Photos: The Bracero Program in Ventura County

I finally have time to continue my research for my manuscript! It seem that every time when I’m searching the local newspapers, I always come around great photos or articles of the history of Mexicans on the Oxnard Plain. This time when I was searching for articles on “school segregation,” I came around the following photos on local Braceros during the final years of the Bracero Program. 

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Source: The Press-Courier, 11 Jun 1963

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Source: The Press-Courier, 19 Oct 1963

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Source: The Press-Courier, 13 Nov 1964

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A Sense of Place: La Colonia & Bonita Avenue

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“Public histories provide meaning to places.” David Glassberg, Sense of History, 18

Being an academic migrant, I always find myself searching for a sense of place, the feeling of home. Home being the location of your childhood or family memories. For me this place is La Colonia, especially Bonita Avenue.

The following is a extract from my manuscript (rough draft) focusing on my mother’s life in La Colonia.

Throughout the years, I have had many conversations with my mother, Gloria about her life growing up in La Colonia. She has shared stories of migration, culture and community. Her understanding of these experiences shaped her identity as a Mexican. In this post, I share my mother’s reflection on growing up in La Colonia through her interaction with her family and community.

My mother, Gloria was born in 1952 in a one-story house in the Colonia Village’s housing project on Bernarda Court in La Colonia. Her father Carlos was a packinghouse worker and her mother Margarita was a housewife. She was the second child of Margarita and Carlos, whose family included two more children from a previous marriage. In 1956, she moved from the housing project to her grandfather’s house on Bonita Avenue.

My mother attended grammar school in La Colonia; Ramona School is only four houses down from her home. Juanita School is only two blocks away. It was not until the mid-1960s, that she attended a school outside her neighborhood. In 1970, she graduated from high school and one-year later she married my father, Louie.

Her understanding of culture, migration, and community has shaped her identity. Historian Juan Gómez-Quiñones states “culture is learned rather than ‘instinctive,’ or biological.” My mother learned to identify as Mexican from her parents and community. Throughout her life, her Mexican identity has been questioned by American society because she does not “look Mexican” due to her light skin, freckles and reddish hair.

During one conversation with my mother, I asked her the following question: have you been treated differently due to the color of your skin? She responded with the following story; as a child, she recalled going to events in downtown Oxnard with her grandfather, Jose. Individuals at those events would ask her grandfather if he was baby-sitting her. Their remarks frustrated her grandfather for they did not just come from Whites, but also from Mexicans. Listening to those comments introduced my mother to how people in the United States use skin color to define race, ethnicity, and nationality.

Eventually, my mother came to an understanding that many people do not see her as being Mexican. But she explained that the color of her skin did not make her Mexican, instead her history and her community did, and for most of her life, she has lived in La Colonia. Her neighborhood has influenced her culture and her history, shaped by many generations of migration.

This discussion of a family history and of migration does not have an ending. Growing up in La Colonia has affected the way my mother sees herself and the way she has raised her sons. In her heart and mind, the little house on Bonita Avenue has always been home and community to her, no matter if she did not live there. Those experiences have defined my mother’s life. She sees the world differently now. She sees the need to be a defender of her community, an activist who informs her community about their human and civil rights. My mother continues to play a role in supporting and participating in the struggle to end the brutalization, marginalization, and segregation of the Mexican community in Oxnard, California.

It is important to mention, it was a sad day for my mother on September 2012, as she turned off the lights and closed the door knowing she would never return to her grandfather’s house again. But it was time to move on after years of personal struggles with numerous family members over the direction of the property.

In the end, my mother took with her the memories of struggles, happiness, and love. And no one can take those memories anyway!

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Violence on the Oxnard Plain: The Oxnard Police Department and the Mexican Community

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Local Mural at the corner of Cooper Rd and Hayes Ave in La Colonia, 2012

“Who writes for his people ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope.” Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 232

It is important to mention, as I focus my research and writing on the history of Mexicans in La Colonia it’s not a random topic to me. My mother’s family migrated into the Oxnard Plain during the 1930s as agricultural workers. They first settled in the free abode housing off 5th Street, then moved into the Meta Street neighborhood near Oxnard Blvd. And finally buying a lot in La Colonia in 1940s.

