‘One barrio, one familia!’

José Velásquez has been talking about family history, gentrification and voter registration. He pauses a moment at East Sixth and Chicon streets in East Austin, gesturing to the two-story building on the northwest corner, and laments the loss of Rabbit’s Lounge.

“You used to get $2 Budweisers here,” Velásquez said. “Now it’s $12 cocktails.”

Velásquez has more right to the booze-as-gentrification metaphor than most. He has lived in East Austin all of his 30 years, and his great-uncle was Roy Velásquez, one of the first community leaders in East Austin.

How that community formed is a matter of debate. Many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans migrated to Austin during Reconstruction, seeing the Texas capital as a place where things were happening. By the early 1900s, they had established “Mexico,” a district on the southwest end of what is now downtown.

Some local historians say the city pushed Mexicans and Mexican-Americans out of downtown and West Austin. A 1928 city master plan designated the area just east of downtown, across East Avenue, as the “Negro district,” an act of racism that might also have been meant for Mexican-Americans. Others say they were lured east by the promise of city schools, services and parks. Perhaps it was because homes were more affordable, or maybe some combination of those things.

Whatever the reasons, East Austin became the city’s Hispanic hub. It was a tight-knit community where the city didn’t maintain the few sidewalks it built, and the Segovias and Morenos and Limons became old names, and small, wood frame homes were treasures to be passed to children and through them on to grandchildren.

There was also this fact of life: the city zoned much of East Austin “light industrial.” That meant a tamal factory or gasoline-storage facility could open in the middle of neighborhoods where kids play — something the white and affluent west side wouldn’t tolerate. East Avenue was eventually expanded into Interstate 35. As metaphors go, it couldn’t have been more complete if it came with train tracks.

The building that Velásquez gestures toward? Rabbit’s Lounge was the heart of East Austin’s Chicano politics in the 1970s and ’80s, where the “brown machine” hatched strategies over cold beer. Decades later, Austin’s tech boom lured to East Austin a wave of newcomers who bought fixer-uppers within walking distance of one of America’s hardest-partying downtowns.

The party moved east, bars changed owners, and rock replaced conjunto on the jukeboxes. In 2012, Rabbit’s closed and reopened with new owners as Whisler’s, a high-end bar appealing to young professionals.

The drinks are fancier now, “but they’re not for the people who’ve been living here,” Velásquez said.

He founded a small nonprofit to deal with the downside of gentrification. Hermanos de East Austin won’t halt the changes, some of which are inevitable, and some of which are good, Velásquez said. Hermanos does things like helping cash-strapped homeowners with repairs and rising property-tax bills.

And it organizes voter registration drives. As Velásquez sees it, civic engagement is the difference between East Austin evolving and disappearing. The community needs its newcomers, and the more engaged they are, the more eager they will be to help longtime residents and maintain the best aspects of the neighborhoods, he said.

The task isn’t easy, of course. In early 2012, Hermanos announced a voter registration drive intended to foster ties that could help East Austin, calling on its Facebook page for “New, Old, Used to be and Soon to be Eastsiders to come out and join us. One barrio, one familia!”

The registration drive was held at Rabbit’s — which closed seven months later.