The day laborers of the Mariachi Plaza

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In this series, we hear from the people who make Los Angeles run—the night shift workers, the minimum wage employees, and the undocumented laborers.

The resemblance to day laborers is striking: They gather at a central location – on the corner of Boyle Avenue and First Street, in Boyle Heights – because that is where the people who request their services look for them. Sometimes the work shows up in bunches and other times in it’s nowhere to be found. And a large percentage of them are undocumented.

If they didn’t stroll up to the plaza like they just walked out of a scene from the movie Desperado with their black slacks and matching blazers or the instruments slung across their backs, you’d think they were day laborers. Their line of work, however, carries a different tune.