Travel: Annie Fay Blog

Chicano Park Ethnographic Research Paper for Museums + Social Justice

12/15/2019

I researched San Diego's Chicano Park for my Museums + Social Justice final this semester. If you are not already familiar with the rich history of the park, or have not visited, I would highly recommend viewing the murals and exploring the surrounding area in Barrio Logan. I learned so much through taking this class and I hope to use my knew knowledge to cultivate positive changes in our world. Enjoy (:

Chicano Park

Chicano Park is the largest outdoor mural collection in the country. Today, the park features paintings, sculptures, and other art dedicated to Chicanx and Latinx heritage. Chicano Park is located in Logan Heights (Barrio Logan) within San Diego, California. In the early 1900s, “Logan Heights had contained the "second largest Chicano Barrio community on the west coast, with a population of almost twenty thousand,”” (Murals). However, gentrification in San Diego continued to push Chicano residents out of Logan Heights for decades, and by 1979, the population had dwindled from 20,000 to about 5,000 (Rosen 93).

Pricing people out of their own homes was what initially stoked the fire that led to the community outrage and fight for the park. In addition to gentrification concerns, “The revival of muralism in the barrio...” was brought on by an increase in gang and drug violence, employment discrimination, English-only laws, and a lack of political power (Rosen 101). Residents fought against adversity and, between 1969 and 1975, Chicano political activism was at an all time high. The Chicano Movement, also called the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, was dedicated to achieving Mexican American empowerment. The movement specifically helped to reform education by implementing bilingual teaching practices and also fighting to allow agricultural workers to unionize. It is important to note that the particular social and economic issues that the movement dealt with “...coincided with the most productive period of Chicano muralism,” which provides the historical context for the Chicano Park murals (Rosen 101).

In the very beginning of this turbulent era, Barrio Logan residents were promised a park and people waited for months for the development and construction to begin. Instead, on April 22, 1970, construction workers showed up to build a Highway Patrol station. Activists took over the lot planting cacti, agave, and flowers. They then proceeded to raise the flag of Aztlán (the ancestral home of the Aztec people) and “...symbolically called the land Chicano Park, “La Tierra Mia,” as a historic reclamation of their Aztecan homeland,” (Lovell 106-107). The community continued to protest the construction, and at one meeting, an artist named Salvador Torres “expressed his vision of local Chicano painters and sculptors turning the bridge pylons into things of beauty, reflecting the Mexican-American culture,” (Murals). With this proposal from Torres in mind, residents continued to fight for the park they were promised, even occupying the land for over a week, until negotiations were in their favor. As Kera Lovell wrote in “Everyone Gets a Blister”: Sexism, Gender Empowerment, and Race in the People’s Park Movement, “Rather than ripping out the new concrete pillars that overshadowed their once-vibrant community, the creators of Chicano Park embraced them. On Earth Day 1971, the park officially opened as Barrio Logan’s Chicano Park with vivid murals painted on the pillars depicting male revolutionary leaders of color who had been erased in white American colonial textbooks,” (Lovell 105). In alignment with the history of resilience and the formation of parks as a form of protest, locals embraced the pillars rather than petitioning for them to be removed and on March 23, 1973, the mural making officially began.

After seven years of painting and persistence, in 1980, “Barrio Logan’s Chicano Park was found eligible for the National Register under Criterion A at the local level of significance due to its critical association with the Chicano Civil Rights Movement...” and has been considered an official historical site by the San Diego Historical Site Board ever since (Rosen 96). Sites like this, otherwise known as People’s Parks, existed well before the 80s. Since the Cold War era, “...activist coalitions across the world spontaneously converted dozens of vacant lots into liberated zones as forms of spatial protest,” (Lovell 103). Just like Chicano Park, the history of People’s Parks helps to reveal how activism and social justice can sprout up in urban environments rather than strictly formal museums or institutions. In the case of Chicano Park, insurgent park creation serves as a method of protest that simultaneously functions “...as both a tool to challenge histories of settler colonialism as well as a practice of it,” (Lovell 104).

San Diego’s population is diverse but often divided—especially between white citizens and Chicanx/Latinx community members. The history or pattern of biculturalism in San Diego persists at Chicano Park, and the site continues to serve as “...a symbol of community organization fighting to save a culture and a neighborhood, and should provide a positive example to other neighborhoods within San Diego that are fighting to stay alive,” (Murals). The border of Mexico is just 20 miles south of San Diego and Chicano Parks location, and the content of the murals may remind visitors of contemporary issues in our own community and across the nation. Murals like “Niños del Mundo” from 2011 and “No Border Wall” from 2017 illustrate these social justice issues and remind visitors of the unfair and unethical treatment of undocumented citizens, the border crisis, the importance of love and creativity, and the exploitation of Chicanx and Latinx culture (ie. Cinco de Mayo, pinañatas, etc.) that are integrated into the larger culture of San Diego.

