The beautiful thing about art is that it has no limitations when it comes to style, look, feel and location. Art, just as beauty itself, is limitless in all of its parameters and, as always, beauty is within the eye of the beholder. But to take things one step further, art is better taken with a dose of education and this is where it really counts.Behind any really great art piece or gallery is a story which adds value. Not once has there ever been a successful piece of art (or art collection) which has no interesting factual information and Chicano Park in San Diego, California, is no different.
Chicano Park was founded on April 22, 1970 when the community of Barrio Logan and Chicano movement activists joined forces to protest the construction of a Highway Patrol station on the present site of the park. The construction of the Highway Patrol office was (at that particular time) the final insult to that community. Prior to that, the community had already suffered a series of other atrocities such as:
1. The demolition of hundreds of homes to make way for the Interstate 5 freeway.
2. The building of the Coronado Bridge which also ran through their properties.
3. The placement of toxic industries and junkyards.
4. The lack of community facilities, proper schools, jobs, social or medical services.
Sick of being violated, the community got together and formed a protest group which was led by the Brown Berets, community activists, artists and MEChA. They took over the site and confronted police and the construction crew while negotiations took place. This took place for a few days. The end result, to make a long story short, was that the land was given back over to the community for a park. In the following days and months, similar actions by the same groups led to the forming of a Chicano Free Clinic, now known as the Logan Heights Family Health Center, and the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park.The struggle for Chicano Park would eventually symbolize the hard work and concern of the residents and serve as a landmark to the Chicano/Mexicano peoples' struggle for self-determination and self-empowerment. Throughout the park you will find paintings by Chicano artists such as Victor Ochoa, Mario Torero, Yolanda Lopez, Jos Montoya, Sal Barajas, Juanishi Orozco, Berenice Badillo, Carmen Linares and many others. Their works portray and represent themes that are based off of socio-cultural issues, which in the end paint a picture of the struggle for the liberation of Chicanos.
HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT CHICANO PARK
Barrio Logan, in southeast San Diego, is referred to as el ombligo or navel, the center of the world. In the late 1800s, the area had been known as East End; the name had been changed to Logan Heights in 1905. Mexican Americans had settled in the area as early as the 1890s with migrations increasing from 1910 to 1920 as a result of a poor economy in Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Within the mixed ethnic community, the number of Mexican Americans within Logan Heights reached 15 percent of the city's Mexican American population by 1940.At one point in its history, Logan Heights had contained the "second largest Chicano barrio community on the West Coast, with a population of almost 20,000." After WWII, the barrio began to change physically. In the 1950s, the zoning laws had been changed by the city of San Diego, from residential to industrial, allowing the influx of Anglo-owned auto junkyards.
In 1963, Interstate 5 bisected the barrio. In 1969, the Coronado Bay Bridge opened with its on-ramps and support pylons piercing the heart of the barrio. By 1979, the population of the barrio had declined to approximately 5,000 residents. City, state and federal governments had dictated the policies of change in Barrio Logan. Residents had not realized that they could petition the City Council and express their opinions; there had been no local discussions regarding community and neighborhood planning.Chicano Park became Historical Site #143 in San Diego. Chicano artists wanted to paint murals in Chicano Park. They wanted to express their identity as Indian/Spanish European/American. The second phase of their struggle had begun. Absorbing the lessons learned from the park takeover, these artists organized their ideas and themselves, negotiated with public officials. In 1973, bright colors began to replace the lifeless gray concrete surfaces in Barrio Logan.An exhibit of the murals had been displayed in Mexico City in 1983; and a tour guide from Germany stressed the three most important artistic sites in California: The Mud Flats in San Francisco, Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and Chicano Park in San Diego. The funny thing is that the Chicano Park murals were not supported by San Diego's tourist industry back in the day.
In June of 1992, the Commission for Arts and Culture issued a press release regarding the completion of the restoration process of eleven murals. With "41 gallons of paint, 64 brushes, 9 gallons of varnish, and a ton of `elbow grease' the first phase of the process had been completed on what is considered the largest, most important collection of outdoor murals in the country."
*As referenced from www.chicanoparksandiego.com