OXNARD : City Renames Street but Not After Chavez

A months-long effort to change the name of a La Colonia street was approved Tuesday, but not before Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez and several residents tried to get the roadway renamed for the late Cesar Chavez.

Two weeks ago, the City Council tentatively approved a plan to change the street name from Camino de la Raza to Camino del Sol after residents requested it. But since then, Lopez said, more than 1,200 people, including many of those who live on the street, asked that it be named for Chavez.

The 1,200 signatures represent roughly three times as many people who lobbied earlier that the street be renamed Camino del Sol, Lopez said.

The mayor and two Oxnard residents on Tuesday urged the council to rethink their approval earlier this month and instead name the street in honor of Chavez, the late farm worker advocate whose boyhood home was in La Colonia.

“When Cesar visited this area, many politicians wanted to be around him,” said Carlos Aguilera. “What a way now to honor him.”

The rest of the council refused the proposal.

But Councilman Thomas E. Holden said he would support naming a future street after the United Farm Workers organizer--most likely in the northeast part of the city that is now being laid out for development.

Lopez voted against naming the street Camino del Sol on Tuesday.

Oxnard resident Miguel Espinosa, responding to Holden’s proposal, said the city has no business naming a street after Chavez in that area.

“That’s baloney,” he said. “It’s got to be there (in La Colonia).”