The Madonnas of Echo Park

Aurora Esperanza provides the author’s inspiration for writing The Madonnas of Echo Park. Her name, Aurora, was taken in honor of Aurora Salazar, a woman who protested her eviction from Chavez Ravine when Dodger Stadium was being built. Her last name, which means “hope” in Spanish, was readopted by her mother when she split up with her father, Hector.

A stylish, vibrant, and spirited Mexican-American woman who’s passionate about music, Aurora seeks to establish an identity that reaches beyond her ethnicity. “I am a Mexican,” she tells Skyhorse, “but a Mexican is not all that I am” (xix). She idolizes British MTV musicians from the 80s, especially Morrissey, whom she adopts as a surrogate father figure. In family photos, Aurora even replaces many of the cut-out images of Hector’s face with images of Morrissey.

Aurora defiantly asserts her perspective at the restaurant where her father, Hector, works, calling out a pair of upper-level employees who whisper about her father’s derogatory “nickname.” She also asserts herself in conversations with her mother, Felicia, serving not only as her English-to-Spanish translator, but her American-to-Mexican cultural translator. When Aurora’s mother enthusiastically drags her to a Mercado, El Guanaco, where local girls dance to the Madonna song, “Borderline,” Aurora responds, “Dance on a street corner […] Oh Momma, you don’t understand” (48), suggesting that it’s impossible to reclaim a neighborhood space that has been claimed by a white pop star’s music video. Though Madonna, as a well-loved white musician, has the social mobility to embrace the guise of a “Mexican,” Aurora feels silly performing the role of a white woman performing the role of a Mexican woman (which is, in effect, Aurora’s daily reality).

Ironically, the argument between Aurora and her mother draws a great amount of media attention to this “Borderline” performance when, in the midst of taking a group photo, a drive-by shooting occurs. Still in a tiff with her mother, Aurora debatably shoves young Alma Guerrero (or is shoved by her mother, thus shoving Alma), resulting in the 3-year-old’s death.

Aurora discovers a certain pride in her heritage when she returns to Echo Park as an adult. Her mother’s dog goes missing (as the result of a heated argument between Aurora and her mother), and she rediscovers the now greatly-changed streets and landmarks of her childhood. She also connects with her estranged grandmother, Beatriz, whom she has never previously met.

As the author’s inspiration for writing the book—and Felicia’s inspiration for the titular Madonna/“Borderline” dance gathering where the drive-by takes place—Aurora serves as a hub of connection for all the characters in The Madonnas of Echo Park. Every relationship between every narrator can ultimately be traced back to Aurora. 

Alma is the 3-year old girl who is accidentally shot outside the Echo Park mercado featured in the music video for Madonna’s “Borderline.” She is killed in a drive-by shooting while girls and mothers pose in Madonna-inspired regalia. There is much debate among the locals over who is responsible for her death, and the mothers present at the shooting blame both Felicia and Aurora for shoving Alma in to the line-of-fire.

After her death, Alma is deified as the “Baby Madonna” by the locals of Echo Park. A flashy hot pink casket is donated for Alma’s funeral, supposedly by Madonna herself. A giant mural of Alma wearing a midriff-baring top, rising up out of the barrio in flames, is painted on a building overlooking the Hollywood Freeway. 

Hector is Aurora’s father and, for a short time, Felicia’s husband. He meets Felicia at the Echo Park church they both attend. Though Hector is an illegal immigrant, he speaks fluid English, and he helps Felicia with her English skills. At 18 years-old, he marries Felicia, partially in the interest of becoming a United States citizen. His romance with Felicia wanes, however, when he becomes disappointed in his options as an illegal immigrant in the U.S. He has an affair—and a child, Angie—with a supermarket checkout woman, Cristina, and his marriage to Felicia dissolves after less than a year.

Hector seeks to curry favor with his daughter and former wife by taking a job as a busboy at an upscale restaurant called The Option. Though he is a hard worker, his job fails to impress Felicia, who perceives slights toward Hector’s Mexican identity where Hector refuses to notice them. After Hector spends eighteen years of working hard at The Option, the restaurant goes out of business and hosts an elaborate closing night party. At the party, Hector’s daughter, Aurora, stands up for her father and ultimately draws negative attention toward him. Hector turns to work as a day laborer, knowing he will never receive a positive reference from his managers at The Option.

