EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — There have been many conversations about how to display statues from our past. And that’s led to discussions about what kinds of monuments should be built in the future. Los Angeles Times writer Carolina Miranda reports on art and architecture and shares creative ideas to celebrate our people and more recent history.
Since the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery amongst others, people in this country and around the world have been looking around and really thinking about the monuments that we have put up and what they represent.
“I think it’s been this time to really think about what is this statue in the plaza? What is the bronze of a military leader? Who is it celebrating? What history is it highlighting? I think part of the purpose that monuments serve as these nomadic devices these reminders of what is your history? So what history are we serving when for example, prominent slave traders and confederate generals are being honored in major civic areas,” said staff writer, Carolina Miranda.
More specific in California’s history are different representations of Junipero Serra, the Franciscan missionary who helped establish the mission system, spaces intended to convert indigenous people to Catholicism, but which also worked as correctional labor camps. Last month, the statue of Serra that had stood near Olvera Street in Downtown L.A. for almost a century was dropped by activists.
“In these labor camps, indigenous people weren’t allowed to speak their languages, weren’t allowed to follow their traditions, they had to adhere to Christianity, they had to speak Spanish. If they tried to escape, they were flogged. So the missions for indigenous people and Junipero Serra, their grand architect, is not a positive symbol for our history,” added Miranda.
In the summer of 1942, the Mexican youth gathered for a birthday party at a popular watering hole known as Sleepy Lagoon, which was on the eastern banks of the Los Angeles River. This was used as a swimming hole by the youth of color at a time when pools in Los Angeles were segregated. If you were Black, Latino, Asian you weren’t allowed to use the pool on most days. Therefore, this watering hole was important for the youth of color because it allowed them to enjoy some recreation.
“The day the group went to celebrate the birthday, a rival group showed up and a fight ensued. By the next day, somebody was found dead. And that death resulted in this over-scaled police crackdown by the LAPD on Chicano Youth. Anyone who wore a zoot suit, a young Mexican American youth male or female would be rounded up in these huge roundups. Dozens of people were taken to jail. About two dozen of them were tried in what was the largest mass trial in California history and they were declared guilty, with no evidence that they were ever at Sleepy Lagoon that night,” added Miranda. That incident of xenophobia where police targeted Mexican youth for the way they were dressed, set the stage for the Zoot Suit Riots the next year.
Artists Sandra de la Loza and Arturo Ernesto Romo, who have shown around Los Angeles for many years, are making sure this part of history is represented. They have put together a proposal for a park in Maywood, which is the closest sight to where Sleepy Lagoon once was. What they want to do is create this site where it’s not just about building a monument or a bronze statue of a single person. It’s creating a contemplative sight where these histories can be considered and this idea of nature.
“You know, of these kids who all they wanted to do was go swimming and be in nature and where a little of that can be recreated. They spent several years working on a design proposal, but they’re getting ready to present it to the city of Maywood. They’ve held conversations with residents of the area, with survivors of the roundups and leaders about the environmental history of the area. It’s this very all in composing environmental monument,” said Miranda.