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Mexican Americans have lived inLos Angeles since the originalPobladores, the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers who founded the city in 1781. People of Mexican descent make up 31.9% of Los Angeles residents, and 32% of Los Angeles County residents.
Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia was founded in early 1784 within the burgeoningPueblo de Los Ángeles as anasistencia (or "sub-mission") to the nearbyMission San Gabriel Arcángel.[1]
The city's originalbarrios were located in the eastern half of the city and the unincorporated community ofEast Los Angeles. The trend ofHispanization began in 1970, then accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s with immigration from Mexico andCentral America (especiallyEl Salvador,Honduras, andGuatemala). These immigrants settled in the city's eastern and southern neighborhoods. By 2000,South Los Angeles was a majority Mexican area, displacing most previousAfrican-American andAsian-American residents. The city is often said to have the largest Mexican population outside Mexico and has the largest Spanish-speaking population outside Latin America or Spain. As of 2007, estimates of the number of residents originally from the Mexican state ofOaxaca ranged from 50,000 to 250,000.[2]Montebello was the first Spanish settlement in California in Los Angeles County.[3]
Job contracts, sponsored by the US government in partnership with the Mexican government, initially motivated Mexican immigrants to migrate to Los Angeles.[4]
Post-World War I fear of communism manifested itself in Los Angeles through an increased nationalistic, anti-immigrant sentiment. While prominent politicians such as former governorHiram Johnson and activistSimon Lubin advocated for progressive policies, such as women's rights and labor rights, local politics of Los Angeles county and California at large leaned conservative, with governorFriend W. Richardson reallocating the Americanization programs to the California Department of Education in 1923. The goal of these Americanization programs was to assimilate immigrants into "the American way of life"[5] and particularly targeted Mexican immigrants because of their perceived ethnic proximity to Europeans relative to other immigrant groups, such as the Chinese and Japanese; the main way this was achieved was through the instruction of the English language. At first, these programs prioritized Mexican men, registering them through their workplaces, but because of the seasonal nature of farm work, teaching English successfully was not possible.[5]
Aligning with the American ideal ofRepublican motherhood, assimilation efforts were eventually redirected toward Mexican women, who were usually in charge of the home and more involved in community institutions like schools than Mexican men. The new goal of Americanization programs then became training Mexican women for domestic work, to help "alleviate the shortage of housemaids, seamstresses, laundresses, and service workers."[5] By making Mexican women, the homemakers, more American, Americanists hoped that Mexican culture would slowly phase out of immigrants' lives; for example, replacing tortillas with bread during meals. These efforts to push Mexican women into newly-profitable, domestic work outside of the home was met with resistance, which Americanists attributed tomachismo in Mexican culture. When naturalization rates of Mexican immigrants did not improve, Americanization programs shifted focus yet again to the implementation of Americanization curriculum in schools, in an effort to teach American values to American-born children of Mexican immigrants. Despite these programs promising full integration into American society, they only provided "idealized versions of American values"[5] and second-class citizenship, as Mexican immigrants continued to face economic disenfranchisement and their children received an unequal education to their white counterparts.[5]
Agricultural labor shortages associated with World War II brought on another wave of Mexican immigration to Los Angeles. Thebracero program, or guest worker program, was a partnership between the US and Mexican governments, as well as American farms, to bring Mexican agricultural workers to the United States through labor contracts. With a demand for workers that exceeded the supply of labor contracts, the bracero program inadvertently became one of the origins of undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States.[6]
As of 2010, about 2.5 million residents of the Greater Los Angeles area are of Mexican American origin/heritage.[7]
As of 1996 Mexican-Americans make up about 80% of the Latino population in the Los Angeles area.[8] As of 1996 the Los Angeles region had around 3,736,000 people of Mexican origins.[9]
There's a shift of second and third generation Mexican-Americans out of Los Angeles into nearby suburbs, such asVentura County,Orange County,San Diego and theInland Empire, California region. Mexican and other Latin American immigrants moved in East and South sections of L.A. and sometimes, Asian immigrants moved into historic barrios to become mostlyAsian-American areas. Starting in the late 1980s,Downey has become a renowned Latino majority community inSouthern California, and the majority of residents moved in were middle or upper-middle class, and second and third generationMexican-Americans.[10] The Mexican population is increasing in theAntelope Valley such asPalmdale.[11]
Suburban cities in Los Angeles County like Azusa, Baldwin Park, City of Industry, Duarte, El Monte, Irwindale, La Puente, Montebello, Rosemead, San Gabriel, South Gate, South El Monte, West Covina, Whittier and especiallyPomona have large a Mexican population.[12][13]
Mexican Americans from Los Angeles have celebrated theCinco de Mayo holiday since the 1860s. They, along with other Spanish-speaking peoples, celebrate theDay of the Three Wise Kings as a gift giving holiday.[14]
Zoot suits were a staple of Mexican-American attire in the 1940s. Women who wore them, "forged a new identity based on independence, a more pronounced sexuality, and a sense of belonging to a distinctly Mexican American subculture."[15]
In the 1990s thequebradita dancing style was popular among Mexican-Americans in Greater Los Angeles.[16]
TheEl Centro Cultural de Mexico is located inSanta Ana.
Plaza Mexico is located inLynwood.[17]
Two films,Tortilla Soup andReal Women Have Curves, portray Mexican-American families in the Los Angeles area.
Another film that portrays the life of a Mexican-American in Los Angeles isStand and Deliver, which demonstrates the life of Mexican-American high school students and how they get through their academic struggles, with the help of their teacher,Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos).
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Meantime, children in Mexico and many Latin American countries today celebrate El Dia De Los Tres Reyes Magos, or the Day of the Three Wise Kings. Families distribute gifts to commemorate the day that the three wise men brought gifts to the newborn Christ child. Christmas Eve is usually reserved for the religious celebration of the birth of Christ
ethnographic and statistical perspectives in a study of Mexican immigrants' strategies for economic, political, social, and cultural integration
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