Lydia R. Otero

“I often walk my dog in the neighborhood, and I think about Chita living in this barrio. She had been born there and enjoyed being surrounded by family and people she had known all her life. Economic disparities resulting in the displacement of brown people from their own barrio emphasize a haunting and harsh reality that stands apart from my own childhood memories of this area now known as Barrio Viejo. Only the adobe structures stand as reminders of a past that now seems remote. In 2018, actor Diane Keaton paid $1.5 million for an adobe home in Barrio Viejo. The lopsidedness between the past and the present becomes crystal clear each time I walk Meyer Avenue: hardworking Chita could once afford to live there, while today her offspring, a university professor, cannot.”
― Lydia R. Otero