identity of los angeles

Athena Morales English 103 Wednesdays 10/03/2011 The Identity of Los Angeles Growing up on the east side of Long Beach is a lot like how I would imagine growing up in Los Angeles would be. Just a trip down one street, like Anaheim for instance, and you’d pass through as many as four different cultural neighborhoods. From Naples Island to PCH and Pine, everyone lives separate lifestyles yet still comfortably close to one another. In The Los Angeles Archipelago, McWilliams mentioned that “Southern California is an archipelago of social and ethnic islands,” that are “economically interrelated but culturally disparate.” In Long Beach, as long as they’re with their social equals, the rich have never been more comfortable living next to the poor. McWilliams’ statement I believe is saying that this is true of Los Angeles as well. This is what I love about Long Beach and possibly what I adore about Los Angeles. Whether poor or rich, Black, Native, Korean, or White, everyone gladly lives next to one another. It’s the 21st century and it feels so right seeing different cultures living among each other. Yes, while it’s true that they still go home to their socially separated neighborhoods and practice their own individual beliefs, we all still openly and freely mingle. The true identity of Los Angeles however is not just that it’s a city of clashing cultures living respectfully squished between each other but, how each culture influences the city as a whole. Since the Spanish swarmed the west coast of North America, it’s been one broken promise after another. I’m sure, when Cortez first met the Aztecs he promised them they came in peace. What he really meant though was, “in peace until I want to overthrow you of course.” Then the English settlers came, making land treaties with the Native Americans only to go back on their word and rape the hell out of the entire nation. Then again with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when we promised the Mexicans living on the defeated land that they could keep the land and their beliefs, it was a lie. These broken promises have been in recent years too. In Legacy of a Land Grab, author Lalo Lopez introduces us to Maria Montoya, a Mexican woman who rightly owned 80 acres of land in New Mexico. That was however, until the U.S. government promised to just borrow her land for a few months for what they called the Manhattan Project. Those few months ended up turning into a few decades and to this day Maria still has not heard back from them. This promise of a broken promise is a trait I believe that every culture brings to the identity of Los Angeles. At one point you were part of a broken people, everyone was. Everyone has ancestors who suffered at the hands of others. It’s this underlining melancholy feeling that we can sense in every culture. It’s a very bitter feeling that we sweetly love because we can identify with it completely because we’ve been there. I mean come on, even Hollywood is known as the city of broken dreams, and with good reason. While it may not be an identity Los Angeles wants, it’s an inevitable influence that the city gets from each culture living here. So, I’m what I like to call a bastard kid of America. If you’re a true American, you’re a bastard American. I’m first generation Nicaraguan on my father’s side and second generation Greek/Albanian on my mother’s. I’m two very strong dominant ethnicities yet I identify with neither. My father spoke only Spanish until he was seventeen yet I don’t know a word of it. My grandmother was a very traditional Greek Orthodox woman, yet all I was able to learn from her was that I got to eat a lamb feast right after lent. Both these races are in my blood through and through, yet I follow neither culture. My mother was a single parent from south Philadelphia and she never forced any culture upon us other then the Greek Orthodox religion, which I feel is separate from a real cultural family experience anyway. This is what makes you a true American; you don’t identify with your ancestors culture so you create this completely new organic American culture all for yourself. Your new culture can include some of your family’s beliefs or none at all, it doesn’t matter. This struggle and ultimate discovery with one’s identity is in fact a part of Los Angeles’ identity and there’s a perfect example of this in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s, The Revolt of the Cockroach People. In The Revolt, the character Buffalo is having a conflict with himself. He’s a Chicano lawyer who doesn’t want to be one but can’t decide what he does want. Buffalo can’t identify with his Mexican roots or with the American society around him. Buffalo then visits Cesar Chavez, the man who was at the front lines of the Chicano movement in Los Angeles. Chavez tells Buffalo, “It doesn’t matter if I approve or if any one approves. You are doing what has to be done.” Chavez knew what was up. It’s ok if you don’t know where you belong or if what you’re doing is different from others, as long as you’re staying true to yourself. There is nothing wrong with being torn between two cultures, just as it is fine to be torn between none. The people of Los Angeles know how to keep it real, brutally beautiful real. We are all these different races at once and none at all at the same time. I believe that this is not just the identity of Los Angeles but of the entire United States. What it really comes down to is the identity of the PEOPLE of the city of Los Angeles. We’re a city of once broken people, who have overcome self-identity issues after many years with each other and we now lovingly share this little metropolis we call Los Angeles, California. We’ve grown and changed so much. In the book Ramona, Senora Moreno misses a simpler time in California when she was able to just hop on a boat and float down her long river with her husband, while my simpler time was when I was able to play SNES until 2:00 in the morning because I had no obligations the next day. I like our progress Los Angeles.