I chose this site because of its admirable mission. I have lived in San Diego since I was two years-old, and my cities close proximity to Mexico has made me aware of the inequities that exist due to culture, race, and ethnicity across the globe and in my own community. However, despite exposure to the park through an eighth grade field trip, the existence of Chicano Park is often erased and rarely used as a learning tool in San Diego schools. San Diego is divided into a North and a South county (the South county being closer to Barrio Logan) and many residents throughout North county are not even aware of the park because of gentrification and the devaluation of outdoor art spaces that lack the authority of traditional institutions. If more people were cognizant of Chicano Park they could fully appreciate how the space demystifies stereotypes and showcases the power, perseverance, strength, and talent of Chicanx and Latinx members of my community. Minority voices go unheard much too often, but fortunately the murals speak for themselves—and they speak loudly.

I was intrigued upon discovering the role gender inequality played in the earlier years of the park and motivated to research this lesser known aspect of history with the tools and critical thinking skills I developed over the semester. I learned that in the beginning, “Men dominated the focus of murals in the park. In a mural depicting the Chicano Park takeover, women are peripheral and passive while men’s muscles are flexed or their bodies painted in striking poses,” (Lovell 105-106). Chicanx and Latinx men and women are both to credit for the existence of Chicano Park. Without residents of all ages and genders occupying the space and fighting for use of the land, Chicano Park would not exist. Fortunately, over time, Chicano feminists “...have subverted men’s absolutist authority...by insurgently painting their own murals of women...women increasingly center themselves within the activist resistance and within the larger history of the park,” (Lovell 116).

Chicano Park is heavily connected to social justice issues including racial equity, addressing marginalized stories, gentrification, and immigration especially because of the close proximity to Mexico. With all of the current immigration issues in the United States, it is important to maintain sites like this across the country to help raise awareness, pay respect to marginalized groups, and honor the people who essentially created this nation through working to build infrastructure, managing agriculture, and fixing the unstable foundation that colonizers built. California is stolen territory, and Chicano Park is one of the last remaining spaces that reminds visitors of the true past. However, through conversations with other San Diegans and articles I have read, I have formed the conclusion that Chicano Park could be doing more to effectively address contemporary social justice issues and provide a space for Chicanx and Latinx residents to feel represented.

These marginalized groups have their park which serves as a platform for activism and spatial protest, but the surrounding area continues to change because of gentrification. I spoke with my friend, Aléjandra (Alé) Sanchez, about the effectiveness of the park and she told me that two galleries in the surrounding neighborhood, Chicano Art Gallery and Bodega Gallery, are both closing. The landlord has decided the spaces would be more profitable as a brewery. Artists are still being pushed out to make space for trendier and sometimes more profitable businesses. Improvements in the surrounding neighborhoods and shopping areas make the community safer and contemporary, but history gets buried in the process.

I actually had the privilege to work on a project that tackled these social justice issues effectively. I worked with Parkeology in Balboa Park in 2017 to offer information about the free Border Trolley Tours. (My name is listed under “Parkeologists” on the webpage.) This project was done in collaboration with Cog•nate Collective, Kumeyaay Community College, and the teen docent program of Casa Familiar and provided an opportunity for visitors to go on a trolley ride through Barrio Logan and along the border while listening to audio recordings and interviews tracing the true history of migration in San Diego. These recordings were meant to reveal another side to the story and dismantle assumptions about land ownership and Mexican culture. For visitors who could not go on the trolley tour, we also had a Border Peepshow which featured four photographs depicting political separation in San Diego/Tijuana in 1887, 1927, 1967, and 2017 to tell a similar story.

Chicano Park tells the story of how Chicanx and Latinx residents of San Diego fought for their land, political representation, and general equality. When visiting Chicano Park it is evident that the story is not only “...told in three-dimensional space, but the visitor walks the plot,” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 6). Walking among the various murals, visitors may feel taken aback by the quantity and scale of the art work. The murals span decades and the sense of history is all around. Some visitors sit and admire the paintings, homeless residents find safe spaces to spend their days in the park, and families can enjoy the various playgrounds. As my friend Alé said, “Art spaces have always been safe spaces,” so what happens when there are not safe art spaces for everyone?

