Escondido Canyon Homeowners: Racists or Realists?

I can’t comment on the prejudices or lack thereof of specific individuals who are homeowners in Escondido Canyon (“Public Access to Canyon Area Debated,” May 6), but Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy director Joe Edmiston ought to be a little less careless throwing around his own epithets, saying that “these folks are flat-out racists” because fears were expressed that the area would be impacted by school buses full of children “from East L.A.”

There’s another area in the Santa Monica Mountains that is graced with a waterfall--Santa Ynez Canyon--and as few as 10 years ago that cascade was a spot of wonderful, pristine beauty where nature lovers could experience an environment entirely free of urban blight. Now, after a decade of opening up Santa Ynez canyon to “nature walks” for busloads of ethnically diverse schoolchildren--nothing inherently wrong with that--the area has changed dramatically. Unlike 1983, in 1993 visitors to the Santa Ynez falls are apprised, in large spray-painted letters that deface the canyon walls, that “Chico” and “Tito” (presumably not a relative of the former Yugoslav dictator) were there, and that somebody whose initials are “RG” loves “Juanita.” Unfortunately there’s a lot more to read about than that, for those who understand Spanish.

That’s not plain and simple racism. That’s a plain and simple fact. So when the homeowners of Escondido Canyon invoke “East L.A.” in referring to this problem, Edmiston should be aware that it is not empty-headed prejudice but informed metaphor that may be the underlying motivation. It ain’t the Irish sullying our canyon walls with spray paint, and evidently some “folks” in Escondido Canyon know it. Too bad the director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy doesn’t.

Thousands upon thousands of responsible Hispanics roam the Santa Monica Mountains leaving nothing but footprints and taking nothing but pictures. It is not anti-Hispanic racism to identify a serious graffiti problem with its virtually monolithically Hispanic etiology. Saying we ought to keep “East L.A.” out of the mountains has a real meaning. Anybody who wants to know what it is ought to visit Boyle Heights sometime and take a look at the walls and the sides of buildings. For hikers who have explored the once-unspoiled recesses of Santa Ynez Canyon, what they see will be lamentably familiar.

JULIAN J. MALTESE

Santa Monica