As a day laborer, Hector finds himself in uneasy territory, unable to fit in among his fellow workers with the exception of a man named Diego. When Diego is murdered on a job, Hector is faced with the moral conundrum of lying (and covering up the murder) or telling the police (and allowing himself to be deported)

Felicia is a resourceful, caring woman, and the mother of Aurora Esperanza. As a Mexican-American woman who has always lived in Spanish-speaking communities (such as Chavez Ravine), Felicia struggles to speak English, despite growing up in Los Angeles. Her daughter serves as her translator in many situations, including her work as a cleaning woman.

In the wake of publicity (and controversy) over the drive-by at El Guanaco, Felicia loses her job cleaning offices and gains a job working for the wealthy Calhoun family. As a cleaning woman, Felicia is privy to the private sadness of Mrs. Calhoun’s marriage, which she parallels to her own past marital strife. With the help of English tapes given to her by Mrs. Calhoun, Felicia’s English-language skills improve; however, she finds herself unable to traverse other, more shadowy boundaries of communication. Ultimately, Mrs. Calhoun is metaphorically drowned by her own sadness, and Felicia finds her dead from an apparent suicide in the swimming pool.

Mrs. Calhoun is the wife of Felicia’s employer. She is a quiet, reclusive person, and though she is fond of Felicia, as evidenced by her recurring invitations to have lunch with her, she prefers to leave the most meaningful aspects of her emotions and experiences unspoken. Over the course of Felicia’s narrative, “The Blossoms of Los Feliz,” she learns that Mr. Calhoun has been having numerous affairs with teenage Mexican boys. She suspects that Mrs. Calhoun has some knowledge of these affairs, and that this knowledge is the source of her sadness.

Beatriz is the grandmother of Aurora. She is a strong woman with a fierce will, characterized by her grandmother as possessing the spirit of a wolf. Though this strength serves her well when fending off her abusive uncle as a child, it leads her to cruelly turn away her family—including her daughter, Felicia—as an adult.

Secretly filled with guilt, Beatriz begins to see visions of Our Lady of Guadalupe (The Virgin Mary) at a bus stop. After seeing her, Beatriz notices a rosebush blooming in the garbage, and she begins to cry rose petals. She also has dreams wherein her daughter, Felicia, is surrounded by a brimstone lake and her face is just out of reach. The Virgin tells Felicia that she is cold because her heart is cold, and advises her to open her heart to others. Beatriz then feels a deep chill in her body that no coat is able to warm, and begins collecting vast piles of coats.

The Virgin tells Beatriz that a stranger “will give you something that means nothing to them but everything to you without question or expectation” (69). When Beatriz meets Aurora, years later, Aurora offers her a coat that she doesn’t want anymore. When Beatriz takes the coat, she no longer feels cold.

The Virgin Mary appears to Beatriz at a bus stop wearing a headscarf, a pantsuit, and flat nurse’s shoes. She seems intent on reconnecting Beatriz to her family, helping her to let go of past guilt and gain redemption. This vision of The Virgin follows in a recurring train of religious motifs, including shrines to The Baby Madonna, Cristina’s shrines to her movie star “saints,” and Aurora’s encounter with a dog trainer who calls himself The Lord.

Cristina is the mistress of both Hector and Freddy, and the mother of Angie. She works at a supermarket in Echo Park, where she meets both Hector and Freddy. A beautiful woman who styles herself after old Hollywood actresses such as Rita Hayworth and Louise Brooks, she maintains a wall filled with movie star portraits, referring to them as her “saints.”

As Cristina gets older and begins gaining weight, losing the physical beauty she prizes, she falls into a deep depression. After going to the restaurant The Option—which has itself become a faded shell of its former glory—Cristina returns home with a stolen caricature of Rita Hayworth. She dies amidst the dusty accumulation of her movie star photos, and Angie sells her house to developers for a large amount of money.

Angie is Cristina’s daughter and the wife of Juan Mendoza. She is obsessed with Gwen Stefani; she is a “completist” (125) collector who desires to own everything Stefani has created, and she compares her friend, Duchess, to a “Mexican Gwen” (127). Angie also compares friendship to pop songs: just as each new pop song becomes a favorite, then fizzles out once the novelty has worn off, Angie has moved from one female friend to another throughout her life, feeling a strong sense of devotion that ultimately passes. Gwen Stefani’s pop songs, however, seem to endure in a more lasting way for Angie, as does her imagined loyalty to Duchess (long after their friendship is over and Duchess has been killed).

