Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

California Today

San Diego’s Chicano Park Celebrates Its Anniversary

Fifty-two years after its creation, the park still represents a struggle for recognition and power in California.

Image
A view of murals at Chicano Park in San Diego.Credit...John Francis Peters for The New York Times

SAN DIEGO — Below crisscrossing freeway overpasses and the whooshing of speeding cars is one of the largest collections of outdoor murals in the United States.

Frida Kahlo’s distinct features are rendered huge on a concrete pylon. Majestic Aztec warriors prepare for battle. On a recent afternoon, a woman stopped to photograph Cesar Chavez and other Latino leaders painted on the side of a highway off-ramp.

This is Chicano Park, the heart of San Diego’s oldest Mexican American neighborhood, known as Barrio Logan. The park, which will mark its 52nd anniversary on Friday, remains a symbol of Latinos’ struggle for recognition and power in this border city as well as the rest of California.

“In most of our lives, this is probably the only time that we’ve ever had a voice — a say in something we wanted,” Jose Gomez, one of the leaders in the creation of the park, said in “Chicano Park,” a 1988 documentary. “You know, it’s not much of a park, but it’s our park.”

Image
Credit...John Francis Peters for The New York Times

In the early 1960s, a heavily Latino neighborhood in southeastern San Diego known as Logan Heights was bifurcated by the construction of Interstate 5. Just a few years later, the newly built Coronado Bridge carved another path through the community and dislocated even more families.

Though Mexican Americans had long been accustomed to not being included in decisions made by government officials, many began to feel more empowered during the civil rights movement. So residents of the neighborhood they called Barrio Logan demanded a park to make up for what had been lost.

In 1969, officials agreed to designate green space underneath bridge pylons that now pierced the community. But in April 1970, bulldozers arrived to raze the land to construct a California Highway Patrol station, not a park.

Image
A statue of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.Credit...John Francis Peters for The New York Times

This led to a takeover of the three-acre parcel, with protesters forming a human chain around the bulldozers to halt further construction. The group occupied the park for 12 days, as demonstrators flooded in from nearby homes and Chicano studies classes while other activists traveled from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to support the movement.

Fed up with years of disregard from the city, protesters planted cactuses, flowers and trees to create a garden on their own.

“What have you given us? A social system that makes us beggars and police who make us afraid?” a demonstrator who identified himself only as a San Diego State University student told city officials on April 23, 1970, according to a history compiled by S.D.S.U. researchers. “We’ve got the land and we are going to work it. We are going to get that park. We no longer talk about asking. We have the park.”

On May 1, city leaders agreed to build a park on the land in Barrio Logan. Thus, Chicano Park was born.

Kera Lovell, a history professor at the University of Utah, told me there were at least four dozen such park takeovers in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. The most well-known is Berkeley’s People’s Park, which was founded the year before Chicano Park.

Image
Credit...John Francis Peters for The New York Times

These acts of protest most likely became popular as Americans grappled with the issues of land rights and imperialism during the Vietnam War and an era of urban renewal.

“It just calls into question who owns the space and what is power,” Lovell told me. “I don’t know if they were ever meant to last.”

But Chicano Park has.

Four years after the park takeover in 1970, Latino artists began to cover the concrete surfaces in the park with paintings that told the stories of their people. Today more than 80 murals are splashed along several blocks, depicting an array of images, including lowrider culture and deaths at the border.

In 2017, Chicano Park was named a National Historic Landmark. It’s currently being considered for designation by the National Park Service.

“The pillars are pretty awful. They’re gray and stark — but they see them as these canvases that they’re going to paint about their life in this world in which they’re being displaced,” Lovell told me. “In my work, I say Chicano Park is a success as far as not just survival, but thriving.”

For more:


Image
Capt. Kevin Larson flew the heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper drone. He participated in 650 combat missions out of Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.Credit...Mason Trinca for The New York Times

The trauma of being an Air Force drone pilot unraveled Capt. Kevin Larson’s life. After a drug arrest and court-martial, he fled into the California wilderness.


Image
A homeless encampment along Glendale Boulevard within the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
  • Deaths among the unhoused: Nowhere is the homelessness crisis more acute than in California, where about one in four of the nation’s 500,000 homeless people lives.

  • Renter tax relief: A legislative proposal for low-income Californians could increase the renter tax credit for the first time in 40 years, KQED reports.

  • Overworked veterinarians: During the first year of the pandemic, nearly 23 million American families adopted a pet — and now some veterinarians are burned out, KQED reports.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  • L.A. mayor’s race: A new poll has Rick Caruso neck and neck with Karen Bass in the fight to become Los Angeles’s next mayor, Politico reports.

  • Toxic water: Many mobile park residents in Coachella Valley and other agricultural areas don’t have access to safe water, The Desert Sun reports.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

  • Stockton stabbing: A 15-year-old girl was fatally stabbed outside her high school on Monday morning.

  • Fresno’s housing problem: Fresno had one of the biggest rent increases of any U.S. city last year, fueling a homelessness crisis in a city that used to be California’s most affordable, The Guardian reports.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  • The fish of Tule Lake: The once-vast lake is expected to dry up, so scientists are working to save two endangered species of fish, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

  • Fake kidnapping: Sherri Papini pleaded guilty on Monday to faking her own kidnapping in 2016 and lying to the F.B.I. about it, The Associated Press reports.


Image
In Glendale, a 1926 house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son Lloyd Wright, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms, is on the market for $3.295 million.Credit...Open House Foto

What $3.3 million looks like in Glendale, San Anselmo and Orinda.


An almond cake with lemon curd baked inside is the ultimate citrus tart.


Image
Hillsides and pastures covered in a carpet of bright yellow wildflowers in the Carrizo Plain in 2017.Credit...George Rose/Getty Images

Today’s tip comes from Allen Root, who provides this guide for exploring his corner of California — San Luis Obispo County:

“Heading east on Highway 58 after leaving the 101, you will pass through the lovely village of Santa Margarita. Savvy travelers will stop by the Caliwala Market on the left at the far end of town and stock up on some surprisingly good grab-and-go picnic snacks. Cross the tracks and travel another 70 miles through ever-changing topography to the Carrizo Plain. Depending on the time of year, you may be presented with a vast and raucous display of wildflowers, get to visit the largest example of ancient pictographs in the region, or be greeted with a dusting of snow on the Temblors. The Carrizo is the last large example of the ancient grasslands that reflects what the vast Central Valley once looked like. Regardless of what season or which activities attract the visitor, the Carrizo is a spacious and serene place to drink in nature’s beauty. A visit is always restorative.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.


Image
James Pearse Connelly, left, and Walter Wachter married on Jan. 22 in Los Angeles. A month before, the couple had a wedding celebration on Dec. 19 in Banff, Canada, with 65 guests.Credit...Phil Crozier

Talk about a Hollywood love story.

James Pearse Connelly and Walter Wachter first met at the Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2017. The two had a brief exchange after being introduced by Wachter’s boss at Netflix, whom Connelly also knew.

Connelly had been nominated for outstanding production design for his work on two shows, but he didn’t win for either. But, ultimately, he won something better: a life partner.

Read the full story from The Times.


Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Do a great job (5 letters).

Mariel Wamsley and Jonah Candelario contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

Soumya Karlamangla is the lead writer for the California Today newsletter, where she provides daily insights and updates from her home state. More about Soumya Karlamangla

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Paint Meets Power: Three Acres Of Their Own. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT