Most people are no strangers to the term gentrification, but some might not know its Latino cousin, gentefication. Actor Julissa Calderon stopped by the Jezebel studios and dropped some knowledge on what that term—which her new Netflix series is named after—means: “‘Gentefied’ is [when] our gente, the Latino community… someone who was raised there, leaves, goes on to do bigger and better things, and then decides, ‘Oh, the rent is cheap where I grew up. Let me go buy a house there. Let me go do this and let me go clean it up, and let’s make some money off of this.’ That’s what gentefication is.”
Born in New York and raised in Miami, Calderon has experienced gentrification in her own life, like seeing the new faces in her grandmother’s historically Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights and the rapidly growing developments laying claim to South Florida’s Carol City. “What I’m not okay with is people coming into these barrios, and feeling like whatever was there needs to get out,” Calderon says.
Watch her break it all down in the video above.