“Mi Vida Loca” is a cult classic. Latinos love this movie and it’s a part of our pop culture legacy, but when “Mi Vida Loca” first premiered in 1993 it wasn’t seen in the light that we see it today. A lot of critics panned it. One critic said that while filmmaker Allison Anders mixed “real gang members with up-and-coming Latin American actresses,” the ploy failed “to lend the film authenticity or vitality. The tone seems, to put it kindly, misguidedly romantic.” Another said, “While the characters are colorful and vibrant, the film is strangely flat.” However, this independent film represented much more than it was. For Latinos, it wasn’t just a low budget movie, it was ourselves on the big screen. 

It was Latinos representing Latinos. It was our story and no critic could ever take that away. 

Director Allison Anders was inspired to create “Mi Vida Loca” after meeting her daughter’s Latina friends.

The basis for Sad Girl and Mousey is based on real people that Anders saw in her neighborhood. Her daughter informed her mom all about the novela that was taking place right outside her door. In a 1994 interview with Bomb magazine, Anders said, “I had seen these two 14-year-old girls with babies on their hips, yelling at each other. So finally I said, ‘Devan [her daughter], what’s up with these girls?’ And Devan, who was nine years old at the time said, ‘Well, Christine and Marty were best friends since elementary school. Then Christine had a baby by Ernesto. But then Marty had a baby by Ernesto. And now they don’t get along.” And that is how the story of how Sad Girl and Mousey was born.

Anders said they filmed in Echo Park, which is where she lived too, right as the gentrification of the area was taking place. 

That meant she had to make sure everyone on the set was safe because real gang members lived there as well. Anders said the real gang members she met as inspiration for “Mi Vida Loca” were actually part of a gang that didn’t reside in Echo Park, but a neighborhood nearby. That tension of real actors and real gang members shooting a film in gang territory caused for some interesting days on the set. 

“I was very concerned however with keeping the real gang members in the cast and crew safe,” Anders said in an interview with Screen Slate. “So my producers and I involved the Echo Park members every step of the way to know which neighborhoods were safe for us to shoot in. We literally took them in the car location scouting to check out the safety. Sometimes the borders were block to block: “We can shoot down here—but not across the street.”

While some had issues that a white woman was directing a movie about Latina gang members, Anders said she got the dialogue approved by Latinas on the set.

Anders said that real gang members “approved every single draft of the script, and after a while could pitch it and give notes better than anyone I’ve met since, seriously.” She added that each person that was consulted on the film was paid and credited. “We even kept the money in the neighborhood literally – the art department rented set dressing from their homes – which also gave a sense of pride that a movie company was renting some banner they made for their bedroom to put on film. We rented the homes of the parents and grandparents of the Echo Park locas and locos. Make-up purchased the real stuff the actual girls wore from Woolworth’s on Sunset Blvd.”

Here’s one remarkable story about how Anders adopted the child of one of a Latina gang member that died before the release of the film. 

Anders said that Nica Rogers, a member of the Echo Park gang, died of an overdose at the age of 19. She was in a few scenes in the movie as well. Rogers had a son named Rueben who was left orphaned after the death of his mother, so Anders adopted him. He is now 28-years-old, married with his family and living in Texas. He is also working in the Hollywood industry. Anders also started a Nica Rogers scholarship that would benefit the youth in Echo Park. It’s so amazing to see this movie live on in not just on the screen but in people’s lives too. 

READ: Mousie And Sad Girl From “Mi Vida Loca” Are Ultimate #Friendshipgoals

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When Guadalupe Rosales started  the Instagram account “Veteranas and Rucas” it was meant to be a sort of archive for Southern California Chicano Life in the 1990s. It started off as a way to connect with people she lost contact with after she moved to New York. But after a while, the account took on a life of its own.

Veterana and Ruca

Credit: @veteranas_and_rucas / Instagram

“‘Veterana’ means someone who has put in work or time in the gang culture, and ‘ruca’ is what you call your chick,” she told LA Weekly. “If you know these words, you can connect with me and the West Coast.”

Reconnecting

Credit: @veteranas_and_rucas

And lots of people knew what she was talking about. As of now, the account has almost 200,000 followers. People are constantly visiting the page and posting their own pictures. Some are dedicating posts to loved ones they’ve lost and others are even finding relatives they’ve never met. Rosales herself, connected with her long lost best friend.

PLAY: Quiz: Which “Mi Vida Loca” Character Are You? Sad Girl, Mousie, Whisper or Giggles?

Preserving History

Credit: @veteranas_and_rucas / Instagram

“I’ve had teens who are curious about their parents, who wonder how their parents met or knew their parents were from this gang or party crew, but they never experienced it,” Rosales says. “They’re learning history and at the same time trying to save and preserve it.”

The World is Taking Note

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A post shared by Veteranas & Rucas (@veteranas_and_rucas) on Nov 6, 2015 at 6:49am PST

Credit: @veteranas_and_rucas / Instagram

What’s shocking to Rosales is that this life is not really chronicled anywhere. There are no archives helping preserve this side of history. So she contacted UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center and she will now be exhibiting photos, films and flyers from this time. Because, as Rosales says, “So many of us were part of it that it’s kind of like, ‘How could it not be important?’”

Read more about Chicano life in the 90s here.

Check out more pics from @veteranas_and_rucas here.

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