Immigration Distinguishes L.A. and Serves Malibu

Immigration—a hallmark of America’s egalitarian history and ascendancy—in good times and now bad—has continually nourished the cultural diversity that distinguishes Los Angeles and is its evanescent quality of soul.

And so I comment in the latest issue of the new, striking art and design magazine The Panafold, abridged here for my local social media followers for I feel the issue is relevant to Malibu:

“What is the city but the people?” wrote Shakespeare in Scene 1, Act 3 of his tragedy Coriolanus. Written in the 1600s, the play—set in a tumultuous Rome of 500 B.C. recounting the downfall of a despot--is a telling line applicable to today’s Los Angeles, proffering views of a vital present and glimpses of an urban future, energized by a singular cultural diversity that is its renown.

But it is this notable diversity—arguably the most pronounced in the history of the world, fed as it is by contested immigration patterns—that has also made Los Angeles the target of a modern-day xenophobia that echoes our nation’s dark past, and has prompted a shameful purging of select resident populations (and effects Malibu.).

According to the U.S. census, about 40 percent of the Los Angeles area’s ten million residents were born outside the United States, primarily in Latin American, most having lived here for more than ten years, and are in the mainstream of the region’s economy.

Despite this, a recent USC study found that one-fifth of the metropolitan L.A. population—about 800,000—are undocumented, reportedly inhibited from pursuing legitimate status for mostly failing to learn English as a second language.

These individuals work a range of jobs— laborers, sewing machine operators, household help, service industry staff. Most are self-sufficient. Yet, for political expediency, whim or whatever, they have been the targets of a White House that continues to spin news of a migrant invasion of criminals breaching our borders.

Yet it is immigration that infuses the ever-evolving and engaging, pervasively Latin American soul of Los Angeles —nurtured in ethnic neighborhoods, offstage and on—at curbside food trucks, in shopping mall eateries, and in three-star restaurants.

It is everywhere if you look and listen for it, design, decorate or dress with it, or smell and taste it. Obvious and evincing, subtle and embedded, it is seen in. art and architecture in the sensitivity to natural light, the use of bright colors and natural materials. In music, in the distinct sound of roaring trumpets, high-pitched guitars, and resounding basslines. In food, in the unique blend of spices and seasonings that give Mexican and the broader Latin American cuisine their distinctive and irresistible flavors.…

All these things make Los Angeles what it is—a gazpacho of vibrant, culturally diverse neighborhoods that together create a strong sense of place.

Phenomenologists might call it “genius loci,” but given L.A.’s roots as a Mexican territory and its enduring legacy of immigration, the more fitting phrase might be the Spanish: sentido de lugar. ¤