Originally an arid dry desert area under the control of New Spain, the city of Los Angeles was established in 1781 by California's then governor, Felipe de Neve. With only a handful of settled families from Mexico (also under Spanish rule), Los Angeles has since seen many changes. Still maintaining a close connection to its Hispanic roots, many people today associate Los Angeles with a Hispanic culture and people. If you've lived or spent enough time around the East Los Angeles area especially, you'll see just how much this influence has shaped the environment. The name of businesses and streets are in Spanish, you hear "Oldies" or romantic mariachi music playing from inside small homes and apartment windows, and the murals and street art pay respect to famous Mexican-American and Latin-American idols and Mesoamerican folklore. This is the image of Los Angeles that many have grown up around, including myself; and it's for this reason that many have been quick on observing a change of demographics in certain neighborhoods. In this case,the change comes in the form of gentrification, which refers to the phenomenon of usually traditional lower class neighborhoods having to unwillingly undergo changes to accommodate for emigrating wealthier families and businesses. Gentrification is changing the face of Los Angeles, and many take it as an offense to Los Angeles' more Latin American cultural identification.

It is clear that the effects of gentrification are multi-fold; most well known is the intense amount of pressure on some settled residents of neighborhoods that can't keep up with rising property values, and in extreme situations, displaces members of the neighborhood to leave behind their livelihood to move to another city. It's a very disheartening phenomenon that's constantly been active not just in Los Angeles, not just the United States, but many cities around the world. While there are many opposing studies done on the exact statistics and long-term effects of gentrification, the truth is that for at least here in Los Angeles, many worry particularly about the removal of Latin-Hispanic culture.

But I always wondered; Why? Why do many associate a new coming off outside culture and way of life as an attack on the Angeleno culture?

It's not that difficult to observe to the keen eye, either. Where there was once many outlet stores, family owned mini-markets and liquor stores, electronics stores, insurance and traveling shops, and auto-body shops, there are now fast food chains, large brand-name clothing stores, first-rate banks, and the ever trending culture-savvy cafes. Some of these gentrifiers can even come from traditional neighborhoods themselves. Combined with the steady loss of the Spanish language with newer generations and modern internet culture replacing traditional culture, we also have a generation of Latin-Hispanic youth living an incredibly different life than their parents and even more so than their grandparents. Many of these youth often go on to universities or trade schools and attain more knowledge and skills and advanced positions in society than their previous generations. This, in fact, can cause a subtle state of gentrification if they return to their old streets and homes and bring a new but foreign mix of ideas and cultures to the neighborhood.

Combine this with the fact that nearly half of Angelenos aren't even from Latin America in the first place; in recent years, immigration from China, India, and several countries in the Middle East has continuously been increasing. It's evident to see that it's only a matter of time before Los Angeles changes further again. The time of cruising down the street to oldies, large family fiestas, street food vendors walking endlessly in the hot sun, hotdog stands and taco trucks, and going on errands in entirely Spanish plazas will slowly be replaced by something entirely new. It certainly emotionally affects long time Mexican American and Latin American residents.

But perhaps it's because I've always struggled with my own cultural identity that I tend to focus on other feelings. Yes, I see and hear less influence of La Raza every time I visit many Hispanic areas of Los Angeles (like the almost entirely Hispanic East Los Angeles) and see more influence from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Armenian, Arabic, Indian, Iranian and African American cultures. It definitely still stirs many nostalgic and romantic feelings of unfamiliarity, change, and uncertainty. But I begin to think of the beginning of Spain's Los Angeles, with Felipe de Neve and the Mexican families that tended to new neighborhoods, homes, livestock, and lands; the eventual separation of Mexico from Spain, the approach of the United States and the eventual turning of California to the United States. And by focusing more closely on the history, one can get an entirely different perspective on all the change.

Many groups today remind that California (as well as several other states in the Southwest) used to belong to Mexico and that for this reason, Los Angeles should always maintain true to its current cultural breath. But what many of these commentators don't mention is that Los Angeles was not always Mexican; and furthermore, it wasn't always Spanish. In fact, a lot fail to realize that Mexico in this way is essentially quasi-Spanish, just a continuation of Spanish rule and custom: certainly, the language of almost every Mexican is Spanish. And what most tend to not communicate, is something that almost everyone also intuitively understands: the Spanish, and any other European or Old World people, were not the first to live and cultivate the lands across the Americas.

At the truest, very beginning of the history of the human occupation in Los Angeles, many hundreds of years before any Spanish missionaries or Mexican settlers, were the Chumash and Tongva people. Although few in numbers, they had their own unique language and culture and still live in and around Los Angeles today, a city whose current mix of cultures their ancestors certainly would not have been familiar with. Los Angeles was a drastic change of culture from its very beginning. Taking this into consideration, I feel Los Angeles has a different story that escapes the narratives of most people's thoughts.

So what unique and original culture are we Raza, paisano people truly losing? I find it interesting that some of us feel like if we aren't being heard about the invasion of our culture. Afterall, we are the people that eat Mesoamerican-Iberian food and speak a European language, living on the lands of people that never experienced either; people that lived in Los Angeles centuries longer than any Spanish or Mexican people, people that fell to disease or were forcefully converted to beliefs that weren't their own. It's for this reason that Los Angeles has always been a story about change, and since the arrival of the Spanish can never be the same as it originally was.

While historical politics has ensured that the negative effects of all displaced people need to be studied and addressed with separate political and economic discourse, I believe we need to carefully judge the approaching change of art, life, and culture differently. History and the legacy of a people are complicated, but credit should be given where credit is due: Mexicans and other Latin American people have made Los Angeles what it is today, and no one can discredit that (they certainly can try, but there's still too many of us here to let that happen). But aside from Latin American influence, there exist the most important original contributions, struggles and sacrifices of the indigenous Los Angelenos, there exists China Town, Korea Town, Little Tokyo, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, each area of Los Angeles and its people contributing something new; and the list will continue to go on. Los Angeles, like the United States, Mexico and the rest of the Americas, has been a history of constant immigration and arrival of new music, foods, literature, and ideas. At the end of the day, then, perhaps it's not entirely about keeping things traditional, but celebrating what we were raised with, acknowledging the people of the past and the history of why we have what we have, and the necessary mentality to welcome the new.