by On a recent afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, the fashion sector was strangely quiet despite the brilliant colors of the fabrics on show along Ninth Street. Foot traffic was slow in the alleys off Olympic Boulevard.
Food vendors have chosen to remain at home, while church seats have been less filled elsewhere in the area. Many Fourth of July festivities, graduation celebrations, and programs at local parks have been canceled. There are fewer people taking buses, and more people are canceling appointments at hospitals and health clinics.
In many respects, it no longer seems so implausible to imagine a ridiculous California devoid of Latino inhabitants, as portrayed in the independent film A Day Without a Mexican over twenty years ago. For many undocumented Latinos in the Los Angeles area, federal immigration raids have changed their lives, leading them to believe that it is safer to stay at home.
According to Yareli Arizmendi, one of the film’s creators from 2004, “life imitates art.” This is what we observed would occur.
The film, which Ms. Arizmendi and her husband, Sergio Arau, wrote and starred in, follows a tumultuous few days in California when Mexicans abruptly vanish from the Central Valley’s fields, from the parking lot of Home Station, a home improvement store, and even from inside people’s homes. The shelves of grocery stores become bare, Border Patrol agents begin seeking for new employment, and even politicians who had previously spoken harshly about immigration change their minds when the weatherman, housekeepers, and other workers abruptly stop showing up.
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