Friday, August 26, 2016

The Los Angeles Plaza

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.  




[1]William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 40.
[2]Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 81.
[3]Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 210. 

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