One of my favorite blogs these days coincidentally happens to come out of Echo Park (when its author isn't posting from UC San Diego). Ruben Ortiz Torres' "Rants about art and culture across borders in a post colonial era" is witty and smart and usually in English. He lives with his family in Elysian Heights but teaches at Davis.

Ortiz's bio explains that the artist was born in Mexico City and educated "within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism. Then:

...After enduring Mexico City's earthquake and pollution he moved to LA with a Fullbright grant to survive riots, fires, floods, more earthquakes, and proposition 187.

A May 2007 post, Belfast Barrio, points out similarities between LA barrio murals and political murals of Ireland. (His most recent post notes the departure of the British soldiers from Belfast.)