Of Mexican Descent
A Memoir of Migration & The American Dream
Bonsallo Avenue to Garden View Avenue
Before we moved to South Gate, my family lived on Bonsallo Avenue—a stone’s throw from downtown Los Angeles, somewhere between Pico-Union, West Adams, and University Park. Even now, when I look at maps, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which neighborhood that house belonged to. The city has changed so much that the geography of memory feels more reliable than the geography of streets.
We rented the bottom half of an old Victorian home split into two units. It was the only house I knew before we moved to our postwar tract home in 1984. Above us lived family—first my aunt and her boyfriend, later my father’s brother and his girlfriend. In truth, the whole block was an extended family tree rooted in Mexican soil. Nearly every neighbor traced their origins to either Sinaloa, my mother’s home state, or Nayarit, my father’s.
I still remember the layout as if I could walk through it blindfolded. You entered through a heavy wooden door that opened into a narrow vestibule. Off to the side was the living room, where a large bay window looked out onto the front yard. A towering palm tree stood there, so tall its crown disappeared into the bright haze of the Los Angeles sky. Beyond that was a formal dining room lined with dark wood paneling. That room always struck me—the way it imposed a sense of ceremony on our modest lives. Somehow, dinner at that table made our working-class family feel grand.
Off to the right was the room where we all slept—a communal bedroom. My parents’ bed was set against the main wall; beside the door stood a bunk bed for my siblings, and in another corner, my small single bed near the walk-in closet. I once thought about asking to sleep inside the closet so I could have my own “room,” but I never did. I didn’t need to. In that shared space, I felt secure, surrounded by the hum of family—by laughter, by the rhythm of my parents’ breathing at night.
Past the bedroom was a small family room where I spent weekend mornings pouring cereal and watching cartoons until my oldest sister kicked me off to watch music videos. The Clash, David Bowie, Culture Club—our soundtrack to a changing world. My dad would eventually reclaim the TV, and I’d sneak back for one more episode when no one was looking. The kitchen sat at the back of the house, and adjacent to it, a surprisingly large bathroom—with an enclosed toilet, fancy stuff—that opened onto a stone backyard.
Outside, the city showed its rough edges—crime, infestation, decay. But inside that house on Bonsallo Avenue, I felt protected. Those were happy times, the kind that stay lodged in memory like sunlight caught in old woodgrain—quiet, imperfect, and full of love. Still, the streets beyond our block were unforgiving. On my walks to and from school, I often had to fend off neighborhood bullies—kids twice my size and years older. I don’t recall ever losing a fight. I was small but fierce, shaped by the need to survive outside the bubble of family. The streets were cracked and littered, abandoned cars rusting at the curb. Gangs were rampant, houses sagged, and rats made their homes where people tried to live.
Despite everything, I loved our community. On weekends, we’d head downtown to Broadway—the vibrant heart of Latino Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early ’80s, before redevelopment and shifting migration patterns hollowed it out. We’d shop at Zody’s, our department store of choice, or eat lunch at Clifton’s, the jungle-themed cafeteria that felt like a portal to another world. Mexican music spilled from every storefront, saturating the air with brass and longing. Sometimes we went to the old movie palaces to watch Star Wars or Jaws one week, then Cantinflas or La India María the next. Other nights, we went to the Mexican variety shows—most memorably at the Million Dollar Theater—where singers in sequined gowns belted songs of heartbreak and desire, their voices soaring through the grand, timeworn hall like a prayer for everyone who had made this city home.
If we weren’t downtown, we were at someone’s party. The parents socialized; my father, in particular, drew people in. He had this charisma, this gravity I envied. I’d watch him from a distance, the way people leaned toward him as he spoke, laughing, mesmerized. I wondered if I’d ever inherit that ease. If it was a kids’ party, the whole block came out—music, food, fathers cheering as children swung at piñatas. Banda music blared into the early hours. Despite the danger, despite the poverty, there was love here. There was community.
But love and community weren’t enough to keep us there. My older sister was about to enter high school—Manuel Arts, whose reputation had begun to collapse under the weight of gang violence. My parents couldn’t risk it. They decided to uproot us from the familiar dangers of the present toward the uncertain safety of somewhere new.
By the mid-1980s, Manuel Arts had become a symbol of decline. Alumni spoke wistfully of the “glory days,” but crime had seeped into the campus itself. In 1981, a suspected gang member was shot and killed during lunchtime on school grounds. That same year, the football team’s starting fullback was also gunned down. Violence was no longer something that happened somewhere else—it had entered the walls of education. My parents didn’t need a newspaper article to convince them.
When they found the house on Garden View Avenue in South Gate, I think we all went to see it together. Maybe it was during the inspection; I don’t remember any other houses. The process was a mystery to us kids. All I knew was that this was going to be our new home. It was a modest two-bedroom, single-story house along the industrial corridor of Southeast Los Angeles. I remember driving down the street for the first time—the jacaranda trees in bloom, carpeting the curbs with purple petals. The lawns were green and manicured, the streets free of trash and abandoned cars. It felt like another planet.
Our Mexican American realtor met us in the driveway, but before we could enter, a small chihuahua barked furiously at us. Behind it stood an old white man—the seller—who told the realtor he didn’t want “the kids” coming into the house. It was the first time I’d encountered a white person outside of school. He wasn’t friendly, but we went in anyway. The house was clean and quiet, almost sterile—missing the soul and chaos I was used to. The old man followed us from room to room, maybe worried we’d pocket one of his knickknacks.
