My barrio

Living in East Los Angeles isn’t what people say it is, especially people who aren’t even part of the area. Apparently to others, East Los Angeles is infested with drugs and criminals and hate, but to me East Los Angeles will forever be the most beautiful and prosperous culture.

This is La Raza, this is the home to all the dreamers and the people who want to work and make it in this life with something rather than nothing. Us Latinos chose to be in East Los Angeles because it is somewhere we are proud to stand by and make it stronger as life goes on.

I thank East Los Angeles because this is the place where my parents met, had it not been for that I would’ve never been born and who knows how my parents would be doing right now.

I also thank East Los Angeles for the food and the people around it. The food obviously because there’s some of the best foods you can have around and the people because we are here to help each other.

Also my high school, East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy, is a place really important to me because it was able to educate me with some of the best teachers around which has been one of the biggest blessings in my life. It was able to open doors for me and set me up for success If it wasn’t for my school who knows where I would be?

So go ahead, say that East Los Angeles is bad, say that it’s a place full of drugs, say it’s a place full of gangs, say it’s full of hate, and say it’s home to the people who won’t be anything in life. We’ll just keep proving the doubters and the haters wrong. They don’t want to see us up. But we’re still going to keep grinding one day at a time.