Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary and the Mike Royko Award for Commentary and Column Writing and was part of the team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News for reporting on a leaked audio recording that upended Los Angeles politics. Arellano previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
Latest From This Author
Is it any wonder that city council meetings nowadays easily dissolve into even more municipal desmadre?
As L.A. became more progressive, Gomez retreated into his conservatism. During his three years as the first Latino head of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, Gomez pursued culture war nonsense instead of actual issues.
Easter is supposed to be a happy time, but all I can think of is the people who persecuted Jesus. At a time when Christians are called upon to embrace Jesus’ message of love and charity, our president continues to revel in a cruelty that’s, well, biblical.
- Voices
Arellano: Trump threatened Vietnam with a huge tariff. How’s that going over in Little Saigon?
In Little Saigon, enmity for the Vietnamese government thrives among the older generation, many of whom arrived in the U.S. as refugees after the fall of Saigon. Some are even willing to pay higher prices if it means the Communist regime will suffer.
The Mann House hopes to bring back its fellows in May. Villa Aurora also survived but is closed indefinitely because it’s yet to be cleaned.
The team should not only swing by the White House to meet Trump, they should do it with the weight of L.A. on their minds.
- Voices
Arellano: O.C. public defender who exposed jailhouse snitch scandal is retiring, but not done
Scott Sanders, a longtime Orange County public defender, changed local history in 2013, when he told a judge about evidence that sheriff’s deputies had illegally used jailhouse snitches for decades.
Jaime Jarrín, leyenda de los Dodgers, reflexiona sobre su vida y un equipo repleto de superestrellas
Jarrín nunca se pierde un partido de los Dodgers por televisión y asiste a los partidos en casa siempre que puede “porque echo un poco de menos el ambiente del estadio”. Pero su gran proyecto estos días no es el béisbol.
Jarrín never misses a Dodgers game on TV and attends home games whenever possible ‘because I do miss a little bit the atmosphere of the stadium.’ But his big project these days isn’t baseball.
Francis rejected all trappings of sovereignty and cult of personality. Instead, he has lived and preached what Jesus commanded his followers to do in the Sermon on the Mount, which might as well be the Communist Manifesto nowadays.