The Curiosity of Cudahy : The Densely Populated Town Is Racked by Poverty but Not Without Hope

Oh, Cudahy, delightful spot,

With weather neither cold or hot

Where scenic mountains are in view,

And ocean breezes fan us too

Here golden sunsets close the day

On those who live in Cudahy ... --From “Cudahy” by Hugh M. Smith, circa 1940

“I worked until Sunday and had the baby Thursday,” she says. And now, eight days later, Maria Gonzales sits in a Cudahy office cradling little Clarissa in her arms, hoping to enroll in a nutrition program that provides food vouchers for mothers, infants and toddlers.

Halloween decorations are taped to the walls, as are more permanent posters. “La leche materna es la mejor,” says one. Mother’s milk is best--a message reinforced by the image of a woman lovingly breast-feeding her baby.

On another day, in another part of Cudahy, an R.J. Reynolds Co. sales agent staffs a “Joe Cool” Camel cigarette booth outside the Tianguis supermarket on Atlantic Boulevard. Buy one pack, get a Camel lighter; buy two, get a Joe Cool T-shirt. Critics say the promotion is an exploitative exercise that encourages a deadly habit, especially among minority youth.

It’s not every day you can get such a deal. “We’re doing this on the first and 15th of every month,” salesman George Mathews says. Those are the same days that people pick up their welfare checks at the office down the street.

Mixed messages are not hard to find in modern Cudahy, an anonymous, tiny city a few miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles that in simpler times inspired simple rhymes. Today, Cudahy is a puzzle of contrasts that is perhaps best known as an unfamiliar name that pops up on demographic reports. Cudahy is a curiosity.

Consider: With 22,817 people packed into its 1.1 square miles, according to the 1990 Census, Cudahy is said to be the most densely populated municipality west of the Mississippi. Another dubious distinction in this predominantly Latino city is its per capita income--$5,935 annually for every man, woman and child, the lowest of all cities in urbanized areas of California. In comparison, the city of Los Angeles--though it encompasses several neighborhoods poorer than Cudahy--was gauged at $16,188.

Cudahy, to the chagrin of some longtime residents, serves as the government-assistance hub for a larger area teeming with low-income families. The welfare office on Atlantic Avenue administers Aid to Families With Dependent Children, food stamps and Medi-Cal for a district that includes Cudahy, Lynwood, South Gate, Downey and part of Bell. General relief is administered elsewhere.

The bad news is that business is good at the welfare office. The Cudahy operation handles more than 850 AFDC cases a month, more than double the amount of five years ago. And yet, to travel down Atlantic Avenue is not to bear witness to poverty and blight. To the contrary, there’s the big, bright Tianguis, the K mart and the Pic ‘N’ Save. There’s a Pizza Hut, a Burger King and El Pollo Loco. A handsome $12-million Kaiser Permanente medical office building opened a year ago.

In some sections of South Los Angeles just a few miles west, such development would be hailed as a major renaissance. And though Cudahy has some shabby trailer parks and apartment complexes, most of its 1960s-vintage housing stock is far superior to the tenements of Pico-Union or the projects of South-Central.

How is it that poverty, for all the statistical evidence, can be so hidden?

“You drive around and see the nice little manicured yards and you don’t really see the social pathology of what’s going on,” says Heidi Kent, an administrator in the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. “You start talking to someone about their diet, and sometimes you find out they didn’t eat yesterday.”

And thrifty orchards here abound,

Which ripen fruit the whole year round . . . .

Where the old folks laugh and children play,

For life is great in Cudahy ...

And it really was great, Esmer Bryant says. The Cudahy planning commissioner is not one to disclose her age, but her parents bought into a dream first marketed in 1908. A brochure described meatpacker Michael Cudahy’s 2,800-acre ranch: “It is the last remaining large body of land in the immediate vicinity of the city which is available for the small farmer, the truck gardener, the fruit grower, the poultry rancher and for the city man’s country home.” Prices started at $359 an acre.

Even as the post-World War II housing boom transformed Southern California, people here clung to the dream, refusing to carve up lots that measured 105 feet wide and 395 feet deep. People planted orchards, raised chickens and had goats to keep their big yards trimmed. “We all had horses,” Bryant recalls. “We rode horses all over Cudahy.”

In time, though, the economics of development became irresistible. Apartment buildings, motels and trailer parks were shoehorned into the deep, narrow lots. That, along with the fact that two families often double up in one household, accounts for the high density. According to the 1990 Census, the median rent was $599--not cheap in a low-income area.

As in other Eastside communities, Latinos long ago became the majority and Anglos became an aging minority, many living on fixed incomes. The town is now about 90% Latino.

Residents united in 1960 to incorporate as a city, but their ability to control the town’s destiny was overwhelmed by larger economic forces. Bryant, still longing for the days of horses, is bothered by the way Cudahy has become a way station for people.

“It isn’t the city we intended it to be,” Bryant says. “It’s just that the people who come in are transients. They stake no claim here. . . . I blame it all on the welfare office.”

Then she catches herself. People say so many bad things about Cudahy, Bryant says, that she doesn’t want to add to the bad press. Why doesn’t anybody talk about Cudahy’s nice parks, or the new senior citizens housing complex, or the talent show the seniors stage every spring?

If Esmer and Thad Bryant, their children grown and moved away, represent the past and present of Cudahy, Osvaldo Conde’s family may represent the present and future. The Condes moved from Mexico seven years ago, and now Colima Market, their family-run grocery on Wilcox, has become a hub of activity.

You should have been there the night of Sept. 12, says Osvaldo Conde Jr., when the store set up two large TV screens in the parking lot to show the championship boxing match between Julio Cesar Chavez of Mexico and Hector (Macho) Camacho of Puerto Rico.

Spectators, Conde says, celebrated Chavez’s victory. “They were shouting, ‘Viva Chavez! Viva Colima Market! Viva Cudahy!’ ”

Here friendship’s door stands ajar

To welcome folks from near and far.

And those who come rejoice the day

They cast their lot in Cudahy.

The 1990 Census found that more than 27% of Cudahy’s residents lived below the poverty level. Yet many people here find Cudahy to be an improvement over what they had known before. And Cudahy, many people say, is better off than it was 10 years ago.

The development along Atlantic has revived the once moribund avenue, City Manager Jack Joseph says. The Cudahy Chamber of Commerce--its old motto was “the only way is up”--has also been brought back to life. And the city’s decision to contract with the Sheriff’s Department, Joseph says, seems to have quelled some of the gang activity.

Maria Gonzales, cradling Clarissa in her arms, has known both harder and better days. Her family’s Cudahy duplex, she says, is a big step up from their old apartment in downtown Los Angeles.

The 32-year-old hairdresser, who is married and has two other children at home, says the recession prompted her to turn to the Women, Infants and Children program. “This year (business has) been terrible, down 25% to 30%,” Gonzales says. “That’s why we need help.”

Cudahy has been good to Sandra Pena-Loza, who emigrated from Mexico City three years ago with her husband, Jimmy, and two daughters, ages 12 and 8. Her unborn son, to be named Jimmy Arthur, was due any day.

Jimmy earns $170 a week working for a floor-polishing business. More than half of his income goes toward the $400 rent on the little house on Clara Street. The nutrition program food vouchers, worth up to $75 per month, help put milk, cheese, cereal, juice, eggs and beans on the table.

Pena-Loza smiled when asked if she ever felt homesick for Mexico City.

Not really, she said. “Life is very sad there. I’m very happy here.”