Netflix and Gentrification in Los Angeles

A new Netflix series called Gentefied focuses on the changing economic and racial dynamics of Boyle Heights, a predominantly working-class Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles that has been at the center of the city’s debate about gentrification. While most critiques of gentrification tend to focus on wealthy white urbanites, Gentefied looks at what happens when upwardly mobile Latinos contribute to the problem. In doing so, the show provides a powerful glimpse into the way that capitalism can estrange people from their own communities.

The show focuses on the Morales family’s fight to save their family-owned business, a taqueria, after their landlord announces he’s doubling their rent. The Morales family has to decide, will they raise prices and change the menu to suit the tastes of the neighborhood’s new wealthier and whiter residents (even if it means alienating their regulars)? Or, will they fight back against gentrification and stay true to their Mexican and working-class roots?

Boyle Heights, a longstanding hotbed of Chicano activism, has been a major battleground in the fight against gentrification. In the 1950s and ’60s, development projects like the East Los Angeles Interchange freeway system displaced over 15,000 Boyle Heights residents. Many see the encroachment of art galleries and coffee shops as simply the latest affront in a longer history of urban injustice.

However, these trendy restaurants and artisanal tacos aren’t intended for white hipsters, but rather for wealthier Chicanos, who are attracted to Boyle Heights by a desire to feel close to their cultural roots. The term “gentefier” (from gente, Spanish for people) was first coined by Chicano business owner Guillermo Uribe. “If gentrification is happening,” he told Los Angeles Magazine in 2014, “it might as well be from people who care about the existing culture.” Netflix’s Gentefied is more critical of the trend. As the Morales family begins charging $5 for fusion tacos, they fear they are becoming part of the problem that put them into this situation in the first place. (Community organizations like Defend Boyle Heights have raised concerns that Gentefied itself could exacerbate gentrification. Exposure from a popular Netflix show might indeed, as the producers themselves admit, attract even more tourists and renters to the neighborhood.)

Unfortunately, in an attempt to give every side of the gentrification debate a voice (“everybody has a different perspective on the things,” co-creator Marvin Lemus told the LA Times), the show can veer into a disappointing neutrality. Gentefied aims to show us that both the Morales family and the people protesting their taqueria ultimately want the same thing — to keep Chicanos in Boyle Heights. But perhaps a better question would be: Who set these terms in the first place and made us choose between survival and authenticity?