Reenactors of the Battle of Rio San Gabriel of 1847.
Recent deployments of federalized National Guard and U.S. Marines into L.A. were not the first time U.S. troops marched uninvited into the city. It last happened in 1846 when U.S. military forces invaded California, then a province of Mexico. Mexican flags flew in L.A. then, as they do today, being as the city was, well, Mexican. Four months earlier, in April 1846, armed conflict between the U.S. and Mexico erupted when Mexican forces fought back against U.S. military encroachment into Mexican territory in Texas. This provided the "justification" the U.S. needed to invade and seize all of the Mexican territory that now makes up the states of Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. In the 1840s, U.S. calls then to obtain portions of Mexico were not dissimilar to today's U.S. calls to annex Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada. In 1846, the Mexican-American War arrived at L.A.'s doorstep by August. What followed were a series of skirmishes and battles between U.S. troops and Mexican defenders. L.A.'s defenders, however, as fierce and resourceful as they were, were mostly hastely-recruited and poorly-armed local civilians, unable to offer extended resistance to well-equipped professional American troops. The final U.S. military takeover of L.A. occurred on January 10, 1847. Against the wishes of most Angelenos at that time, it was the end of Mexican California. It was not the end, however, of L.A.'s connection to its past and its Spanish/Mexican legacy, which continues to this day. See Mexico's Last Stand in California.
Photo by Don Cormier from the LA Times Photographic Collection at UCLA Library.
1970. 10,000 anti-war demonstrators gather in Expedition Park in Los Angeles to protest a surprise invasion by U.S. troops from Vietnam into neighboring Cambodia. On April 28, 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. ground forces, alongside South Vietnamese forces, to attack North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases in Cambodia. This action was taken despite Nixon’s announcements of large U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam, handing military operations over to the South Vietnamese, promises of no further U.S. escalation of the war, and prioritizing peace negotiations with North Vietnam. Americans had been hopeful to see an end to America’s long, bloody, grueling involvement in Vietnam. A majority of Americans in the polls that followed, however, did respond positively to Nixon’s Cambodia action. Congress, on the other hand, accused the president of overstepping his authority by failing to obtain congressional approval to expand military actions into another country. Nixon’s action also re-ignited anti-war demonstrations across the U.S. and around the world. On May 4, four students were killed and ten others wounded by National Guard troops in Ohio, deployed to a demonstration at Kent State University. On May 9, a massive anti-war demonstration of 75,000 people gathered in Washington D.C., across from the White House. That same day, on the other side of the continent, the 10,000 anti-war demonstrators at Exposition Park became the largest anti-war demonstration held in Los Angeles until that time.
Trader Joe's is considered one of the most successful supermarkets in the country (measured by sales per square foot), with more than 600 stores in 42 states. It was founded in Pasadena, California, and its very first store continues to operate there.
