Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary and the Mike Royko Award for Commentary and Column Writing and was part of the team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News for reporting on a leaked audio recording that upended Los Angeles politics. Arellano previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
Latest From This Author
30 years ago, nobody would have believed the Menendez brothers could have made it this far.
When Joe Toscano was deported, L.A.’s institutions demanded he be allowed to return.
Frank Gomez went from mayor of Montebello, to happily retired and in love, to an O.C. Democratic Party bigwig.
Now being served at East Los Tacos: The Original Pantry Cafe’s best breakfast, made to order by its most experienced line cooks.
Robert Francis Prevost is an American leader who can remind the world what the United States represents at its best.
The new pontifex maximus has much work ahead of him to wrangle the faithful into unity.
Anaheim’s “Wilkommen” guidepost embodied a city where multiculturalism was embedded from the start.
Lorenzo Arellano condujo grandes camiones por el sur de California durante 30 años antes de jubilarse en 2019.
David Horowitz died last week at 86 as one of the most consequential figures in the modern-day conservative movement.
- Voices
Arellano: Trump is wrong. My dad was a trucker, and he didn’t need much English to do his job
For Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy to huff that his department “will always put America’s truck drivers first” — as if people like my dad somehow don’t belong to that group — is hateful and ignorant of what trucking in this country is truly about.