Abstract
By the 1970s the population of Monterey Park was increasing so rapidly that its traditional tight-knit economic, social, cultural, and political structure could no longer be maintained. The dilution of the core community actually started several years before the influx of Chinese immigrants reached its peak. For many years community life had focused on the older northern residential and central Garvey-Garfield business sections of town, slighting or ignoring areas on the outskirts. Alice Ballesteros, who grew up and still lives in the southernmost, largely Latino section, notes that, “for a long time, the south end did not have the strong