A Troubled Corner: the ruined and rebuilt environment of a Central American barrio In post‐Rodney‐King‐riot Los Angeles

This article draws from a larger study on the contentious spatial cultural politics of a Central American immigrant barrio during the period between the 1992 Rodney King Riot and the most recent Los Angeles Police Department Rampart scandal. Under consideration here are Rebuild Los Angeles’s (RLA) redevelopment and the Rampart Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) gang abatement unit’s crime prevention strategies, and the representations of the space of the barrio therein. Specifically, I examine how both redevelopment and law enforcement employ the idiom of community to rebuild the ruined environment of Pico-Union and to smooth over spatioeconomic conflicts and contradictions in Los Angeles. [Redevelopment, policing, community, Los Angeles Riots, Central American and Latino immigrants]