“We were here before California was a state”: Talking Latino history with Jose Rivera

[Music] You're listening to East Bay yesterday. This show is about history, but it's not stuck in the past. [Music] Hi everybody, welcome back to another East Bay yesterday. I'm your host, Liam O'Donohue. I've been doing this show for a few years now, and one of the questions I get asked fairly often is about where people can find more about Oakland's Latino history. And there's not really a single resource that provides a great overview. It's a huge topic, of course. There could be a whole series of books or documentaries about just the early Mexican communities in the East Bay, for example. So that's why I wanted to talk with Jose Rivera, an independent historian who runs a project called Oakland Latinos Unidos. Right now, it's an Instagram page, Facebook group, and a YouTube channel where Jose shares all kinds of images and stories about Latino, primarily Chicano history. Jose is hoping to turn all his notes into a book someday. And speaking of notes, we did this interview at a picnic table in Oakland, San Antonio Park, not far from where Jose grew up. And he came prepared with rare out-of-print books and photos and stacks and stacks of folders full of newspaper clippings and all kinds of information because our plan was to cover a lot of territory. We start by talking about the Deanza expedition, which happened long before California was even part of the United States and go all the way up through the gang wars that Jose lived through as a young man. In between, we touch on everything from Praceros to Zootzuts and yeah, it would be impossible to capture everything. But we try to hit on some of the pivotal moments in the history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Oakland to give you guys a kind of crash course. That being said, there's so much we don't cover. So I would encourage anyone who's interested to do your own research. And if you find something interesting, the Oakland wiki always has room for more stories and anyone can contribute. Okay, thanks again for listening to East Bay yesterday. Here's my interview with Jose Rivera of Oakland Latinos Unitos. Can you introduce yourself and maybe talk a little bit about the project that you started? Okay, so my name is Jose Rivera. I'm originally from Oakland born and raised in Oakland. I grew up in the Fruit Valley area around East Seven Street, which is down there by Jingle Town. I lived around Oakland as well. I lived on 82nd Avenue before I lived on 35th Ave. I've also moved around the Bay Area. I've lived in Vallejo. I've lived in Sacramento and I've lived in Richmond currently. And I started this project called Oakland Latinos United in 2003. The reason I started it was because I felt that there was almost nothing written about the Latino or Rásar Chicano community in Oakland, even though we are a very old community here. And we've been here going back to the time before this California was even made was even part of the United States when it was part of Mexico. And I felt that our story had to be told every time I would read Oakland History book, it was always the black and white narrative. And that's always a narrative in the United States period. You might get a little bit about the Native Americans. You might even get a little bit about the Asians, but basically it was a black and white narrative. And to be fair, I understand the black narrative of Oakland because Oakland does have a strong history with the African American community. So the birthplace of the black pastors, a lot of artists and sports figures and even politicians that are African American have come out of Oakland and have made big moves in Oakland. I don't take anything away from that, but I feel it fair that the history of Latinos of Chicano, the Rásar in Oakland, it's important to tell that story because California was once part of Mexico. Can we talk about the terminology a little bit before we get into history because you're saying Latino, Rásar, Chicano, can you break it down what you mean by that? Many years, the dominant culture in California were Mexicans. Yes, there were small pockets of other Latinos like Puerto Ricans were in Oakland, which is something we could talk about. But the Mexicans were the dominant in California. So you mean like a monk quote unquote Hispanic? Yes, exactly. That's what I mean. So for many years in California was either you were Mexican, Mexican American and in the 60s the terminology Chicano came up because the word Chicano originated from the word Mexica or Mexicano or Chicano, which is an original name of the Aztecs or the Nawa people. So that term had to be Chicano had become a term in Mexico and even in the United States to mean dirty or indigenous. So what they get in the 60s they reclaim that as an identity of pride and they said where Chicanos is basically Chicano was a Mexican American who refused to identify with the colonizer or with the assimilation because the old generation had been more about were Americans. You know we have to assimilate to white culture that was that was a mentality and then that that changed