Story by Gustavo Arellano
Farmers yelled their pitches for fruits and vegetables in English and Spanish. A hot-sauce seller offered samples. The synth-heavy melodies of duranguense swirled from someone’s speaker.
The Central Avenue Farmers’ Market in South Los Angeles was popping.
“The mix of Black and Latino cultures here is beautiful, so we need to nourish their dreams,” said Alejandro Corona, who runs the market for Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles, a nonprofit.
Every Thursday, vendors set up in the courtyard and nearby sidewalk of the Central Avenue Constituent Services Center. Corona showed me a collection of murals inside the courtyard with Black and Latino motifs: monarch butterflies, ankhs, Aztec gods, and an ibis in red, black, and green, the colors of the Pan-African flag.
But off to the side was another mural with a starker message.
It honored the Black-owned California Eagle and its publisher, Charlotta Bass. Her weekly newspaper, a caption noted, was a “trumpet for the people [that] denounced inequality and injustices.” Next to those words is an illustration of two young Mexican American men on the ground, victims of the Zoot Suit Riots.
As L.A. observes the 80th anniversary of the unrest, which largely unfolded from June 3 to June 8, 1943, much will be said about wartime xenophobia and bigotry. How thousands of white servicemen and civilians assaulted anyone who wore the flamboyant zoot suits — Black, white, Filipino, but especially Mexican American.
Source: msn.com