History of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles

The trend of Hispanization began in 1970, then accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s with immigration from Mexico and Central America (especially El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala).

While prominent politicians such as former governor Hiram Johnson and activist Simon 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 governor Friend W. Richardson reallocating the Americanization programs to the California Department of Education in 1923.

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.

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] Agricultural labor shortages associated with World War II brought on another wave of Mexican immigration to Los Angeles.

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.

[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 especially Pomona have large a Mexican population.

[17] Two films, Tortilla Soup and Real Women Have Curves, portray Mexican-American families in the Los Angeles area.

La Plaza , as seen from the Pico House , c.1869. The " Old Plaza Church " is to the left, the brick reservoir on the right, in the center of the plaza, was the original terminus of the Zanja Madre .
Census Bureau map (2000) of Los Angeles County showing percentage of population self-identified as Mexican in ancestry or national origin by census tracts. Heaviest concentrations are in East Los Angeles , Echo Park / Silver Lake , South Los Angeles , and San Pedro / Harbor City / Wilmington .