I have deep roots in Oxnard and La Colonia. Also, my research and writing is connected to my twenty years as a community organizer! I have first-hand knowledge of police brutality in my neighborhood.

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Searching the local newspaper microfilms at the local library, 2009

I have spend many years collecting materials on the history of Mexicans on the Oxnard Plain. In that time, I spend hours in the microfilm room in the local library examining the local newspaper, the Oxnard Press-Courier (OPC) My goal was to develop a historical timeline by utilizing the local newspaper as a primary source in the development of the Mexican community in Oxnard, especially La Colonia neighborhood.

As I connected the dots in linking the Mexican community to numerous struggles in labor, politics, and education, it became clear to me that the local newspaper also played another part in the historical narrative. The OPC was utilized to construct stereotypes of the Mexican community! Over and over in the pages of the local newspaper, city officials, growers, police chiefs & officers, and other community members labeled Mexicans as criminals, uneducated, or as disposable labor!

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Source: “300 Mexicans Swarm After Ramirez Arrest” The Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 Dec 1934

And those stereotypes continue into today. As the local newspaper spread those stereotypes, the Oxnard Police Department (OPD) played a important part as the enforcer by using violence toward the Mexican community.

It is very clear that the OPD is not our friend! This can be seen in the police killing of Robert Ramirez and Alfonso Limon within the last eight months of 2012. So, it is important to support the organizing of the Todo Poder Al Pueblo, Union del Barrio and other organizations in their mission to expose the crimes of the OPD!

Please read the following article on the current violence against the Mexican community; “No Justice, No Peace”: The People of Oxnard Continue to Gather Strength in the Fight Against Police Brutality. Also, check out the following videos.

The violence toward the Mexican community is not new to Oxnard it has a historical past.

The following is a extract from my manuscript (rough draft) highlighting some of the tension and violence toward the Mexican community during the 1940s & 1950s by the OPD.

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Source: “Police use tear gas against local crowd,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 Feb 1942

In the Mexican neighborhoods of Oxnard during the 1940s, tension and conflict continued between the police, growers, and Mexicans. This tension could be seen in the way the Oxnard Police Department (OPD) interacted with the overall Mexican working-class community. The OPD was utilized as the enforcer of Oxnard’s power structure to keep Mexicans in their place or neighborhoods. A clear example of enforcement occurred on January 31, 1942 in the Meta Street neighborhood, as the police threw tear gas into a crowd of working-class Mexicans, who were watching people dancing in the street. The police labeled it a riot and arrested a number of Mexicans for disturbing the peace.

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Source: “Police quell Colonia riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 Apr 1955

Conflicts between the police and Mexicans continued into the 1950s with a number of so-called riots. In 1955, the police responded to a fight off Cooper Road in La Colonia, which sparked a clash between the police and residents. The tension led to a number of residents throwing bottles and spitting & cursing at the police. The police responded by throwing a teargas bomb into the crowd of two hundred residents. In the end, one police car was damaged.

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Source: “5 men, 5 teenagers arrested in rioting, several injured,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 Aug 1956

The following years, another police riot rocked La Colonia. On August 26, 1956, more than one thousand residents were attending a church bazaar sponsored by the Christ the King Church on Cooper Road. The riot was touched off by the arrest of Richard Madrid, a few blocks away from the bazaar. Again, like the previous riot, tension between the police and residents led to the police being bombarded with rocks, beer cans, and bottles from the crowd. The police responded by launching more than 50 tear gas bombs into the crowd. In its aftermath, several officers and residents were injured and ten individuals were arrested, with five being juveniles. They were charged with disturbing the peace and failure to disperse. Police Chief Carl Hartmeyer stated, “we had to break the riot up and since the mob wouldn’t disperse, we had to use drastic measures. I’ll say this: tear gas is a lot better than shotguns.”

Sources: “Police use tear gas against local crowd,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 Feb 1942; “Police quell Colonia riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 Apr 1955; “5 men, 5 teenagers arrested in rioting, several injured,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 Aug 1956; Juan Soria, Interview by Frank Bradacke Oxnard, Ca, 25 Jan 1996.

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