The friendship between Angie and Duchess dissolves when Angie aspires to move beyond her status in Echo Park, a crime-heavy, impoverished neighborhood in the early 90s. In Angie’s mind, success is associated with whiteness and gentrification. She covets the clean stores and the aura of safety and affluence in mostly white neighborhoods such as Glendale (even if she admits they are a bit boring).

A lack of job prospects brings Angie back to Echo Park, and the series of events that follows—her mother’s death, Duchess’s death, and her marriage to Juan—solidifies her station in the neighborhood. Unlike the other narrators in The Madonnas of Echo Park, Angie is actually pleased by the gentrification of the neighborhood. When Aurora runs into Angie at the Lotus Festival, she says she “loves” the changes in Echo Park, that there are “so many new people to meet and things to do” (189).

Duchess is a creative, artistic woman who is loyal to her neighborhood and her Mexican-American identity. As a teenager, she designs and sews her own dresses, flaunting an impressive style and a sense of confidence in her life’s possibilities. After staying in the same neighborhood and working for many years in the same position as a bank teller, however, some of Duchess’s fiery self-assurance seems to wear off. Ultimately, her job in the bank leads to her death, as a customer becomes agitated and stabs Duchess when she attempts to intervene.

The Madonnas of Echo Park implies an unspoken love triangle that revolves around Duchess: Juan briefly dates Duchess before developing an attraction for Angie, and the book suggests that Angie may harbor her own more-than-friends attraction to Duchess. The death of Duchess sparks Angie and Juan’s decision to get engaged the day after her funeral.

Juan is the husband of Angie and the son of Manny Mendoza Jr. He enlists in the army against the wishes of his father (and the presumed wishes of his deceased mother, Ofelia). He writes a grim farewell letter to Angie (on the back of a drawing of Angie, made by Duchess) that suggests his enlistment was a consciously self-destructive decision.

Prior to marrying Angie, Juan namely dated Asian women. Most significantly, he was in a long-term relationship with a young Vietnamese woman named Tran. His relationships with Asian women distressed his mother, who was against interracial marriage.

Manny Jr. is the father of Juan and the brother of Efren Mendoza. His father, Manny Sr., was a major player in a Mexican gang that Manny Jr. is also part of. When Manny Jr. learns his father accidentally shot Alma Guerrero, he vows never to make the same mistake, and he approaches his gang activities with caution and trepidation.

Manny Jr. has conflicted feelings toward his wife, Ofelia, and his son, Juan. He forms a connection with Phoc, the father of Juan’s Vietnamese girlfriend, Tran, and he seems to appreciate the idea of blending families through interracial relationships. Because of these conflicted feelings, he struggles to prevent Juan from entering the army, despite feeling that he should.

Manny Sr. is a lifelong gang member and the self-proclaimed killer of Alma Guerrero. His shooting of Alma inspires his son, Manny Jr., to approach his gang activity with greater caution and reserve.

Efren is the brother of Manny Jr. and the son of Manny Sr. He is a bus driver for the City of Los Angeles who is proud of his job. A staunch rule-follower, to the degree that he avoids getting involved in any conflicts on his bus, Efren is prejudiced against Mexican immigrants who don’t speak English. He bends his rules once for Felicia—believing that she is flirting with him—but feels dismayed when she turns him down for a romantic date. Efren’s policy of non-involvement is tested when a violent, racially-motivated fight breaks out on his bus, and he is forced to respond in the moment.

Much of Efren’s rule-abiding personality comes from his desire to distance himself from his brother and father, who were both longtime members of a Mexican gang. Efren left home as a teenager when his brother jumped him and attempted to initiate him into the gang.

Ofelia is the mother of Juan and the wife of Manny Jr. Staunchly devoted to the Mexican-American community of Echo Park, Ofelia is averse to her son’s interracial relationships. She believes that “the family” needs to stick together and sees interracial relationships as a betrayal of Mexican-American heritage.

Freddy is the commonly-absentee husband of Cristina and the stepfather of Angie. He is a skilled hustler and thief who insists on performing his crimes independently, turning down offers from the Mexican Mafia. As he ages and moves in and out of prison, his criminal skills begin to deteriorate.

Most of Freddy’s narrative in The Madonnas of Echo Park follows his most recent release from prison, wherein he searches for Cristina only to learn she has died, and wanders through the neighborhood to find it has greatly changed. After Freddy is beat up in an attempted hustle at a bar, he stumbles onto Efren Mendoza’s out-of-service bus, and asks Efren to drive him to an unknown destination.