While the students chose their themes and prepared their articles for this issue, we discovered that they had a common denominator: the vast majority had to do with the Mission. This San Francisco neighborhood, which until recently had a strong Latino presence, has experienced in the past few years a dramatic transformation that seems irreversible, and which the contributors to this issue deal with in the articles that they present to you today. Our spirit shall be celebratory, in the same joyous way that Mexicans dialogue with their dead and dying.

Something else is noteworthy. Several of the people featured in our articles are former USF students. One of them is Tiye Sheppard, a former Divisadero contributor who, thanks to her articles in our magazine, won a number of literary prizes and was able to travel to make a study trip to Cuba, which ended with her expulsion from that country. It has also been a pleasure for us to include among our articles a critique of a play written by an MFA from this university.

Let the party begin.