East Los Angeles

East Los Angeles is proudly known as the community that sparked a Mexican American civil rights movement, gave birth to Los Lobos and jump-started low-rider car culture. But for all its notoriety and close-knit feel, East L.A. has never been a city. Rather, it's an unincorporated area governed by the county Board of Supervisors. But on Friday, the community took a major step toward gaining independence.

Preservationists and developers are wrangling over the future of an abandoned theater in East Los Angeles that represents a Spanish-baroque style rarely found in the city. Activists, developers and local business people presented two starkly different visions this week of what could be done with the abandoned Golden Gate Theater near Whittier and Atlantic boulevards.

Call it the sushi-torta torta express. Set to start running on Sunday, the Gold Line Eastside Extension is a direct, six-mile shot from Little Tokyo to East Los Angeles. It's also a light-rail lifeline to the incredible variety of restaurants that surrounds each of the eight new stations: izakaya , bakeries, marketplaces, taquerías, burrito stands, sukiyaki joints, sandwich shops, roast goat specialists and seafood emporiums. Once the train pulls out of the Little Tokyo depot and leaves behind downtown's sushi bars and ramen- ya , it crosses the 1st Street bridge, dips underground for a couple of stops and comes up again after Soto Street, passing the burritos, cemitas and mariscos of Boyle Heights.

Juan Arzube, a Catholic bishop who was known as an advocate of Mexican American Catholics in Los Angeles and a social activist on their behalf, has died. He was 89. Arzube died Dec. 25, according to Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Los Angeles archdiocese. The cause of death was not given. He had been in failing health for several years and had been a resident of Nazareth House, a nursing facility in West Los Angeles, since 2002.

Senovia Amigon arrived at the Boyle Heights street corner at 3 a.m. Valentine's Day to stake out her turf. After eight years peddling romantic trinkets near the auto body shops and menudo stands at 4th and Soto streets, Amigon wasn't about to let anyone crowd her customary spot. "If someone comes," she said in Spanish, "you kick them out." At the prime corner location, early arrival could mean the difference between a modest windfall and bunches of wilting, leftover flowers.

Janet Favela is making one of her regular visits to the Boyle Hotel. The 25-year-old organizer with East Los Angeles Community Corp. is carrying a stack of fliers in a brightly colored bag emblazoned with the image of Mexico City's famous Garibaldi Plaza, a popular destination for mariachis. Favela walks through a gate shuttering the front door and proceeds up a long staircase in the four-story residential hotel, built in 1889.

Armando Torres Morales, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, who researched issues of concern to the Latino community and used the findings to advocate for change, including increased mental health services and an end to abusive police practices, has died. He was 75. Morales died of cancer March 12 at his home in Stevenson Ranch, said his son Rolando.

The assailants, at least two men, showed up at Jesse's Auto Sales in East Los Angeles around lunchtime. They quickly hustled two salesmen, both grandfathers well known in the neighborhood, into a garage with a cracked concrete floor. The gunmen then shot the two men at close range before escaping with two cars from the lot. "Two older men, just working, taken to the back and executed," said Sgt. Richard Garcia, a homicide investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Business was brisk one recent night as the smell of sizzling carne asada floated from an East Los Angeles taco truck. A row of customers sat on folding chairs, tacos and quesadillas in hand. Two blocks down Cesar Chavez Avenue, Jesus Huerta's La Tia Tamale restaurant stood empty. "If they weren't there," Huerta said of the shiny chrome-sided Taqueria "El Pecas" truck, "I'd be selling right now."

It is not every day that we have the opportunity to celebrate a colleague whose work for this newspaper stands the scrutiny of history. Journalism, by its nature, tends to focus on the immediate. Only a few of any generation leave a bold enough mark to be visible over generations. One such journalist was Ruben Salazar, whom we honor today as the United States Postal Service issues a stamp to commemorate his life and work. To many, Salazar is recalled largely for his death.