in the 60s. So now we go to Rasa Rasa means race in the 1920s. A writer named Jose Vas Consuelos wrote a piece called a Rasa Cosmica which make the cosmic race and what he meant that Mexicans were a cosmic race because we were almost every race of in the Americas. We were indigenous, we were Spanish or European and we were African as well. So he said that created this cosmic race so that term Rasa was taken from that and in the 60s it was used as the people instead of being the race even though that's what it literally means it really means the people. So when we say La Rasa Rasa it means our people and Latino finally like you know the term that came more in the 70s and 80s by the US government to classify people of you know Hispanic or whatever you want to call it. So we're talking like you know where the terms because obviously by then it was growing you had the words in Central America. A lot of people from our Salvador and Duda's what can my law were coming to the United States. Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and what what not Colombians, Peruvians. So the terminology a lot of people didn't really associate with Chicano anymore. So the term like you know became more prominent and I use the term a lot of people have got on me they say why do you call it Oakland like you know United. You know why don't you call it Oakland Chicano that's because even though I self-identify as Chicano I'm actually half-solving during the Mexican and I felt that I wanted to appeal to the broad Rasa community of Oakland not just the Chicano Mexican community all of us here as one group. So a second ago you talked about how before California was part of the United States it was part of Mexico. Can you give me a quick overview of that history before the gold rush before statehood how did California come to be part of Mexico and what was this region that East Bay's relationship with the kind of center of Mexican politics and culture back then. So to go back to that we have to go back to the Alonies because this was their land this is occupied Chocteno Alonilan or occupied Hucin. The Spanish government which at that time Mexico was called new Spain sent an expedition to the Bay area to colonize it and they called it the Anzac expedition and what people don't know is that the Anzac expedition was actually a mix expedition. It was a lot of mosquitoes who are the quote unquote modern day Mexicans. It was even some Afro-Majicanos some indigenous. So they came this way and that's where the colonization of the of the Bay area started actually started in San Jose and in Fremont with the mission San Jose and the Puerto Rico of San Jose. And then they came to San Francisco which was called yet about when basically what happened was they built all these crusaderials, military garrisons and also these missions around the Bay area. And they you know they brought the people that today we call the modern day Mexicans to the Bay area those those are the people that were coming. Unfortunately the Alonis a lot of them weren't slaved in the missions they were forced to do the work the the Spanish or the Mexicans didn't want to do. We had people like Huni Petro Sera and various others who were notorious at that time. So basically what happened was some of the Alonic population was decimated by that but a lot of it survived a lot of it survived and they eventually assimilated to the to the Mejican or California culture so what happened was and that was kind of a way of self defense right because when Native American people are basically being hunted down and criminalized they took Spanish last names in order to basically assimilate or hide within the Mexican culture so they wouldn't be executed or enslaved. Exactly that's exactly what happened and a lot of Mexicans we are indigenous people that matter fact I've seen old pictures of the Alonis and they remind me of Mayas they look just like the Mayas from Guatemala or you could tell to me I swear to God they look. just like them. So you can see how easily it was to assimilate the Mexican culture. The first cowboys in the Bay Area were actually alonies. They learned it from the Spaniards and the Mexicans and they became the Rankians and all the the Rankials around here. So that's where we go next to the Rankials. In 1820 when the Mexican war for independence was ended, you know the treaty, the treaty that was when Mexico broke off from Spain. Yes, from Spain. What happened was they took over everything, you know the new Mexican government took over everything including California and the the people who had manned those missions and manned the presidios and manned the poblicos like San Jose, Sonoma and Monterrey. Monterrey. They were given lands further further services. So they were given these big land grants and one family who was very prominent in San Jose called the Peralta family. We're given a land grant in Oakland and that land grant was called Rancho San Antonio, which is the reason why this quark is called San Antonio quark and the reason why this district is called San Antonio District. Oh yeah, I didn't even mention yet that we're sitting for people