Ethiopians make home in L.A.
By Natalie Banach, The Daily Bruin
LOS ANGELES, July 5, 2005 — Nestled between a small Rastafarian music shop and a Starbucks, a little ways down from the Miracle Mile, is a row of restaurants and stores which speak to an immigrant community that maintains one of the largest political exile populations of its kind.
Known as Little Ethiopia, the stretch of ethnic establishments is just one sign of Los Angeles’ large Ethiopian community, a diaspora which spreads throughout the sprawling city. Even UCLA has become a place for Ethiopians to gather, study and celebrate their heritage.
Hosting the second largest Ethiopian political exile community in the country, Los Angeles has welcomed the immigrants in much the same way the Ethiopians themselves have opened their arms in invitation.
“The Ethiopian community in California and elsewhere is a very civic-minded group of people, whether it’s talking about the politics of their own country or anything else. That’s why you can have the creation of a part of town called Little Ethiopia. … They’re proud of their heritage, and also proud to be Americans. That’s what strikes us here,” said Edmond Keller, professor and director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center of Africa.
On the university campus itself, Ethiopians from the political exile community, as well as international students and second-generation Ethiopians, often interact with the rest of the campus, telling others about their country’s 1,600-year-old Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the food uniquely spiced with indigenous ingredients.
“With places like Ethiopia, people always talk about Africa – the country of Africa, even. … People don’t understand that it’s a place of many nations, and that (Ethiopia) is extraordinary,” said Wendy Belcher, a lecturer at UCLA who spent three years of her childhood growing up in Ethiopia, and has visited sporadically since then.
The rise and fall of Ethiopian governments
Often pointed to as a country with an ancientness about it, Ethiopia’s large waves of exile have only occurred over the past 30 years.
The 1970s were a time of turmoil for the Ethiopian people and their Emperor Haile Selaisse. The imperial regime witnessed a collapse in the hands of a military junta with Marxist leanings.
“You got a military government that dramatically changed the political landscape,” said Shimelis Bonsa, an Ethiopian international graduate student studying the country’s modern political history at UCLA.
That change in the political make-up of the country brought about Ethiopia’s Red Terror, which entailed the government’s brutal victimization of its own people and widespread repression. It also resulted in the first large wave of Ethiopian emigres arriving in cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Subsequent waves of migration also occurred in the 1990s when the military regime gave way to another group of rulers.
When this new government took power it promised democracy, but as soon as it gained authority, political dialogue was quashed and many freedoms were revoked, said Elias Wondimu, an Ethiopian political exile living in Los Angeles and founder of Tsehai Publishers and Distributors, an independent publishing company in Los Angeles.
Wondimu, a journalist, was visiting the United States in 1994 with a delegation of Ethiopians. During his trip, the political atmosphere became tense and several journalists were attacked. Wondimu realized he couldn’t return, so he remained in the United States and started an Ethiopian magazine to educate people about his country’s politics.
While many of the immigrants in the 1990s came mainly for economic reasons, the majority of Ethiopians living in Los Angeles have nevertheless emigrated for political reasons.
The political exiles soon began climbing social and economic ladders in their new communities, dispelling common misconceptions of stagnation in immigrant populations.
“They might be driving a taxi, servicing you at the parking, restaurant or at your office building, but that’s just for a few months or couple of years. Then they take their exam and become medical doctors. They go home and study, and when you go to the hospital they are there treating you,” Wondimu said.
According the 2000 U.S. Census, African expatriates in the United States hold postdoctoral degrees at double the rate of European immigrants and have the highest levels of education of any foreign-born group.
The fact that an immigrant community is so largely composed of political exiles has also had a profound impact on the immigrants themselves and the neighborhoods they live in.
The community itself tends to be highly politicized, with talk at every dinner table turning to the events happening in their home country, said UCLA’s Associate Dean of Student Affairs Enku Gelaye, who was born in Ethiopia and emigrated with her family when she was just a child.
Among the many Ethiopians who study and work at UCLA, film Professor Teshemo Gabriel is just one of the political exiles who left Ethiopia in the 1970s.
At the time, Gabriel was getting his master’s in education at the University of Utah when he learned he couldn’t return to his homeland. So instead, he continued, gaining one postdoctoral degree after another.
For Gabriel, it was a “good time,” as he learned from the civil rights movement in America, and was inspired by its goals.
Even though he was thousands of miles from his family and friends, he still felt what he calls an “umbilical attachment” to Ethiopia.
