The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space

I just wanted to take a moment to say that I was truly impressed by the level of information in this book. I have spent fifty years of my life in Los Angeles, and have been going to Olvera Street and the Plaza since my parents could first drag me there for taquitos at Cielito Lindo. But I had NO idea of the social history of the Plaza, the origins of Olvera Street, or the multi-cultural background of the people of the area. I had some vague knowledge about the fact that there had been an older Chinatown than the one I grew up with, but this book has taught me so much more. I highly recommend it for anyone who is truly interested in understanding Los Angeles and how it has grown up (and away) from it's origins.

Good history of the area. Probably a bit academic for the average reader. Thorough and well written.

I was not surprised to find this book in the New Acquisitions section of the Hong Kong Public Library. After all, the histories of the two giant trading partners across the Pacific have much in common that has shaped them into leading world cities.Estrada's new book makes use of recent research that sets the familar accounts of Los Angeles history on its ear. For one thing, he does not shy away from the details of the story of the indigenous people who inhabited the area, before during, and after the colonization of Los Angeles by Mexico. The new pueblo was located just a stone's throw from a prosperous Indian village called Yanga. The residents would provide the new settlers with much needed food, furs, baskets, and especially labor. For the first time, the natives were paid wages for their work in hauling water, domestic help, and digging ditches. The jobs available in the early settlement attracted Indians from other parts of California.The status of local Indians changed radically when California became part of the United States. In the California Constitution, Indians were not considered persons. A white person could not be taken to court for killing an Indian. During the first period of the state, white settlers brought every kind of atrocity upon California Indians, often shooting them for sport.The book focuses on the central role that the Plaza played in Los Angeles history and the fact that it was a Mexican city for its first 70 years, founded by a confident people well established in literature, law, and the arts long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.Estrada's story of the the founding of Los Angeles has rich new details about the ambitions of the California governor, Philip de Neve, to reduce the power of the missions and the Catholic church over the natives. His was a carefully laid-out plan to found new cities that would supply the local military presidios with food and supplies. The story of his selection and organization of the original founders, the pobladores, is rich in new detail. I did not know, for instance, that the cattle being driven from Mexico to the new settlement and the military contingent with it were wiped out by an Indian revolt on the way up. I also learned how the Laws of the Indies set up by the Spanish king governed the planning for settlements in New Spain and were carefully followed by Neve. Those laws were to have a major impact on the future of downtown Los Angeles.Most fascinating part to me was the role that the Plaza played in the epic battle between the Los Angeles Times and the labor unions. The area was of particular concern to the owners of the L.A. Times, Harrison Grey Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler. In the early 1900s, Otis, Chandler and their cronies had acquired 78 percent of farmland in Baja California. Under Mexican president Porfirio Diaz, Americans had bought up millions of acres of Mexican land, factories, mines, oil rights, public utilities, and most of the nation's railroads. To keep wages low, Otis and Chandler were determined to keep the unions out. Two brothers who led the first revolt of the 20th century against the American takeover in Baja California had set up their headquarters in the Plaza. The Plaza was to become the site of decades of union rallies and police riots. Otis Chandler's later support of the Olivera Street tourist attraction was intended to give him more control of this trouble spot, just a block from the Times. You can't beat a story like that!

The history of the plaza, laid out under the Spanish crown in 1781, is the history of Los Angeles. William Estrada has written a highly readable and comprehensive study of the founding and growth of Los Angeles under the Spanish, Mexican and American flags from a small pueblo, into its current day internationally renowned, cosmopolitan city.This book is not a narrow history of an ethnic group or social strata, but rather a remarkable interweaving of the interaction among the various groups - the Mexicans, Americans, French, Italians, Chinese and many others - and their often inter-married descendants - who have created the present city. It is a rare perspective, viewed from the standpoint of the people who built the city, ranging from the first residents who defied the missionaries by paying their Indian workers, to the city's role as the Mexican capital of California, to the politics and influence of Harry Chandler in creating Olivera Street as a Mexican market place to encourage tourists arriving at the new Union Station in Los Angeles to spend their money locally, while enjoying the experience of a foreign country, rather than leaving for San Diego and Tijuana.Particularly revealing is the plaza's forgotten role in the political turmoil of the 1920's and 1930's as the only "free speech" forum in the city, featuring communist rallies and raids by the feared Los Angeles Police "Red Squad".This is a fascinating book that provides new insights.