You can& #39;t become a Californio or "Angeleno" (horrid word) because those are colonial identities. Colonial identities drift like the wind, they are constantly gentrified. They lack a center. In reading about Pío Pico, the last governor of Alta California under Mexican rule, a...

man of African-mixed heritage, I noticed the emphasis on the fact that he was one of the wealthiest men of his generation. Why the need to emphasize his wealth? How had his wealth made him significant in an economic order & a society intent on erasing history at every turn to..

make way for the new? How do we construct our identities on geographies that have been stolen, bartered, borrowed & raped.

*Californiano. Silly Wikipedia referred to Pío Pico as a Californio.