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Community resistance and conditional patriotism in cold war Los Angeles:

The battle for Chavez Ravine

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Abstract

This article examines the resistance to displacement of residents of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, a community slated to be razed for a public housing project in the post-war era (1950–1953). Community women, mostly Mexican American, overtly identified themselves as patriotic wives and daughters of veterans who were entitled to keep their homes and live in peace. They declared that their patriotism was conditional, and that the seizure of their homes and destruction of their community threatened the basis of their patriotism; displacement, they suggested, might radicalize them. While their efforts to preserve the Chavez Ravine community were unsuccessful, they influenced local politics and became a lasting symbol of Chicano displacement and resistance.

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Notes

  1. This article is based on several chapters of my 1999 dissertation: The Battle for Chavez Ravine, Public Policy and Chicano Community Resistance in Post War Los Angeles, 1945–1962, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley.

  2. Baca, J. (1983); Normark, 1999; Culture Clash, 2003; and Cooder, R. 2005.

  3. Chavez Ravine was only two-thirds Mexican and Mexican American, but was widely considered a “Mexican” neighborhood. A designation of blight meant that 20 per cent or more of the homes in an area had one or more “substandard” elements and could be subject to slum clearance or redevelopment.

  4. The term “Mexican American” is historically specific; see Tino Villanueva (1985) for an excellent analysis of the term.

  5. Juan Gómez-Quiñones mentions that ANMA was “involved in campaigns against police brutality, housing discrimination … deportation raids, and the media stereotyping of Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking people” (Gómez-Quiñones 1990, 51).

  6. The promise of priority on housing is one of the most widely quoted aspects of the program, but non-citizens were ineligible for public housing, so the Housing Authority may have made a promise it could not keep. Later events rendered this complication moot.

  7. Information on the City Center District Improvement Association is limited, but sources indicate sustained community activism to improve conditions both by petitioning the city, and by individual and group community improvement activities.

  8. Ironically, Mabel Hom lived just outside the boundaries of the redevelopment area, and her testimony was refuted on this basis in a written rebuttal submitted after the hearing.

  9. Organizations advocating public housing included the American Legion, the Veterans Organizations Coordinating Council, the Veterans Advisory Committee, the Los Angeles Central Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Citizens Housing Council, the Greater Los Angeles Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Council, the League of Women Voters, the Los Angeles Urban League, the Los Angeles County District Council of Carpenters, the Council of United Railroad Workers of America, the Los Angeles Youth Project, the Watts Chamber of Commerce, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Regular Veterans Association, Americans for Democratic Action, the International Association of Machinists, the Los Angeles City Housing Council, the Catholic War Veterans and the American Council on Human Rights.

  10. The testimony of Chavez Ravine appellants was paraphrased and truncated. Don Parson (2005) further discusses the role of Bertha Withers.

  11. See also Parson, 1999; I am deeply thankful to Mr Parson for sharing an advance copy of this article.

  12. A dozen other households also refused to leave, and were similarly evicted. The Aréchigas, however, were the most public about their opposition, and the most willing to use the media to their advantage, including alerting the media to the day they expected the eviction.

  13. La Opinión, the Spanish language daily newspaper of Los Angeles, was sometimes more extensive in its coverage, but it rarely diverged significantly from the politically powerful Los Angeles Times.

  14. Efforts to interview Dodger officials were unsuccessful. I was told that Neil J. Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West, (1987) was their preferred version of events.

  15. The exceptions are cited above; Baca, 1983, Normark, 1999, Culture Clash, 2003, Cooder, 2005; and Yosso and García, 2005.

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the support of my wife Christina Zapata, my family, mentors, and the editors of Latino Studies. This article is dedicated to the people of Chavez Ravine, their descendants, and displaced people everywhere.

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  1. Sonoma State University, CA

    Ronald W López (II)

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Correspondence to Ronald W López.

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López, R. Community resistance and conditional patriotism in cold war Los Angeles:. Lat Stud 7, 457–479 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.38

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