who are listening to podcasts right now. We're doing this at a picnic table in San Antonio Park overlooking downtown Oakland off in the distance and it's a beautiful day here underneath the red woods. So the Peralta we're given basically the whole city of Oakland and even parts of Berkeley. I think it went all the way up to like Albany almost right? Yeah, I think so and it went all the way even up to like parts of San Leandro. So the Peralta we're given different little Ranchos around the Bay Area around Oakland I'm sorry and the main one was the one that's over there on on 34th which is today the Peralta House. There's where the original Peralta goby was and a lot of these Ranchos like I said a lot of the Alonies were the cowboys of these Ranchos. They were the ones they were doing the cattle work and cooking the food and doing that stuff. So this new culture was created from that it was called the Califord New Culture. Those were the Mexican Californians and we could even say that the Alonies were part of that culture. You know and another thing a lot of indigenous people were Califord news. There were a few landowners who were indigenous people in California that it's not talked about much but that's another story for another day because that doesn't involve this region. We're talking about Oakland specifically. So what changed was when the you know the the war or the aggression against Mexico in 1846 I believe. This is the Mexican-American war. American war. Now the Califord News were split. Some Califord News wanted to be part of the US because they felt that Mexico neglected California and some Califord News did it and there was actually some resistance to it when when the invasion happened. Obviously we all know the bear flag revolt and it's an almost starting to the whole the whole war in California at least and that spread all over and and and after basically the Treaty of Guadalupe Algo was signed with Mexico they ended the war. You know Mexico lost California Texas. New Mexico Arizona. Quarcha Colorado. Quarcha Utah. Nevada. And that was back when this was called Alta California right. We still got Baja California that's part of Mexico. Yeah so one thing that we never think about because we have a border mentality. We have a colonial mentality in this country. The border is a sign of colonialism. Baja California is California. California. California's went from here all the way to Baja California. So if you were from there all the way here you were a California. That's just to basically knowing things about that these days but that's just how it was. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Algo was signed in 1848 there's the gold rush California becomes a state the next year. Once California becomes part of the United States what happens to all the people who were you know the California is the Mexicans that were living here once California becomes part of the U.S. So part I know the Califord News lost most of their land from squatters even though the treaty said that they could keep a lot of their land very few kept their lands or they kept very little bit or they ended up getting lawyers and it cost so much that they eventually had to just sell off their lands anyway. So that's what happened with the Peralta family. Exactly so that kind of what happened and then the more poorer Mexicans who were here who were in California period especially a lot of lonies who are now identifying as Mexicans as a form of survival and not just the lonies a lot of Native Americans period in California they got the the the brunt of the racism and of the backlash you know because people were being lynched people were being attacked people's houses and properties were being burned. So let's fast forward a little bit I know that one of the earlier big waves of Mexican immigration into California after it became a state was during the Mexican Revolution when was that and like can you talk about that a little bit like why did people come here during that era? So the Mexican Mexican Revolution was a huge war in Mexico that you know a lot of people know about but I think a lot of people don't understand the extent of how for one disorganized and just crazy that situation was because they got to a point where they didn't know who was in charge there were so many warlords that it was like who's in charge. So what happened was Mexico had a dictator for about 30-40 years named Porfirio de As. Porfirio de As controlled Mexico with an iron hand. They said Porfirio de As was good and bad they said he was good because the industrialized Mexico and made it a modern country what they said he was bad because he did it at the backs of poor people. He created the Hacienda system which is what created the mosquitoes and indigenous people to become enslaved them near. Yeah they were basically they belong to these landowners and they can only work for these landowners and it's like whole areas of Mexico were controlled by one landowner and then there was also a very brutal police force made up of criminals called Los Rurales the Rurals and they would go around lynching people killing people anyone who spoke