Is Heritage in the Eye of the Majority?

The word Placentia, a local history tells us, means “delightful situation” or “pleasant place.” Talk about a town not living up to its name.

Politics has been less than delightful in this growing burg of 50,000 people surrounded by larger cities such as Fullerton, the college town, and Anaheim, the happy place.

Placentia provides its own amusement, though you can’t call it family fun. During last year’s local elections, some joker named Tony Khamo bought the domain rights to Web sites under the names of three City Council members. He then tried to sell rights to Councilwoman Maria Moreno, who turned him down. So the trickster sold Moreno’s Web address to somebody else featuring adult entertainment with her name, though not her image.

“This is like a big soap opera,” said Moreno, who told me Friday that she had reported the strange incident to police, but no charges were ever filed.

I couldn’t locate Khamo for comment. He previously told a reporter that he didn’t like Moreno’s politics because she supposedly played up to Latino voters. I guess he prefers his politics in the mud.

Moreno, the city’s first Latina mayor, who served 11 years on the council, also had to sue to keep her name on the ballot last year, following a filing deadline flap. She won in court, so her opponents sued to stop her. The mess became moot when Moreno lost the election by 2 percentage points. The council members are all Anglo, again.

Placentia’s porno politics was only a sideshow, however. The big brawl has been over the city’s annual civic celebration, the Heritage Day Festival and Parade. Last year, for the first time in its 36-year history, the October event was moved from the older, Latino south side of town to the newer and whiter north side.

The decision shook the city along its ethnic fault line, Chapman Avenue. The political tremors are still reverberating through the community.

South of the thoroughfare live many of the city’s Mexican American residents, descendants of packinghouse workers in the old town area now called Placita Santa Fe, after the railroad that served as the township’s early economic lifeline.

Old town residents and their allies rallied last year to keep the event close to its roots at Kraemer Park. They gathered 800 petition signatures, got support from four former mayors and a Placentia-born bishop, and packed meetings at City Hall. Finally this month, they resorted to an old-style street demonstration to protest the changes.

“I can’t believe that a parade could become an issue that’s so divisive,” Moreno said. “Everybody’s lost the focus of what the parade is about, which is bringing people together.”

Festival ‘Means So Much’ to South Siders

City officials moved the October festival to Tri-City Park at the northernmost edge of Placentia, where the city meets Brea and Fullerton. Their reason: The festival needed more room and the parade needed to draw more bands to compete from other areas. Despite a protest march by a south-side group called Save Our Heritage, a council majority last week voted to keep the festival on the north end again this year. Efforts to compromise on the parade route deadlocked.

Proponents of the move argued that the south side shouldn’t hog the city’s heritage. It belongs to everybody, including newcomers settling in new subdivisions built where fields and orchards used to be.

“Heritage is an ongoing process,” Councilman Scott Brady was quoted as saying this week.

Hmmm. I never thought of it that way. But maybe Brady’s right.

Spaniards on horseback take over Tenochtitlan, wipe out the Aztec ruling class, raze the temples and erect cathedrals on the ruins, changing the name of the conquered capital to Mexico City.

Presto. A whole new heritage.

Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock and have dinner with the Indians, who are later slaughtered along with the buffalo. Survivors of the genocide are moved to reservations.

Another new heritage is born.

Yes, it’s a process, driven at times by force and violence. So one man’s heritage can be another man’s heresy.

That’s why people feel so strongly about where Placentia holds its Heritage Days. Any move signals change. It means the city is redefining itself. It also hints at who’s in control.

So it’s really not about a parade at all.

“It has to do with de-mo-cra-cy!” said businessman Gil Enriquez, accentuating each syllable. “The people in power are not listening to the people they represent.”

At least, not to all the people, added Bill Zavala, a Save Our Heritage organizer.

City officials “just don’t get it, that it means so much to the people here,” said Zavala, a third-generation Placentia resident whose grandparents came from Mexico at the turn of the century. “They’re saying, ‘We’ll tell you where heritage is and where to celebrate it.’ ”

To the city’s Mexican-Americans, he says, heritage has nothing to do with owning property, developing industry or leaving surnames on streets and monuments. They were too poor for that. They see heritage through family and remembrances. It has to do with respect for elders and customs handed down through generations.

To them, it’s not a process, it’s tradition.

“The only monuments the residents have are the packing sheds,” said Enriquez, who joined Zavala and me for lunch at old town’s El Farolita.

A Walk on the Historic Side

Afterward, Zavala led me on a tour of the neighborhood.

“This is where the town began, right here,” he said, standing at the corner of Bradford and Santa Fe, across from the site of the old train station. A shame they tore it down, he said.

He pointed out the location of the old packinghouses, the neighborhood market and the long-gone movie theater where his father saw singer Pedro Infante perform. He showed me where his grandmother operated a restaurant for migrant workers. That’s where his mother, Anita Ramirez, met his father, Jose Zavala, who worked as a forklift operator for 25 years.

We walked up Melrose, a street that may as well have his name on it, so many relatives lived there. His father still does.

“I like my roots and the people I grew up with,” said Zavala, who enjoys painting, surfing and singing rock and R&B; in garage bands. “I made a commitment to myself that I would honor them, and my way of honoring them is to make sure that Placentia is always properly represented.”

He and others have organized a Placentia chapter of Los Amigos, the Orange County advocacy group. They plan to register voters and run candidates for office.

The fight over the festival, Zavala said, “is galvanizing the community to speak up, to get represented for the future.”

“The fire is lit,” agreed Enriquez.

Democracy is a process, too. Call it heritage in the making.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.