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/lp/wiley/a-troubled-corner-the-ruined-and-rebuilt-environment-of-a-central-dpkHHmi2x0
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2002 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
- ISSN
- 0893-0465
- eISSN
- 1548-744X
- DOI
- 10.1525/city.2002.14.2.185
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
Introduction ONTEMPORARY LOS ANGELES HAS become intimately associated with Fredric Jameson's essay on the Bonaventure Hotel (or Bonaventura), which Jameson posits as the architectural pronouncement of a depthless postmodern space. In that article, the "hyperspace" of the Bonaventure looms above the culturally deep "great Chicano markets," located below on Broadway Avenue and 4th Street just east of that hotel's towering glass surfaces (1984:62).l In this article, I want to take you just west of the Bonaventure, situated as it is in LA's downtown node of global finance capital, to a troubled corner in a Central American barrio (neighborhood) in the Pico-Union district. I do so to locate and to orient you—although there is a certain irony here since, according to Jameson, spatial orientation is, Cily & Society 2002, XIV|2|: 1 85-210. Copyright 2003 by the Americon Anthropological Association City & Society of course, precisely what we have lost to postmodernism. In the 1980s, Pico-Union served as a major entry point for Salvadorans and other Central Americans fleeing their war-torn countries. Today, it is Salvadoran Los Angeles's symbolic, if not demographic, center. I say symbolic, because while Pico-Union is predominantly Mexican and Mexican- American, it is also home to
Journal
City & Society – Wiley
Published: Dec 1, 2002