against the government likes out. So what happened was around 1909 a guy named Francisco Madero challenged Porfirio de As. Madero ran against Porfirio de As and he won but there was a coup. So Madero came to El Paso, Texas he ran away from Mexico. He formed he formed the army and one of those that included in that army was Panchovia for Francisco Villa who's real name was Doroteo Arango and they raid in Mexico and that's where the Mexican Revolutionary started and in the South you had Emiliano Sapata who was fighting against the he wasn't so much for Madero but he was fighting against the landowners for the indigenous people in the state of Morello. So this became a huge war and it lasted from 1910 till 1920 that war killed millions and that's what drove a lot of the refugees out of Mexico in the California right. Actually those four were closer to the border in the north and those days people don't realize there actually wasn't really much of a border in Mexico it was just a line across the dirt so you could get into the US very easily at that time so a lot of people just said screw this we're going up north so people came to Texas people came to the Mexico people came to Arizona people came to the state of California Los Angeles was the biggest hub of where many came and they came to Oakland. I want to ask you about Oakland's first Mexican neighborhood but before we get to that can you talk a little bit about why this time span between the gold rush and the early 20th century why there's not much known about it? Well I mean that is true there's not much known about what happened to the Califordnals in Oakland especially or the Bay Area. I know that I've read little things that what did happen was a lot of the Califordnals kids married white people and they kind of assimilated into white culture so that could be one thing that happened there was an erasure so there's not much known about whatever the Mexican or Latino community was in Oakland between the end of the Mexican-American war to the Mexican Revolutionary Era but there is some documentation of the Mexican Revolutionary Era up till now thankfully there is a little good documentation that I have found and uh that's where we get into the story about the first botanical or the first Mexican neighborhood. Let's talk about it. What'd you find? So like I said I started this journey a long time ago because there was nothing nothing ever written in Oakland history books about Oakland about Latinos and I knew our community existed here because I grew up here in the fruval area and I mean I was surrounding by once you like the inos in Mexicans and I remember people telling me oh I've been here for many years and I was like so we must have a history so it was kind of like this mystery of why there's not a nothing about us even the Chicano history books never talk about Oakland or the Bay Area they talk about just LA or Texas or New Mexico Arizona like those stakes but they don't talk about the Bay Area it's almost like it didn't even exist so I began to research I began to ask questions I would meet older people randomly in Oakland old Chicanos old Mexicans and they would always be like I would be like oh you're from Oakland oh yeah born in raised I'm like we're at they're like I'm from West Oakland I'm West Oakland now I was like I don't remember no Mexicans in West Oakland and then something began to come into play when I was a kid on 7th street by the police station but 17 Broadway 17 clay that area right there I remember there used to be a lot of Mexican businesses this is back in age. in early 90s. There used to be me Rancho, there used to be La Boa de Kenya, there used to be La Mexicana, there used to be a pharmacy-owned guy named Don Luisito. There was a few Mexican businesses, and I used to always be like, why are there Mexican businesses in downtown Oakland and then by the police station, I don't make sense. So something dawned on me, like, oh, this must have been the old Mexican neighborhood at one point, it just dawned on me. And then I started thinking back, like, all those Mexicans that used to tell me they were from West Oakland, now that makes sense. So one day I went to the Oakland Public Library, and I talked to the guy who ran the Oakland History Room at the time, his name was Steve LaVoy, I don't know if you know him, but he got me in the right direction. I told me, bro, I wanna do a project about Mexican history of Oakland or Latino history, and I wanna know what are the roots, and he told me, you know what, a lot of it started in West Oakland, and he's like, I'll find you some scuff, and he found me some scuff, and luckily they had a Chicano history file skin there too. So I just began digging, and I was like, wow. I said 'cause I had always been told that West Oakland was the heart of the black community, that it was like the Harlem of the West, that's all I knew about West Oakland. So I figured that was the old black hood. I had no idea that there was a Mexican neighborhood. - And the Mexican neighborhood was kind of in between downtown, and like the, the, that has a higher African American concentration, which is kind of