Commentary: After the fires, my comadres and I are grieving for the place we knew as ‘Jotadena’

To us, it was Jotadena.

The place where seven of us queer, Chicana-Mexicana-Indígena lesbian comadres in their 50s, 60s, and 70s gathered monthly for hikes on the beautiful Gabrielino trail, lunch on Pizza of Venice in a backyard, or just chismear the night away. The place where we strengthened our bonds as chosen sisters and affirmed our creative powers as artists, writers and teachers striving to do good work in a world that often seeks to destroy us.

Our gatherings fed our spirits and grounded us in community with each other and with the land, Tongva land first. In Jotadena, we spent much of our time together outdoors, taking meditative walks around the neighborhood, sharing Carmela’s ice cream at the park, or telling stories around the fire pit while the coyotes howled away.

The Eaton fire left many of those places in ashes. It leaves us grieving so many losses.

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I visited Altadena for the first time in 2011, when some friends invited me to a last-minute Golden Globes party at their friend Brigitt Montes’ house. I remember exiting the freeway and picking up gelato from Bulgarini, the January evening getting darker the farther north we traveled on Lincoln Avenue.

In fading daylight, I saw green pines, sturdy oaks and the sunset’s glow on mountains so close I could touch them. We turned onto a bumpy road, flanked by parks and gardens, arriving at a home nestled among trees near an arroyo where bobcats prowled at night. I felt transported to a retreat in the woods — I had never been to this part of Los Angeles before. Montes must be a badass if she lived here, I thought.

That impromptu party would be the first of many joyful, bawdy, spiritual and sacred friendship gatherings in Altadena that would last for years.

Our group started meeting regularly in 2018 out of a collective desire to strengthen our connections with each other as L.A.-based jotas. Our friends, Montes and two others, lived within a mile of one another, so gatherings rotated among their homes on Tremont Street, Mariposa Street and Montes’ house near Janes Village.

Montes, a natural products industry professional in her mid-50s, moved to Altadena in the early 2000s. As one of our regular hosts and keeper of the “Jota Dena” Instagram account, I consider her the “mayor of Jotadena.”

“The pull for me was the greenery,” Montes told me recently when we got together to reminisce. “The mountains, the oxygen, open spaces and trails,” as well as the privacy and sense of safety, all inspired her to buy her first home in Altadena more than two decades ago.

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When she first moved, there was a longtime queer community presence in Altadena that was mostly older, white and retired, she said. An older gay couple would host social hours for other neighborhood gays. But Montes never quite fit in there.

She did feel at home almost immediately in the warmth of her mostly Black neighbors.

“On Sundays after church, there would be fish fries in peoples’ yards all over the place,” said Montes. “Anybody could walk up and get a fish fry plate for five bucks. It felt like instant community for me as a single, queer Chicana wanting to root myself there in ways that filled me spiritually and emotionally. It was incredible.”

Montes remembered how shortly after she moved into that first Altadena house, her neighbor Helen came over and greeted her and her former girlfriend.

“She just said, ‘Oh, OK, two girls living here, I see you, I watch you guys.’” Montes laughed at the memory. “But she always looked out for us, and we looked out for her. I never felt ostracized for being queer and brown here.”

When we began gathering, we immediately felt the ancestral pull of the mountains, trees and canyons. Altadena became synonymous with peace and release.

“So where did the word ‘Jotadena’ come from?” I asked Montes recently. I had a hunch, but I wanted to hear it from la jefa herself.

“Jotadena really came from us,” said Montes.

“Not until our group started regular gatherings here, doing our walks and being creative together at my place, or Tremont or Mariposa, as queer Chicana-Indígena-Latina dykes, that’s when I wanted to take the word ‘jota’ and give it power,” said Montes. “To put good energy into that word and the space where we gathered, not the derogatory or violent energy it often carries.”

“I remember all of us at the Tremont house just talking, listing all the queers we know who lived in the Altadena-Pasadena area, our friends and community who’d come through,” my partner, Stacy Macias, chimed in. “The word was swirling around and just sort of clicked — Jotadena!”

Macias is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Cal State Long Beach who has taught a course on Jotería Studies, a subset of Chicana/o/x-Latina/o/x Studies that centers queer Latinx, Chicanx, and Indigenous thought, theory and practice with roots in community activism, creative expression and political resistance.

The Jotadena gatherings fed Macias in ways she craved as a new hire on the tenure track when the group began. “I was glad to be part of a community that I can give to, feel with, grow alongside and hold,” she said. “We have to take care of the self, the spirit and each other while recognizing our ancestors and valuing our relationship to nature and our existence outside of our labor.”

With some prompting from another group sister, Montes started an Instagram account to document the environs of Jotadena while on group walks, hikes or bike rides. Its photos offer a glimpse of the Altadena that called to us — a basket of fresh eggs from a neighbor, a rainbow-painted crosswalk and a headline about how Altadenans stopped a private school from building a new sports facility in the hills.

For Montes, these images represent the best of Altadena’s friendly neighborhood community and the fierce fighting spirit that she and so many other residents, visitors and friends grew to love.

After some life transitions that pulled us in different directions, our regular meetings ended in late 2024. But we stayed connected to Jotadena. Then came the Eaton fire.

Amid news of the staggering, unfathomable, immeasurable losses suffered by our Mariposa Street sisters and so many others we know in the burn regions, we learned that Montes’ house was one of two left standing on her street, now an unrecognizable path lined with the ashen ruins of neighbors’ homes.

She remains evacuated, but plans to return to the house she’s had since 2007.

As a longtime resident and community member who shared her beloved Altadena with so many of her friends from other parts of L.A., Montes grieves the deep losses suffered by her local neighborhood. Like others who find their homes still standing in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, she also feels a sense of survivor’s guilt.

“I was just there, looking out my windows, and nothing’s the same. I miss my neighbor Brenda’s mandarin tree and beautiful poppy yard. I miss seeing the Latinos on horseback carrying 12-packs of beer, galloping off from the liquor store. The mix of nature and people, the smells of fruit, eucalyptus, wisteria, jasmine, dried leaves, dirt. We lost so much of that natural landscape and the structures that held us,” she said.

Montes’ plants, however, survived.

“I’ve planted aloe, sage, and other native plants around my home, and they’re all intact. I believe they had a hand in protecting my home,” she said. “And, we’re alive, our whole group. Our love and energy that we gave to the house, our laughter, creativity, togetherness and collective jota spirit, that’s all still there and part of this house.”

It’s been more than a month since the fires altered lands and lives in Altadena, and the grief still feels incredibly fresh.

“I’m gutted to see the destruction all around us,” Montes said. “Our beloved neighborhood is unrecognizable. We’re all grappling with what comes next.”

The weight of the moment hit us all — Montes, my partner, and me — as we reminisced and thought about our dear sisters evacuated two counties away. They lost everything on Mariposa Street, where we met many times to make art, share a potluck or just kick back with drinks, cracking jokes and catching up.

Then, Montes showed us a text one of them sent to her a few days after they fled the fires. “Look,” she said, holding up her phone. “Santos found this at the bottom of her backpack.”

It was a keychain decorated with pressed flowers and the word “JOTADENA” spelled out in colored foil stickers that Montes had made years ago and gifted to our amiga.

Jotadena lives.

Melissa Mora Hidalgo is a writer, Fulbright scholar and adjunct professor based in Greater East Los Angeles. She is the author of “Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands” (2016) and writes a column, “Dr. Beer Butch,” at LATaco.com.