1910 Mexican Revolution Changed Face of Southland

On Sundays in the old days, the whole family gathered at the Southern California chicken ranch to hear the old man tell tales of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. They sat around the fire, children and grandchildren of Rosario Zarate Torres, once a teenage recruit of Pancho Villa.

The old man’s memory of the social upheaval was phenomenal--dates, places, full names. But most riveting were the stories of what he had lived through: the cruel violence witnessed as a child, the disillusionment of a poorly paid and illiterate recruit, and the arduous journey north to settle in El Modena, a pastoral patch of land adjacent to what would later become a city called Orange.

Rosario and his wife, Esperanza Luna, whose family also fled the revolution, were among the pioneers of El Modena, one of Southern California’s historic working-class barrios. Their lives spanned a century that opened with its first major revolution, in Mexico, predating the Bolshevik uprising in Russia by seven years.

The revolt in Mexico sought to overthrow the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz, who had held power for more than 30 years. The economy had improved under his iron-fisted leadership, but most Mexicans remained poor and uneducated.

The chaos led to years of internecine conflicts. Two major revolutionary leaders pushed for radical reforms--Pancho Villa in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the south. Both were assassinated, and the revolutionary goals of land reform were not fully implemented until the 1930s under President Lazaro Cardenas.

The prolonged violence in Mexico would have profound effects on Southern California as well, sparking waves of immigration to the United States. The migration soared in the 1920s, when more than half a million Mexicans came here, compared with 31,000 in the decade before the revolution.

In those days, immigrants like Rosario and Esperanza found it easy to cross the border, paying a small immigration fee for newfound freedom and a more secure future. All across the Southwest, you can still meet elderly Mexicans who migrated in the wake of their country’s terrible troubles.

The Torreses recently passed away, both in their 90s. They left behind more than 125 descendants--”and we have three more coming,” says Carol L. Torres, one of the couple’s eight children. Among the clan are a pediatrician, teachers, a musician, engineers and business owners. They are Americans today, thanks to a foreign revolution their forefathers fled.

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The story of Rosario and Esperanza was recorded by one of their granddaughters, Bella Ariaz, for a high school English project. The resulting audiotapes remain a family treasure.

Esperanza Luna came from Michoacan, in Mexico’s fertile central region. The family lived off the land, raising corn, wheat and beans, and making their own cheese and butter. They also had a store that sold staples along with fabrics imported from Europe.

The family’s relative prosperity made it target for kidnappers, who twice took Esperanza’s grandfather. When he was finally released, the once chubby man was bony and covered in sores.

To recover and let things die down, he brought his family to El Modena, where other relatives had already settled around the turn of the century. He crossed the border in 1918 with his family, including his son, Nabor Luna, and Nabor’s four children, one of whom was 12-year-old Esperanza.

“And we’ve been here ever since, all these years,” Esperanza says in Spanish on the tape.

That same year, Rosario made a similar trek by train to the border. In 1916, he had signed up to fight with Villa. The fresh recruit was a boy of 18 who had just lost his father. At that age, he recalls on the tape, he wasn’t sure what he was fighting for. Later, with Villa’s forces routed, he decided to come north, traveling through dangerous stretches of northern Mexico.

“Along the way, everywhere there were people who had been hanged, almost on every post,” recalled Rosario.

He told of paying $8 to cross the border legally. Immigrants also needed a letter from their hometown mayor vouching that “they weren’t bad people,” he said.

Rosario and Esperanza, who were childhood friends, met again in El Modena and got married in 1922. They did not return to Mexico until after their 50th anniversary, traveling to their towns of origin in a large American motor home. But the trip didn’t sit well with Rosario, who couldn’t stomach the food or the politics.

He yearned to go home to El Modena.

“I want to die in my country,” he would say.