There is a tradition in many of the provinces that at the time of childbirth the old women of the village come by, take the placenta, and bury it in a secret place.
“It anchors the child in the community, to history. … It’s that umbilical cord attachment. No matter where you go, you are bound to join your placenta. It’s calling you to the ground,” Gabriel said.
A creation of a strong support network has also become important in the face of the unique situations that political exiles may face.
“In a normal circumstance you won’t know (you’re an exile), but some reality will force you to realize who and where you are. There is a classic example. When my mother was sick and later died, I wasn’t able to go. These kind of incidents remind you that you’re an exile,” Wondimu said.
Five priests, magic spells, urban art
As a converging point for many international scholars and researchers, UCLA has maintained a unique position with the Ethiopian community in Los Angeles as a base of scholarship and a venue for educating others about the culture.
Among the current exhibitions at the Fowler Museum is one that features the paintings of Qes Adamu Tesfaw, an ordained priest who worked in an urban art market in Africa.
Blending bold colors and even bolder images of colonization and everyday life, Adamu’s work has provided a foundation for discussing East African art with the UCLA community.
The religious sphere has also not escaped the watchful eye of Ethiopian scholars on campus, as Belcher can attest.
Earlier this year Belcher discovered a huge repository of ancient Ethiopian manuscripts on campus, and when she called Wondimu to tell him he quickly sent five priests from local Ethiopian Orthodox churches to help translate them.
“You should have seen the students in the library. Their heads whipped around. These priests in their full-on black robes were carrying crosses and whispering prayers. … For them this was a scared place,” Belcher said.
The manuscripts themselves contained a variety of magic spells and included reproductions of texts so sacred the priests had never seen them before.
As for the study of these manuscripts, Belcher and one of the younger priests continue to catalog the collection that is “almost unrivaled,” Belcher said.
Like many immigrant populations, the insistence on a close connection with their homeland and a desire to teach others about it has many Ethiopians calling the campus home.
“One thing that I really appreciate at UCLA is being part of a greater immigrant community. You tend to see the similarities in all immigrant communities,” Enku said.
Never far from home
The creation of Little Ethiopia is no doubt due in large part to the politicized nature of the Ethiopians, a community that continues to be involved in the turbulent political events the country is currently going through.
Three weeks ago, dozens of students were shot in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, as they protested the results of the most recent elections, which appeared to be largely fabricated.
“The first election in 1995 was not considered free and fair, and in the 2000, it was the same thing. … Maybe this time (the opposition) will receive a third of the seats in parliament. If it were a free and fair election, they would take over,” said Keller, who was an observer of the 1992 elections in Ethiopia.
The death of the students, along with the imprisonment of over 4,000 individuals and a large number of journalists, provoked outrage among many of the Ethiopians here in Los Angeles.
“I was involved in marches when I was in Ethiopia. This was uncalled for, whatever the situation. It’s just like killing the future,” Gabriel said.
Bonsa and many others echoed Gabriel’s sentiment, pointing out that the members of government were once students themselves, protesting the old junta in the streets.
In Los Angeles, the recent events sparked demonstrations at the Federal Building, a week-long candlelight vigil in Little Ethiopia and demonstrations at the Los Angeles Times over the general media blockage of events in Ethiopia.
“When people don’t hear or read, they won’t know and, if they won’t know, then they won’t do anything,” Wondimu said.
The lack of active and major support for the opposition party in Ethiopia has many Ethiopians here questioning Western government officials.
“These people see democracy as a solution. The Western governments should support this. We don’t need food aid – we need support,” Bonsa said.
The week before the gunning down of the students, the capital witnessed peaceful demonstrations of over a million citizens calling for free and fair elections.
Ethiopians in the United States point to the huge outpouring of support for the democratic opposition party in Ukrainian elections held late last year.
“I see this irony and double standard in the policy of western governments. … What the government should do is recognize this. That’s democracy. The wind of democracy is blowing across Africa. We should talk about this,” Bonsa said.
As events unfold in Ethiopia and heads of state decide what course of action to take, Ethiopians at UCLA and in Los Angeles will continue to closely monitor the government and help their surrounding communities to understand what it means to be Ethiopian.
“There is a tendency to emphasize the negative in the international media, which is true – there is still genocide in Darfur. … But this doesn’t tell us about Africa. There is progress – people are fighting for progress,” Bonsa said.