,000 fewer blacks than there were in 1990.” 

The Times argues that today, immigrants from Mexico and Central America live on blocks that generations ago were the only places African-Americans could live. In the former center of black culture in Los Angeles, Spanish is often the only language heard on the streets. 

"The riots and their aftermath opened people's eyes about the Latino presence in South LA," says Pasadena businessman Hector Sotomayor, who spent his early adult life in South Los Angeles. "We were no longer invisible. 

Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America had begun quietly settling in South Los Angeles, and the great immigration boom from those countries in the 1990s spawned what ultimately has become a dramatic demographic transformation. 

But I agree with Tony Castro when he says that doesn't mean that the African American community has gone away. It remains in smaller numbers but fighting hard to retain its political power, which it has been able to do because so many of the Hispanics in South LA are either not citizens or too young to vote. 

Latinos like to start small businesses, and they have done so in great numbers in the area. Latinos and blacks are learning to co-exist, respect each other, learn from each other and benefit from each other’s strengths. 

I’m so glad I lived in that part of town when I first move to Los Angeles, and so proud that my first neighborhood in this great city is prospering. It’s becoming better as years go by. Let’s just hope that this prosperity continues -- and expands to others part of the city that are like “South Central.”

 

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader who serves as Vice Chair of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition and sits on the board of the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council representing Larchmont Village.  He was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 87

Pub: Oct 27, 2015