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California Today

A Not-Just-Mexican Independence Day Celebration

Wednesday: A look at festivities in MacArthur Park, a Central American enclave. Also: President Trump’s visit, and Bay Area hip-hop.

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Credit...Samuel Trotter for The New York Times

Good morning.

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My colleague Daniel Hernandez wrote about Independence Day festivities over the weekend — not just for Californians celebrating their Mexican heritage, but for those with roots in Central America. Here’s his dispatch:

Mexican Independence Day, on Sept. 16, is practically an official holiday in Los Angeles, a megalopolis sometimes referred to as the second biggest “Mexican” city in the world. (That’s not entirely hyperbole: On Sunday, the night before the holiday, the mayor of Los Angeles rang a bell on the steps of City Hall, accompanied by local legislators, just as it’s done in cities and towns across Mexico.)

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Credit...Samuel Trotter for The New York Times

Fewer Angelenos might be familiar with the fact that this past weekend also marked Independence Day for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, countries that broke from Spain as a federation on Sept. 15, 1821. But in the streets surrounding MacArthur Park Lake, where a Central American parade and festival was held on Sunday, the holiday did not go unnoticed.

This year, some 100,000 revelers showed up to cheer youth marching bands and floats carrying Central American beauty queens, eat pupusas and aguas frescas from sidewalk vendors, and enjoy the carnival rides. Everything was adorned in blue and white balloons — colors that unite several national flags from the region.

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Credit...Samuel Trotter for The New York Times

“Once we were all just ‘Mexicans,’” said Omar Corletto, a native of El Salvador who crossed the border in 1983 at age 14, and is now a beverage manager at a Beverly Hills restaurant. “Remember, it was a term that police in Los Angeles used to identify anyone who was Hispanic.”

Mr. Corletto, now 50, is a co-director of Cofeca, or Confederación Centroamericana, which organized the parade. The group formed in Los Angeles to protest U.S. military intervention when El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua were each ensnared in violent civil wars. In the ensuing migration of exiles and refugees from those conflicts, many settled in Los Angeles, and in particular, in MacArthur Park. Today, the neighborhood is easily the most Central American in character in the United States.

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Credit...Samuel Trotter for The New York Times

Guatemalan and Honduran flavors and sounds beckon from the regional diners on 7th Street. “If I need to get something from El Salvador, I come here, I know I will find it,” said Rosa Rubio, 36, an attendee of the parade. Salvadorans, she said proudly, have a “fighting spirit.”

On Sunday, the party lasted all day. “We’re trying to be more united, to be stronger,” said Luis Jaime, 26, a bombardon player in a Salvadoran brass band calling itself Azul y Blanco.

Mr. Corletto noted that awareness of groups that are other than Mexican keeps growing. “Today, in this city of Los Angeles, we’ve managed to educate the people on the diversity that exists within Hispanic-ness,” he said. “Now, people ask you where you are from.”


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President Trump landed in California on Tuesday for his first visit to the Bay Area since he took office, before heading to Los Angeles. Here’s what you need to know:

  • The president’s dire assessment of homelessness in the state meant that many super liberal politicians found themselves in uncomfortable agreement with a president they loathe. Still, they disagree about solutions. [The New York Times]

  • Dozens of protesters picketed — inflatable baby effigy in tow — in the residential hills near the home of Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who hosted a fund-raiser for President Trump. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

  • On Tuesday evening, President Trump’s fund-raiser was set to be held at the Beverly Hills mansion of Geoffrey Palmer, a developer and major Republican donor. [The Los Angeles Times]

  • President Trump arrived the same day news broke that the White House was set to formally revoke the state’s legal right to set vehicle emissions standards that are stricter than federal regulations. [The New York Times]

    The governor, the state’s attorney general and two top environmental regulators are set to address the move this morning at a news conference in Sacramento.

In other news:

  • Wildfires are disrupting school for students in regions where such blazes are frequent and getting worse. Here’s what happened in one town over four years. [CalMatters]

  • San Jose is set to become the biggest city in the country to bar natural gas from many new homes as part of an effort to encourage more all-electric development. [The Mercury News]

  • “I never really thought a whole lot about evil before this all happened.” An Irvine woman who lost her son to a single OxyContin pill — he was opioid intolerant and didn’t know — has been on the front lines for years fighting the company that made it. [California Healthline]

    Also: Here’s what you need to know about the bankruptcy filing of that company, Purdue Pharma. [The New York Times]

  • Three high school students in Desert Hot Springs were arrested after the authorities said they posted a threat on social media. Police officers seized two guns and a replica AR-15 assault rifle in the investigation. [The Desert Sun]

  • Pacific Gas & Electric’s tree-trimming operation is extensive and majorly flawed, company officials told a federal judge. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

    If you missed it, here’s more about how the troubled utility dealt with difficulty trying to find tree trimmers. [The New York Times]

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Macaroni and cheese is served in a golden egg at the French Laundry, in the Napa Valley.Credit...Preston Gannaway for The New York Times
  • In wine country, the restaurants that earned three Michelin stars form a kind of luxury fantasy circuit, where flush diners can be sedated by precise, opulent and really, really expensive dining. [The New York Times]

  • Gap started as an outfitter for the counterculture. Here’s a look at how it has transformed — multiple times — since its first outpost opened in San Francisco, 1969. [The New York Times]


Last week, I asked for your Bay Area hip-hop recommendations for our California Soundtrack.

And, readers, you didn’t disappoint.

We’ve added “Ghost Ride It,” from Mistah F.A.B. and Too $hort’s “Blow the Whistle.” Both are cultural touchstones redolent of the East Bay in the mid-2000s. And both slap. (Did I use that correctly? Am I too late?)

We’ll add more soon, but in the meantime, if you want to listen to more Bay Area music, the Oakland Museum of California has you covered with its own 50th anniversary playlist.

Click here to listen to the California Soundtrack on Spotify.


California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

Jill Cowan is the California Today correspondent, keeping tabs on the most important things happening in her home state every day. More about Jill Cowan

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