Estrada,
William David The Los Angeles Plaza:
Sacred and Contested Space. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
William David Estrada’s nativity to Los Angeles gives him
a particularly keen insight into the history of the Plaza and Los Angeles. He
has served in various curator positions throughout the city and is currently
the Curator of History at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. His
work, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and
Contested Space, provides an in-depth account of the history of the Plaza
and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Plaza
explores changes in spatial and social dimensions over several centuries and
shows how these changes reflect the more encompassing story of the city of Los
Angeles.
Thematically and chronologically arranged, Estrada begins
The Los Angeles Plaza with a detailed
history of the Plaza area prior to colonial rule and up through 1821. He
describes early poblador attempts to
settle the pueblo and their struggles
to seamlessly intermingle the native Indian population with the incoming
settlers. Also, Estrada explores the spatial and structural plans of the grid-plan
plaza. A major event that Estrada credits as symbolizing the Plaza’s early
social and cultural history is the mounting conflict between early missions and
the establishment of a civic church. As the civic church grew in authority in
the pueblo, the Plaza became the
undisputed center of Mexican California.[1]
Next, Estrada examines the changes that took place in the
Plaza area and Los Angeles following Mexican independence from Spain. Southern
California experienced a significant expansion of agriculture, notably cattle
ranching and farming, along with the growth of private ranchos and an export economy in hides, soaps, and tallow. Los
Angeles grew to become the unmatched center of Mexican society in Southern
California, with the Plaza at its heart. With the election of Pío Pico of Los
Angeles the Plaza came to represent the growing importance of Los Angeles as
the focus of social and political life in Alta California. Los Angeleno
residents began to exhibit a social prestige because of their residence in the
Plaza area. This time period also saw the settlement and acculturation of
foreigners from the United States and Europe. Chinese immigration began as
early as 1850 and the expansion of Los Angeles would grow to depend on Chinese
labor. Estrada proclaims that the changes taking place in Los Angeles indicate
that the city was on its way to becoming an American City.
Indeed, the third chapter, entitled “From Cuidad to City,” defines the urban
growth that would permanently alter the landscape of Los Angeles and the Plaza
area. Estrada contends that “the 1870s signaled the beginning of several
cultural, technological, demographic, and economic transformations that further
defined Los Angeles as an emerging American city, and they were most reflected
by the changes at the Plaza.”[2] Railroads were the
harbinger of the urban-industrial growth experience by Los Angeles and the
surrounding Southern California area. Due to exponential population growth, what
emerged was a new social landscape segmented along racial and class lines.
This time period brought more changes to the landscape of
the Plaza. Urban and residential development began to move away from the
centralized location of the Plaza in Los Angeles. The deteriorating condition
of the Plaza area led to the first preservation effort with aims to create a
garden park space. In addition, Mexican residents living in the Plaza area
began to change the architecture of housing from the established adobe-style to
Italianate or Victorian-style housing, in what Estrada points to as a way for
Mexicans to adapt to the changing cultural landscape.
The Los Angeles
Plaza depicts the new imagination of the Plaza in the early twentieth
century that led to the reclamation of the space by immigrants from differing
cultural backgrounds. Estrada argues that the melting-pot of cultures brought
new meaning and greater cultural vibrancy to the Plaza. People of all cultural
backgrounds used the Plaza and surrounding area for commercial and leisure
activities. The new cultural offerings connected recent immigrants to their
distant homelands as a sort of psychological survival. The Plaza offered
immigrants a place of interaction beyond their homes and workplaces, and
increasingly, was the space for radical free speech and an as a rallying place
for politics. Additionally, in part because of its central location, throughout
World War I the Plaza was known as an important space for revolutionary
activities.
No other example characterizes the commercial-tourist use
of the Plaza better than the opening of chapter six. Estrada uncovered a scene
from a 1952 film where a recently unemployed Mexican man refuses the only job
he can find: portraying a caricature of himself as a sleeping Mexican man underneath
a tree near the Plaza. This example paves the way for the efforts to contest
then-accepted historical narratives over public pageantry, mural art, and
community preservation.
For Estrada, the distortion of the local history of the
Plaza is personal, and the latter half of The
Los Angeles Plaza explores the efforts to fight that distortion. The
transformation of Olvera Street into a colorful tourist site attempted to hide
its historical realities. When exiled Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueros was
commissioned to paint a mural, expectations were of an exotic jungle scene.
However, when the mural was unveiled “all anticipations of an artwork depicting
Southern California as an idyllic land of perpetual sunshine, the missions, and
the open shop were instantly shattered.”[3] Ameríca Tropical
instead depicted the scene of a crucified Indian amid fallen pyramids, armed
revolutionaries, and a bald eagle symbolizing Yankee imperialism. Estrada
points out that Ameríca Tropical serves to
explain how underlying forms of protest can clarify our understanding of the
Plaza as an arena for the continued fight over historical narratives. The
concealment of the mural a short time later proves how white contemporary Plaza
residents attempted to distort the history of the area.
No story of the Plaza would be complete without
mentioning Christine Sterling and her efforts to expand the Plaza and control
the interpretive landscape. Largely due to Sterling’s efforts, the Plaza became
the property of the state of California and a designated State historic Park
and State Historic Landmark. Despite other shortcomings, Sterling was a
defender of the Mexican community. The Latinization of the Plaza and Los
Angeles in general brought redemptive meaning to Southern California. Estrada
notes the Chicano and Chicana Movement as evidence of greater involvement among
Mexican Americans in politics and activism.
The several biographical sketches and
personal memories of Plaza occupants such as Karl Yoneda, Meyer Baylin,
Christine Sterling, and the homeless Luis, does much to enhance the intimate
feel of The Los Angeles Plaza.
Without these aspects, Estrada would have fallen short of a true investigation
of the Plaza. Estrada is particularly adept at storytelling, and his prose
animates history of the Plaza and Los Angeles within the pages of The Los Angeles Plaza.
Today, the Plaza is a varied mixture of historical,
physical, and cultural resources that have fostered as much by myth and current
politics as by actual history. The symbolic heart of Los Angeles still remains
the Plaza, especially as the population of Mexican Americans continues to grow.
As Los Angeles deals with the privatization of its downtown space supplanting
traditional streets and spaces, the city will continue to wrestling with the
ongoing issues of modernization and interpretation of history.
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