Sweet, Sad Latino Life of Yesterday : Fiestas, Segregation and Strikes Depicted in a New Exhibit at the Historical Society Museum

It took Ernie Gutierrez some time to figure out what puzzled him about the El Monte Historical Society Museum. Then one day it hit: Mexican-Americans have lived in El Monte for more than a century, yet the museum had few exhibits or photos depicting that thriving ethnic group.

Gutierrez, an El Monte City Councilman, set out to change that. He formed a committee and went door-to-door, soliciting historic photos that depicted family life, community events and the cultural heritage of the city’s Latinos, who comprise 72.5% of the population.

People responded enthusiastically. They ransacked old photo albums and attic boxes. They pulled out sepia-toned portraits of Latino businesses, stern Mexican patriarchs, Independence Day fiestas, school outings, weddings, picnics by the Los Angeles River, and life in the old El Monte barrios of Los Flores, Media Camp and Hicks Camp.

Most of the barrios were razed years ago and live only in photographs, in aging memories and in some cases, in the adoptive names of local gangs.

“I’ve always wanted to do something that addressed what we’re about,” Gutierrez said last week, as he and a group of volunteers set up the exhibit, which opens today. “It’s good not only for our kids to know, but for the people, that we go back a long way.”

Teresa Krist, the museum’s curator, acknowledges that “there’s not really a balance” when it comes to commemorating Indian and Mexican-American contributions in El Monte, the oldest settlement in the San Gabriel Valley. Krist, who became curator 10 months ago, says the new exhibit is an attempt to remedy that.

The museum had the air of a reunion last week as old friends and relatives gathered to sort, paste and mount photos. People exclaimed over faded faces and places they had not seen for half a century.

There, standing larger than life on her front porch, stood the imposing Zenaida (Sadie) Castro, holding the camera’s gaze as imperiously as she held off the union busters in 1933, when the Mexican-American berry pickers went on strike for higher wages.

“She was one of the few people who spoke English back then,” said Patty Holguin, 65. “She had some Indian blood in her. She was feisty, and she would boss her husband around. There was no bumbling around her.

“She used to cook rice and beans and take it to the people who were striking,” Holguin said. “There was no type of union then, the way Cesar Chavez has now.”

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There is a portrait of “Los Madrugadores,” subtitled “the first Mexican group to play on live radio in Los Angeles.” The three men holding flamenco guitars and three smiling female singers leaning over a balustrade above them were all from El Monte.

Holguin, Connie Munoz and Gutierrez were three of 10 siblings who grew up in Hicks Camp, at what is today the intersection of Valley Boulevard and Arden Drive. From 1938 to about 1968, their father, Ignacio, ran a small grocery store there called “La Nacional.”

In the 1970s, the county razed the area to make way for redevelopment. Now, a school, light industry and houses occupy the area.

Yet the demise of Hicks Camp doesn’t leave everyone teary-eyed.

“I was glad to get out,” Munoz said. “There was a lot of juvenile delinquency, and Dad got held up repeatedly. My dad trusted them; he used to help a lot of those people, give them credit. It used to bug the heck out of me.”

There was also segregation. The Mexican-Americans clustered in the barrios because they were prohibited from moving to more affluent Anglo parts of town.

Holguin and Munoz recalled that Mexican- and Japanese-American children attended Lexington School, where there were no Anglos. With separate cultures and languages, however, the two ethnic groups didn’t mingle much.

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“I thought it was so weird to see the food they ate, just as they probably thought we were weird with our tacos,” Holguin recalled.

Bill Munoz, 56, owner of an El Monte florist shop, said segregation was not limited to the schools.

“There were two movie houses, and most of the Mexican people went to the Valley Theater,” he said. “If we went to the El Monte Theater, they used to segregate us, the Mexican people on one side, the whites on the other.”

Munoz, whose parents were farm workers, recalled the fields of walnuts, corn and strawberries that stretched for miles in the San Gabriel Valley. By the time he reached high school, segregation had already started to give way. “I used to have girlfriends who were white,” he said. “That was a no-no, but I used to play football, and when you play football, you’re popular, and it doesn’t matter.”

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The Latinos remember happy times. In the 1930s, they swam and picnicked in the rivers, before their banks were paved with concrete. They went dancing behind the church in Hicks Camp and did the “Pachuco Hop,” Gutierrez recalled. They caught rides to school on the slow-moving rail trains.

The assembled Latinos, most in their 50s and 60s, also uncovered several photos of Father John Coffield, a Catholic priest who spoke fluent Spanish and left a deep imprint on the teen-agers by urging them to stay in school.

“He influenced the youth tremendously,” Holguin said. “He told them to go into accounting instead of auto shop. Ernie, Joey, Ben, they all went to college, and it was a first. He kept them from going off the deep end.”

Today, many of the once unruly children are successful business people and civic leaders. Gutierrez said that as a child, he never dreamed he would become a city councilman in his hometown.

Munoz cherishes the memories, but he is glad the barrio is gone. “There’s no such thing left now,” Munoz says. “Thank God our kids don’t have to go through that. Now everybody lives all over.”

About the Exhibit

“Mexican-American Photo Exhibit”

Noon to 4 p.m. today and Tuesday through Friday; through Oct. 31

El Monte Historical Society Museum, 3150 N. Tyler Ave.

Admission is free. For more information, call (818) 444-3813.