Without community spaces like Chicano Park, ignorance is inevitable. San Diego is home to people from all different backgrounds and many smaller suburbs are very segregated. “Despite the fact that the San Diego/Tijuana border is the most transited in the world, only 1 in 4 San Diegans take the drive south to cross,” (Border). I can attest to this statistic as I have not been across the border in well over a decade. The area I live in is mostly white, and because of this separation, there are plenty of people who are ignorant by default. “According to a recent article in The Atlantic, 75% of Whites have entirely White social networks,” and I think the Parkeology project I worked on, at the very least, provided insight into another culture (Herz). This statistic also magnifies the importance of sites like Chicano Park where people of all different races, ethnicities, and cultures can come together and learn from one another to create a more aware, tolerant, and accepting society because “...the political positioning of museum authority...can be challenged by the experiences, beliefs, and emotions visitors bring with them,” (Golding 13). This only furthers the notion that meaningful cross-racial dialogue needs to become more prevalent in today’s world.

Chicano Park is a site of conscience in that it responds to biculturalism, identity politics, gentrification, racial injustices, and remains “...committed to engaging people through dialogical exchange, not only by remembering past struggles for social justice, but also by addressing contemporary pernicious legacies…” (Golding 21).
Chicano Park engages with the public through community events like the Barrio Art Crawl and the Cinco de Mayo Festival. As Martin Rosen and James Fisher wrote in Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: Barrio Logan, City of San Diego, California, “Since 1970, Barrio residents have made extensive use of their new park for social and political events. Annually, on the Saturday nearest April 22nd, the Latino community of San Diego and the Barrio Logan neighborhood have celebrated the founding of Chicano Park...” (Rosen 94). The 49th Chicano Park Day Celebration took place on April 20, 2019, and the event is always free and open to the public so that people of all ages and backgrounds can come to appreciate art, participate in craft workshops, hear speakers, enjoy traditional foods, and be educated at informational booths. However, there are still plenty of obstacles and challenges that the park faces.

As Carlos Tortolero wrote in A Mexican National Museum in Chicago: Integrating Cultures, “...there are two hurdles that institutions of color must constantly be confronting when viewed by the mainstream world,” and these hurdles are that the “...art is not good,” and that there is a “...mindset that institutions of color can’t “manage things,”” (Tortolero 42). Sadly, Chicano Park is no exception. It obviously took a lot of work to get the land and funding in the first place, but some people continue to have misconceptions about the park, Barrio Logan, and Chicanx and Latinx people in general.

Chicano Park is not a formal museum or institution, it is an art space on the streets that is open to the public which separates it from the colonization process and places the control in the hands of the Native people that the site represents. This is powerful, but it also makes the park vulnerable. Unlike a formal institution, there is not an authority figure or board to make everyone take the park seriously. In addition, “The Barrio Logan neighborhood, itself, does not provide a completely safe haven for the murals,” because of pigeon roosting, graffiti, “...disconnection among the barrio’s youth and these magnificent murals,” homeless taking residence in the park, and garbage from nearby businesses (Rosen 108).

The park can also do more to facilitate dialogue. Because of the free, public, outdoor space that Chicano Park occupies, there are no docents or guides to educate visitors. With the exception of special events like the annual celebration, there are not many opportunities at the park to learn more about Chicanx and Latinx culture. Visitors may engage in conversations with other visitors or research more about the park online or at the library, but the park could be improved by offering more events. As Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko wrote in History That Promotes Understanding in a Diverse Society, “Facilitated dialogue allows personal truths to come forward, be examined and valued, and be evaluated for harmful impact,” (Catlin-Legutko 8). Conversations are integral to peaceful change, empathy, and tolerance. Scholars, journalists, and people in positions of power can continue to push this ideal through their work, but, “We wouldn’t need these articles if we occupied social spaces in which meaningful cross-racial dialogue were common,” (Herz). Governments may advocate for equality, but citizens can also take matters into their own hands. In the case of Chicano Park, and Modern Chicano muralism, the movement “...grew out of a desire for change and was typically centered in barrios and ghettos of inner cities. Muralism inspired efforts to reclaim a community’s cultural heritage and was used as a means to develop individual and community self-pride,” (Rosen 100). People have the power to cultivate positive change.

Chicano Park allows the San Diego community to stay invested in social justice and continue to fight for equality and tolerance in our city and across borders—both tangible and intangible. We are all human, but separated by a lack of understanding of one another’s cultures or backgrounds. Community-based museums like Chicano Park allow people from all different backgrounds to come together and grow while the murals themselves “...serve as a reminder to people in the community that they can change their environment,” (Rosen 106).

We all have the power to change our environment for the better, and community collaboration can have far reaching positive impacts. I hope that Chicano Park continues to inspire activists to fight for what they believe in. Now more than ever, the importance of standing together in a world that does not necessarily feel united is necessary because as Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko states, “When relevance is evident, oppressive and colonized frameworks can be dissolved,” (Catlin-Legutko 9). I believe that Chicano Park, the artists, and residents who made the park possible and continue to support it have the power and passion to dissolve these despotic frameworks and actually create new frameworks— beautiful frameworks that are just as colorful and varied as the people they represent.

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