| | "Mi Casa Es Mi Castillo" ("My Home is My Castle"): Mexican American Homeowner Politics and Suburban Renewal in Los Angeles, 1955-1970" | |
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Speaker
| | Dr. Jerry B. Gonzalez |
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| | Date | | Oct 13, 2009 |
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| | Time | | 4:00 pm
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| | Location | | 160 English Building |
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| | Sponsor | | Latina/Latino Studies Program |
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| | Phone | | 265-0370 |
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| | Views | | 520 |
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| Postdoctoral research colloquium: The prevailing assumptions about the process of suburban growth following World War II, both in the scholarly community and in popular culture, hold that suburban expansion moved away from declining central cities. Integral to this process was a shift in the coupling of race and space as the terms "urban" and "suburban" became infused with distinctly racialized identifiers. This postwar narrative, set along a black/white axis, represents the standard framework of suburban history. However, suburban Los Angeles challenges the state of the field because suburban development moved towards working-class Mexican American communities on the periphery.
These formerly self-contained places resided in unincorporated county territory close to agricultural industries and suffered from a lack of basic municipal services such as indoor and outdoor plumbing, street lights, sidewalks, and paved roads. Once annexed to incorporated cities, rather than push for infrastructural improvements, civic officials pursued the wholesale removal and redevelopment of these neighborhoods through the use of eminent domain. This presentation highlights the attempts by working-class Mexican Americans to resist, and eventually to control, the impact of removal and redevelopment on their communities while also illuminating the role middle-class Mexican Americans played in shaping suburban Los Angeles. |
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