No, Los Angeles was not founded by Mexicans: this is the city's history

After the riots that began in Los Angeles against the ICE raids and that have now spread throughout USA, some celebrities and personalities sympathetic to the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, have falsely said on social networks that the city of L.A. was founded by Mexicans.

Singer Katy Perry is among those who took to social media to share this misinformation with her followers. On Tuesday, Perry even posted on Instagram claiming that the city of Los Angeles was founded by Mexicans in 1781.

On Tuesday, the president of the Mexican Senate, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, stated that during a 2017 demonstration in New York, he declared Mexico would pay for the U.S. border wall—but based on Mexico’s 1830 territorial boundaries.

The official then went on to show a map that included the state of California, as well as Texas and other southwestern U.S. states as part of Mexico.

The vandals demonstrating in Los Angeles also claim that the city always belonged to Mexico and that they cannot be kicked out of what was once their land. In fact, the national flag of Mexico has become the predominent emblem of the protests.

Los Angeles, a Spanish story

As we have already reported at VOZ, the city of Los Angeles was founded on September 4, 1781, by Felipe de Neve, a Spanish military man born in Bailén in 1724.

What from its beginnings was known as Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, began with just 14 families gathered around a settlement that the Spanish Crown had erected to strengthen its position on the west coast.

Felipe de Neve was appointed Governor of the Californias in 1775. According to the archives of the Hispanic Council, the Spanish military man drew up a list of arguments and recommendations in 1777 for the founding of two towns: San José and Our Lady of Los Angeles on the Porciúncula River.

The Spaniards under the direction of Felipe de Neve laid out Los Angeles in much the same form the city still largely retains today. They followed the Leyes de Indias (Laws of the Indies) and the Bourbon-style “new town” manuals, which prescribed streets laid out in a grid. In less than nine years the settlement grew in size, and by 1790 the colony’s 141 inhabitants were counted in its first census.

The projects were approved a couple of years later and Felipe de Neve thus became the founder of Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the USA.

During the Spanish rule, missions and settlements were established that marked the identity of the region.

In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain, and California became part of Mexican territory. Later, after the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded Alta California to the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe de Hidalgo in 1848.