There was a time when El Salvador Park was the place for Sunday afternoons.
Santa Ana residents packed the park to meet friends, listen to music, and check out the shiny lowriders passing by. They all form part of the city’s vibrant Mexican scene.
On Sunday, August 28, Santa Anna celebrates its heritage and its residents with a free community event, billed as the first Chicano Heritage Festival hosted by a California city. The festival features live entertainment, car shows, arts and culture exhibits, food trucks and more from noon to 8pm.
It all takes place in El Salvador Park. The adjacent neighborhood has been home to generations of Mexican-American families and has seen many key moments.
“We highlight, commemorate and thank the residents who have contributed to this community,” said Jonathan Ryan, who along with Rep. Nerida Mendoza, helped organize the festival in the working-class Artesia Pilar neighborhood. Hernandez said.
The celebration, funded by $50,000 in funding from the city, follows Hernandez and Mendoza’s declaration of August as a Chicano Heritage Month, introduced last year. Then Rep. Lou Correa, Democrat Santa Anna, introduced a similar resolution in Congress in late July.
On Sunday, Correa will present his resolution signed by various members of Congress.
“I’m about to cry,” said Correa. “Having a resolution on Chicanos tells us that Santa Anna recognizes the contributions of the activist Chicano movement of the ’60s and ’70s, when many fought to be part of American history.”
Hernandez said that includes people who overlooked it. Not everyone has a successful story. He pointed out that many people in the neighborhood have shared their struggles.
“What I look forward to is celebrating our resilience and our story of redemption and triumph,” Hernandez said.
One such story is that of Nati Alvarado Jr., a 61-year-old resident who grew up three houses away from the park and whose family history in the city goes back almost a century.
Alvarado remembers his childhood when the park was “our backyard.” There was a Little League baseball game, and black and Latinx kids playing together peacefully in the community center. But by the time he was 15, he had become his father and became a drug addict. It took years to turn his life around, but Alvarado has spent decades working with young people since, breaking the cycle of poverty through nonprofits and as a pastor at his local church. One of his programs has enrolled about 1,600 children in park activities this summer.
“The ’70s and ’80s were a rough time with rampant violence and gangs. El Salvador parks had very bad names and I was a part of them in the ’70s,” Alvarado said. “But there are communities of people united,” he said, “changing the story of El Salvador parks and our entire city.”
Muralist Marina Aguilera said many of the Latino youths had nothing to do with gangs, but that was not the view of the police at the time.
“If you were Latino and you wore a certain outfit, they thought you were a gangbanger,” Aguilera said.
She is part of a group called “Buena Guente” or “Good People” who work with young people to “change the stereotypical and negative stigma surrounding Chicano youth and bring positivity to Chicano culture.” I was working for
Aguilera also talked about Santa Ana’s lowrider culture, where car clubs are still popular, and dozens of murals depicting life in Mexico. These were once seen all over the city, but were painted over by city officials, including her own work, such as her painting of two of her 1957 Chevys in an El Salvador park. will be
“The city covered them up. I feel like the hierarchy tried to erase the Chicano culture,” goes by the nickname “La Artista Marina Aguilera” and is believed to be Santa Ana’s first female muralist. said Aguilera.
Another mural painted in the park by Aguilera and a group of artists is starting to peek in as the edges of the new paint are peeling off. ” is drawn. In one section, farmers are picking strawberries. Another picture showed a man “doing construction and building a city.” In another video, she said, “Immigration and police will imprison you if you have dark skin.”
“It depicted the life many people were living at the time,” she said, claiming her mural “cries to come out” in an El Salvador park.
The park has seen many significant moments over the years, according to resident Manny Escamilla, who is writing a book on the city’s history.
— In January 1971, the park was part of a three-day march in which more than 150 Chicano High School and college students protested against the Vietnam War and protested outside a police station.
— In June 1972, hundreds of black and Latinx students converged on El Salvador parks to demand changes to the school, including a mandatory ethnic learning program.
— In October 1972, farmworker leader Cesar Chavez met with residents in El Salvador Park to protest proposals to ban labor strikes and boycotts.
— In the summer of 1992, about 500 Latino gang members from across the county gathered at a park to codify a truce to curtail drive-by shootings in the city.
According to Hernandez, on August 29, 1970, when Los Angeles Times reporter and Santa Ana resident Reuben Salazar was killed by a tear gas canister fired by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy, residents were engulfed in the Vietnam War. He also participated in the National Chicano Moratorium march against the Hernandez wants Santa Anna to officially recognize Salazar, the first Mexican-American journalist to cover the community of Salazar, in his former home.
“We’ve always been proud that[Salazar]has roots here,” Hernandez said. “This history helped me as a kid. I want to highlight these stories so people can be proud of where they come from.”
For longtime residents, festivals celebrating Chicano culture are a newfound pride.
Aguilera, a muralist who traced her family history back in Santa Ana in the early 1900s, said:
Alderman Mendoza, who helped bring the festival to Santa Ana, said the first event she hopes will be held annually is an important way to celebrate Chicano culture and the community at large.
“I want to send the message that the city of Santa Ana truly cares about all its residents,” she said.
Meanwhile, Alvarado, who grew up three doors down from the park, is preparing for the festivities.
“Being able to host the first Chicano Festival in El Salvador Park means a lot to me and my friends who were part of the community in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “Back then, it was the place to cruise on a Sunday afternoon. It was packed.”
On Sunday morning, Alvarado will showcase the 1969 El Camino.
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