I never saw him again; I heard he was sent off to Florida to live with his grown children. What I do remember vividly is the move itself—it happened at night. We left Bonsallo like refugees slipping away under cover of darkness. I never asked my parents why, but I imagine they had their reasons.
In South Gate, my sisters finally got their own room, retreating into a world that no longer included me. My parents took the main bedroom. My little single bed was tucked into a corner of the living room until I graduated to the couch in junior high. I wouldn’t have a room of my own until 1991, when my second sister left for college.
One of my earliest memories there was being told I’d been signed up for Little League. As an avid baseball fan, I could hardly believe it. Until then, I’d only bounced a racquetball against the garage door, pretending. We went to the local sports shop on Tweedy Boulevard to buy gear. My mom didn’t want to spend much, so she bought me a single batting glove—three sizes too big so I could “grow into it.” It was one of the first new things I ever owned, so I didn’t complain. Most of my toys and clothes were hand-me-downs, or things my dad scavenged from his job cleaning cars at the Toyota dealership on Figueroa.
On opening day, all the teams marched in a parade down Tweedy Boulevard, our small-town main street. Parents lined the sidewalks, waving and cheering as we made our way to South Gate Park for breakfast. It felt like something out of a television show—Leave It to Beaver, but brown and bilingual. Just weeks earlier, I’d been fighting in the streets and dodging rats, and now I was part of an all-American parade. It was nice. Strange, but nice. The kind of nice that takes years to understand. The kind of nice that can be both a gift and a wound.
The American Dream, after all, almost always comes at a price. No longer did we have that communal experience of family life. My sisters in their room, my mom working double shifts, my father—no longer the life of the party—retreated into silence. I was often left alone, looking out our window onto the quiet streets of late-’80s South Gate. Our move meant safety, progress, arrival. But it also left something behind—a spirit misplaced somewhere between Bonsallo and Garden View, like a forgotten photo album we’d never find again.
Historical Appendix:
The City That Changed Beneath Us
When I think back to Bonsallo Avenue, I sometimes wonder if what I remember is a place or a moment in history. The streets, the sounds, the people — all existed inside a city that was already remaking itself, block by block. Los Angeles was in motion then: freeways carving through old neighborhoods, new arrivals building lives out of what had been left behind. The city we lived in was layered — memory atop displacement, survival atop erasure. What follows is not just background, but the landscape beneath our story — the social, economic, and political ground that shaped the lives of families like ours.
Pico-Union
Once known as Pico Heights, Pico-Union became a major entry point for working-class immigrants and Central American refugees in the 1970s and 1980s. Mexican families like mine had arrived earlier, but the late 1970s brought waves of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran refugees fleeing civil wars.
As the population grew, aging Victorian and Craftsman homes were divided into apartments, and overcrowding worsened. City neglect deepened, and as property values fell, crime and gang activity escalated — particularly in nearby Rampart. Still, amid this turbulence, grassroots efforts emerged: the Pico Union Housing Corporation, founded in 1971, sought to protect residents through affordable housing and employment programs, a small act of resistance against displacement.
West Adams
By the 1970s, West Adams was living through the aftermath of freeway construction and white flight. The Santa Monica Freeway, completed in the 1960s, had torn through the heart of the community, destroying the once-affluent Black enclave of Sugar Hill. Many residents were forced out; others stayed and fought to hold on to what was left. In 1971, West Adams Community Hospital opened — the city’s first Black-owned hospital and a vital institution in the neighborhood.
As the decade progressed, preservationists and new, mostly white “restorationists” began moving in to reclaim old homes. Their arrival sparked friction, as long-time Black residents faced rising property values and a sense of erasure — another form of quiet displacement.
University Park
Bordering West Adams and Pico-Union, University Park was being reshaped by the growing influence of the University of Southern California (USC).
Throughout the 1970s, USC’s expansion meant buying and demolishing nearby homes and shops to make room for new buildings. The opening of University Village in 1976 reflected this shift — a space meant to serve both students and the local community, but one that effectively marked the area as university territory.
What had once been a mixed neighborhood of families, small businesses, and everyday life gradually became defined by institutional walls. My old home on Bonsallo was eventually purchased by the university and renovated; last I heard, it may now serve as sorority housing.
Los Angeles in Transition
The Los Angeles of our childhood was both promise and danger. Between 1970 and 1979, the city’s homicide rate nearly doubled. By the early 1980s, Los Angeles had earned the grim title of the “serial killer capital of America.” More than twenty serial killers operated across the region during that decade, their violence feeding a wider climate of fear and instability.
Industrial jobs were disappearing. Factories in South and Southeast Los Angeles closed or relocated, leaving working-class families — especially Black and Latino — to navigate unemployment and shrinking opportunities.
Neighborhoods like Vermont Square, West Adams, and Pico-Union bore the scars of these changes: rising violence, declining schools, and economic neglect. The push toward suburbs like South Gate wasn’t just a search for comfort — it was an act of survival, a way to claim a measure of safety within a city that no longer felt safe.
Coda
Looking back, I see now that our migration from Bonsallo to Garden View wasn’t only a family story — it was part of a larger pattern repeating across Los Angeles. Families of color moving outward, following the faint trail of the American Dream, even as the city remade itself behind us.
We left the noise, but we also left the pulse — a history that still hums beneath the freeways and faded houses of Pico-Union. Something was lost there, yes, but it remains — suspended between memory and map — the invisible city that raised us.