Latino Mayors in a Yankee Town Bridged Two Cultures

Although a former Boyle Heights street kid named Antonio Villaraigosa is within striking distance of becoming Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in more than a century, he would not be the first or even the second Latino to run the City of Angels since California became a state.

That distinction belongs to two of 19th century Los Angeles’ most beloved mayors: Antonio Coronel and Cristobal Aguilar. Both were born when California was ruled by Spain. They grew up under Mexican rule and became mayors in L.A. after it became a Yankee city, bridging two cultures.

In the whipsaw ethnic and national politics of 19th century California, the two men were stalwart in their civic service and in their support of fellow Latinos.

Coronel, born in Mexico, rose from being a struggling schoolteacher to championing the cause of Native Americans. He midwifed Helen Hunt Jackson’s romantic novel “Ramona,” which alerted the nation to the wrongs done to California’s Indians.

Aguilar made his biggest political stand by vetoing a City Council decision that would have sold off Los Angeles’ water rights. His move would eventually lead to creation of the city’s Department of Water and Power.

Coronel arrived in Los Angeles as a teenager with his family in 1834. His father, Ignacio, a retired Mexican soldier, opened the pueblo’s first school in the family adobe, the town’s first tile-roofed home, near present-day Olvera Street. More than three decades later, long after the Coronels had moved from the house, the place had become a saloon, and the first victim of the notorious Chinese Massacre was shot to death on its steps.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Coronel became first a schoolteacher and then a justice of the peace, until 1846, when he joined the Mexican side in the Mexican-American War.

After the war, spurred by dreams of wealth and eager for a share of the Gold Rush riches, he led a band of Californios north to try their luck. But after some of his friends were shot or lynched in anti-Mexican violence in the Gold Rush town of Placerville, nicknamed Hangtown, he decided it was time to call it quits.

Heading home with his pockets full of gold, he quickly adapted to politics in Yankee Los Angeles, all the while insisting on speaking Spanish and practicing Mexican customs.

Coronel was 35 when he was elected to a one-year term as mayor in 1853. He next served 12 years as a city councilman, and from 1866-70 as state treasurer. During his political career he held a succession of other elected posts, including superintendent of schools and county assessor.

But when he was elected mayor, Colonel took the oath in a ceremony both religious and political. He was sworn in kneeling on a cushion before a makeshift altar surmounted by a large crucifix. Soon afterward, he established the Department of Public Works and encouraged residents to gather in the plaza at the sound of a gong and vote on city matters by a show of hands.

He tirelessly promoted civic beautification and supported the pueblo’s horticultural and historical societies, a museum and the restoration of the missions. He translated key laws into Spanish.

Considered the godfather of Los Angeles’ Mexican American community, Coronel soon emerged as the “boss” of the so-called “Mexican vote.” He was recognized and respected for his courtly manners, and for smoothing over tensions between the Spanish-speaking community and Yankee Americans.

The biggest fight of his life, however, was on behalf of Native Americans. One of his house guests was author Helen Hunt Jackson, whose 1884 novel, “Ramona,” detailed the plight of Native Americans. She acknowledged Coronel’s help and advice in making the book possible.

Three years later, he helped to write the Dawes Act, a legislative plan to establish reservations, which were then seen as a humane alternative.

But his ambitions to become the region’s federal Indian agent were squashed by local judge Benjamin Hayes. Hayes recorded that he told federal authorities that “although [Coronel] is quite popular, clever and sprightly . . . he is a Mexican by birth” and his poor command of English is a “disadvantage.”

In 1873, Coronel had built a home surrounded by vineyards and orange groves for his young bride, Mariana, on the banks of the Los Angeles River near 7th and Alameda streets. At El Recreo, the Mexican American community gathered for civic celebrations, fandangos and, finally, Coronel’s funeral in 1894, when he died at 77.

He left many legacies, including this one: Before he finished his one-year term as mayor, Coronel helped his friend Cristobal Aguilar win election as county supervisor.

In 1866, the year Coronel left the City Council, Aguilar became mayor of Los Angeles. He had already been elected a county supervisor and served four terms as a councilman alongside Coronel. First in 1866 and then in 1867 and 1870-72, he served as mayor, Los Angeles’ last Californio chief executive.

Aguilar was born in Los Angeles in the early 1820s and watched the construction of the city’s first municipal water system, which included a 40-foot waterwheel that lifted water from the main ditch to a storage tank in the plaza. Elaborate plans and costly improvements, including wooden and iron pipes, were laid. Conduits were put in, and dirt dams were put up.

But after a flood in 1868 wiped out most of those improvements, the City Council--frustrated with all the failures--washed its hands of the matter and offered the rights to the water system to the highest bidder.

Aguilar was in his second one-year term as mayor when the council approved the sale to a group of ambitious men. But Aguilar saved the city from committing a kind of suicide, defying the council and vetoing the sale.

His action made him a hero to voters. But he knew that the most important public office in Los Angeles was not the mayor. He had that title, but he also wanted the prestige of being the zanjero, the water czar, who had both power and a salary 50% higher than the mayor.

So, for several months after his second term as mayor ended, he was hired as zanjero, watching for water thieves who cut into the ditch at night and sealed it up again before dawn.

He was again elected mayor in 1870, this time for a two-year term, in a year when the Latino voter registration was about 22%--about what it is in Los Angeles today.

But the blot on Aguilar’s years as mayor was the notorious Chinese Massacre. In October 1871, as violence broke out in the town’s Chinese quarter, Aguilar rode up quietly on his horse, surveyed the turbulent scene of murder and looting, and just as quietly departed, not to be seen in public until the next day.

The rioting that raged through the town left 19 Chinese immigrants dead and led East Coast newspapers to label the city a “bloodstained Eden.”

When Aguilar ran in 1872 for a fourth term as mayor, he lost to a Yankee opponent who made a campaign issue of Aguilar’s poor English. But two years later, Aguilar was back in government, again as water czar. For four years more, he monitored the city’s ditches, doling water out here, denying it there, policing every gallon.

Aguilar died in 1886, when he fell off a stool as he was trying to adjust some curtains.

More than a century after two Spanish-speaking mayors lost the chance at political jobs because of their poor English, Villaraigosa, the man who may become their first Latino successor, has had to brush up on his Spanish.