The Filipino Community

Compiled by Clifton L. Holland

Filipino culture is primarily based on the cultures of the various native groups, and has influence from Spanish and Mexican, as well Chinese and Indian, cultures.  The customs and traditions of the Roman Catholic faith are Spain's lasting legacy.

Unlike its Muslim majority neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, the Philippines is an overwhelmingly Christian country.  As a result of Spanish colonization and evangelization spanning just over three centuries, most contemporary Filipinos, regardless of native ethnic group, are Christians; over 83% are Roman Catholic with various smaller Christian denominations.   However, a significant minority of Filipinos (the majority in Mindanao and most of the Sulu Archipelago) are to this day still adherents of Islam.  Filipino Muslims constitute 5% of the population.

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Historic Filipinotown, is a district of Los Angeles, located between Westlake and Echo Park.   Specifically, the district is bounded by the 101 Freeway to the north, Beverly Blvd to the south, Hoover Street to the west, and Glendale Boulevard to the east, northwest of Downtown Los Angeles.   It was created by a resolution proposed by city councilmember Eric Garcetti on August 2, 2002.  The crosswalks in Filipinotown have been decorated with traditional Filipino basket weaving patterns.

Historic Filipinotown is historically one of the few areas where Filipinos first settled during the early part of the 20th century.  Many Filipino-American families began purchasing homes and establishing businesses in the area beginning from the 1940s, shifting away from the Little Tokyo area in the 1920s and the Bunker Hill area later.

In modern times, Historic Filipinotown reflects the polyglot nature of Los Angeles.  While the district still has a sizable Filipino population, they are in the minority, overshadowed by a sizable Mexican and Central America population.  Nevertheless, the area still has one of the highest concentrations of Filipino Americans in Southern California and still remains the cultural heart of Filipinos throughout Los Angeles.  Of the 100,000 Filipinos that reside in the City of Los Angeles, an estimated 6,900 are within Historic Filipinotown.

The Historic Filipinotown Chamber of Commerce leads the effort for commercial expansion in the area. Many Filipino service organizations and institutions, such as the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC), Filipino American Community of Los Angeles (FACLA), Filipino American Service Group, Inc. (FASGI), and most notably, Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), are located in Historic Filipinotown. The area is also host to many Filipino restaurants, churches, and medical clinics. On November 11, 2006, the City of Los Angeles dedicated the first Filipino WWII Veterans Memorial in the nation at Lake St. Park in Historic Filipinotown site of the former Our Lady of Loretto High School.

Future plans for Historic Filipinotown include naming a park after Filipino labor leader, Philip Vera Cruz, and placing a monument of Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal, at another park in the district.

SOURCE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Filipinotown

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Demographical Information from the 2000 Census

The 2000 Census listed 260,158 Filipino residents in Los Angeles County and 48,946 in Orange County, for a total of 309,104.  Below are two tables that show where the Filipino population is concentrated:  Table #1 lists cities in Los Angeles County, and Table #2 lists communities within the City of Los Angeles.

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Exerpts from Edward Drewry Jervey, The History of Methodism in Southern California and Arizona.  Nashville, TN:  Parthenon Press for the Historical Society of the Southern California-Arizona Conference, 1960, page 87.  (California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North)

Christianization among the Filipinos began in conjunction with the Pasadena Methodist Church in 1916.  For more than ten years the group was housed by the Goodwill Industries.  From it came nearly every leader among Filipinos on the [Pacific] Coast.  Evangelism was extremely ardous because most of them were single men who migrated frequently.  At Unification [in 1939], when there was no property of any description in southern California for Filipino Christian work, the entire endeavor was placed with Chinese and Korean activity in the California Oriental Mission.

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In 1997, the IDEA DATABASE for the Los Angeles 5-County Region contained the following 56 Filipino churches, sorted by city:

Note:  The religious Traditions and Classification Codes (CLASCODES) used in this table are explained in A Classification System of Religious Groups in the Americas by Major Traditions and Family Types (created by Clifton L. Holland of IDEA-PROLADES Ministries, latest version 2007).