Shut Out by Historical Amnesia : Latinos: Denied their past, these original Californians have become our political underclass.

Suffering from historical amnesia, many Angelenos continue to view Latinos as foreigners. I have heard people question the current Latino suit against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: why should “Mexicans” have representation on the board? Whites and blacks both seem to think that civil rights is not a Latino issue.

Southern Californians must know that this area once belonged to Mexico. What they apparently don’t know is the history that draws a continuous link between what happened after the United States took all of the Southwest from Mexico and today’s shutout of Latino Americans from the county Board of Supervisors.

Our schools regularly teach about the social injustices suffered by blacks in the South and by European immigrants in the Eastern cities. Few history courses mention unjust laws directed against Latinos, such as the infamous “Greaser Act,” a California anti-vagrancy law. El Clamor Publico, a newspaper published here in the 1850s, is full of accounts of lynchings and racial injustices toward Mexicans, but it is seldom seen in any course of study, nor is editor Francisco Ramirez’s call for a “Back to Mexico” movement.

The flood of Easterners, brought by the railroads in the 1880s, seems to have swept away all evidence of the Latino past. This is distressing. Los Angeles was built by the labor of Mexicans who had to live segregated in enclaves, attending separate schools and even separate churches. From the beginning, they formed self-help groups, labor associations and libraries in an effort to change this inequality. They gathered in the old plaza at Olvera Street, organizing against injustices in Mexico and Los Angeles. They held this political space in the face of incessant police sweeps, eventually forcing local authorities to designate free-speech areas in the plaza.

Lost in L.A.’s history is the forced repatriation of more than 75,000 Mexicans, a majority of them U.S.-born children, during the Great Depression. Or the fact that lawful school segregation was ended in California in a 1946 suit (Mendez vs. Westminster School District) filed by Mexicans in Orange County.

Because of Luis Valdez’s play, some Angelenos know about the Sleepy Lagoon murder case (1942) and the zoot-suit riots (1943). Fewer are familiar with Latino contributions during the war years: Ysmael R. Villegas of the Casablanca colonia of Riverside and David Gonzales of Pacoima were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Guy Lou Gabaldon, raised on the Eastside, single-handedly captured over 1,000 Japanese soldiers on Saipan. In the Korean War, the medal was awarded to Eugene A. Obregon of Los Angeles (posthumously) and Joseph C. Rodriguez of San Bernardino. In all, 17 Mexican Americans received this highest military honor for valor during those wars while thousands more gave their lives in defense of a country that saw them as foreigners.

In pursuit of empowerment, in 1949 Mexican Americans elected Edward R. Roybal to the Los Angeles City Council. Roybal’s civil-rights record has no equal in the city’s history, where he led the fight for fair employment and against urban renewal and police brutality.

What happened to Roybal after that demonstrates the mistakes that can be made when a city ignores its history. Democratic Party leaders lost a golden opportunity to forge a liberal black and Latino political coalition when they abandoned Roybal in his 1958 supervisorial race, in which he was the victim of widespread voter intimidation and fraud. When Roybal was elected to Congress in 1962, Westside liberals appointed Gilbert Lindsay, a black, to his place on the City Council, then redrew that district, making it impossible for a Latino to be elected to the council for another next 23 years.

Viewing society through a black-white television screen, white liberals excluded Latinos from early anti-poverty programs. Only the militancy of Chicano youth in the latter part of the ‘60s forced a re-evaluation. It was not until 1970 that Latinos were classified as an “identifiable ethnic minority with a pattern of discrimination.” A consequence of historical amnesia is that it encourages the invention of a false reality, perpetuating the illusion of social and political equality. According to Julian Nava, who was on the Los Angeles school board from 1967 to 1979, the critical under-servicing of Latinos is a result of their under-representation. Alan Clayton, formerly of the L. A. County Chicano Employees Assn., estimates that just over 18% of the county’s work force is Latino, while their projected population is about 35%.

When considering their community, Angelenos should remember that they do not live in New York or Atlanta or Washington, D.C. Undoubtedly, a remapping of the county supervisor districts threatens many interest groups. But, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Equality cannot be achieved by maintaining a political underclass in the city of Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles.