Conflict Flares at a Site of Peace : History: Discord arises over art planned for subway station near treaty-signing spot. Inclusion of Mayan designs questioned.

In 1847, the Campo de Cahuenga was a site of peace, the place where Mexican and U.S. leaders settled their California hostilities.

Today, it is a site of conflict--over how to observe, within a subway station, the events of more than a century ago.

The dispute these days centers on an artist’s plans to adorn the walls and pillars inside the future Universal City Metro Rail station. The subway stop won’t open for at least five years, but the plans already have drawn protests from a local historical society.

Margaret Garcia De La Paz, selected by community leaders to craft artwork for the station incorporating local history--including the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga near the site--said she decided to depict not only the peace accord, but also Native American culture about the time the California missions flourished. In addition, her preliminary artwork includes brilliantly colored porcelain-on-steel and cast-iron designs that incorporate Mayan symbols on pillars and handrails.

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Leaders of the 47-year-old Campo De Cahuenga Historical Memorial Assn. say the use of Mayan art is inappropriate, and fear that De La Paz intends to paint the destruction of local tribes--as well as the signing of the peace agreement--as the domination of whites over other races.

“The Mayans had zip to do with the Valley,” said Jim Gulbranson, curator of the historical association, which commemorated the signing of the treaty with a re-enactment Sunday.

Guy Weddington McCreary, president of the group and an influential Studio City real estate developer whose ancestors helped settle the area, similarly accuses De La Paz of engaging in “revisionist history.” He wants the station to reflect the treaty’s significant place in U.S. history--how it led to California statehood and exemplified the mid-1800s concept of America’s Manifest Destiny.

De La Paz, who is collaborating with Los Angeles architect Kate Diamond on the project, says the criticism is unwarranted and premature.

“People attack when they are afraid,” said De La Paz, who is of Mexican and Native American heritage.

“It’s easy to say, ‘This site is where we conquered California.’ But there is more to it. Let’s recognize the people who lived here before. I’m trying to be inclusive. This site deals with my culture, including Gen. Andres Pico, who signed the treaty on behalf of the Mexican government. And . . . there are other peoples to be remembered too.”

De La Paz said she and Diamond agreed to use the Mayan “G” symbol, which represents infinity, as a recurring motif on tiles in the station simply because it could be easily placed on both walls and pillars. The design looks like a string of capital Gs.

“It’s a flexible, striking symbol, and we liked the way it looked,” Diamond said.

Maya Emsden, the MTA’s art director, said a diverse community advisory group unanimously selected De La Paz in a process designed to prevent a single individual or organization from controlling the artwork.

But the debate has simmered since October, when McCreary sent letters to MTA commissioners explaining the association’s concerns.

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Members of the group, which led efforts to construct an adobe building on the site where the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed, said they deserve the right to review De La Paz’s renderings.

Jim Berg, former publisher of a North Hollywood arts magazine and a member of the community panel that selected De La Paz, described the dispute as “a classic confrontation of two historical images of Los Angeles.”

“On one hand, there’s the booster image of Los Angeles as the land of opportunity. It says the missions brought God to the Indians, who were passive and agrarian,” he said. “And then there is a different interpretation--that Indians were basically forced onto the missions, that it was virtual slave labor and that it made them susceptible to diseases that very quickly wiped them out.”

Berg and others said De La Paz’s willingness to look at history through a different lens made her work appealing.

But some members of the historical association, including McCreary, who served on the MTA’s advisory group for the station and is a fourth-generation scion of Valley settlers, do not see it that way. McCreary was not a member of the artist selection panel.

“Some people are saying, ‘We’ll find out what really happened here,’ ” McCreary said. “That bothers me, because we know what happened here.”

He said he feels compelled to speak out “before it’s too late.”

De La Paz said she is willing to talk with McCreary or anyone else. She noted that she has asked Bill Mason, former curator of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, to review the wording of the narrative that will accompany her work.

She also is reading history books, manuscripts and articles--including one written by McCreary--as background for the narrative, which she will write.

“She wants to know what’s phony and what’s real about the history that she’s been reading,” Mason said. “The problem in Los Angeles is, we’ve been blighted by chamber of commerce historians. For example, it’s a prevailing self-conceit on part of Americans that they were liberating California by signing the treaty (of Cahuenga). The U.S weren’t really liberators. There were very few in California who wanted annexation. The area was 95% settled by Mexicans.”

Observed De La Paz: “Sometime in 1995, maybe we can attain the same level of civility that was attained in 1847 when the treaty was signed. It was an honorable peace. That much, we all agree to.”