over by West Oakland Barth now. So we're talking kind of like the center section of West Oakland, or like. - So when I been told the old Mexican community was actually between, 17, was that Washington? All the way to about 17th and market, and it went down, all the way to, to, to, to, to, Jacqueline and Square, and it was a whole neighborhood in that whole area back in those days, and it was a lot of Mexicans that used to live there, and the Mexicans that came during the Mexican Revolution are the first ones that came to that neighborhood. Now there's a lady in this book, this book, the life stories, voices of the East Bay community, actually like her right there. Her name was Dominguita Velasquez, and she was one of the refugees of the Mexican Revolution. Her stories in this book. Now she says when she came to West Oakland, she says there were hardly any Mexicans in Oakland, but as time progressed, the community started growing, and she was one of the first to start Mexican ballet for the glory core, which is the traditional Mexican dance in Oakland, was this woman right here. (upbeat music) The Sweeps Ballroom was a very famous ballroom at the time, and what happened was that they had certain nights for certain races. So most of the time, there was for white people. I believe Friday was for black people. Saturday I think was reserved for white people, and Sundays was for Mexicans. So the guy who started the Mexican dances at Sweeps Ballroom, his name was Guadalupe Godlos, and he was related, I believe to the people from La Bora in Kenya, but he was a shipyard worker. He worked at, I think the Todd Shipyard, and he would, he somehow between a shipyard work, he would promote these big dances at Sweeps Ballroom, and he would bring big names there at the time, like Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Pedescrado, Cantinflas, Maria Victoria, a lot of big names came to Oakland. - And what genres of music is that? - A mixture, at that time you gotta remember, this was the time of the Golden Age of Mexican movies. So at that time, a lot of the mariachi music was really big, the ranchera, the mariachi, and then also the Cuban Mamba was very big, and Chacha Chal was big at that time. So a lot of the groups that played both of those styles, were what was prominent in the Latino community at that time. - So this is like before like salsa, or anguished, or maybe anguished, or maybe anguished, or maybe anguished, but that's before those rhythms were known here. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So I wanna back up for a second, 'cause a minute ago you mentioned Guadalupe Carlos, who worked in the shipyards, I know that World War II was another era of a lot of migration into the East Bay, so can you illustrate that a little bit for us, kind of what did that look like back then? - So just like the African American and white migration from the south to the Bay Area, there was also a Chicano, Latino, Mexican, Mexican migration to Oakland and the Bay Area as well. For one, we gotta remember there was a lot of military bases in Oakland and in the Bay Area, so a lot of people came from New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, so they came from those skates from the Southwest. - For the jobs. - For the jobs, they came to work in the shipyards, some of them were in the military, they were going off to war. A lot of times they would go off to war but their families would come here to work. That created a migration of Mexican Americans from the Southwest in Oakland, and also you had a large migration of Mexicans who were brought as Bracettos. So, Bracettos, most people identify them as, and that's mostly what they did as field workers, 'cause most of them were brought to do the field work during the war, but what's not known is there was a part of the Bracettos, 'cause the Bracettos was a, let's go back, the Bracettos was a program that was signed by the president Abelachamacho in Mexico with the president Roosevelt here. It was a peace treaty to bring Mexican workers to fill in the job shortages. So, there were legal guest workers. So, what happened was a lot of them were brought to the fields, but people don't realize that there actually was a part of the Bracettos movement. There was strictly for the shipyards and for the railroads. And my grandfather was one of the ones that came to Oakland to work on the railroads. So, they brought a bunch of Bracettos to West Oakland. They actually had a camp out on Pine Street by seven by the railroad tracks. And their job was to basically lay tracks and fix railroad tracks and build new squirts for new factories that were opening up. 'Cause you gotta remember, everything was booming at that time. - Oh, it was an explosion, yeah. - So, Mexicans were being used to do that work from Mexico. My grandfather worked here. Unfortunately, my grandfather went back to Mexico sometime after the war. I don't know the reasons why. Unfortunately, he passed away. But I know that he, I remember when I was a kid, I visited him in Mexico and he told me about the key system about crossing the Bay Bridge when it was Grand Neal. He said, remember, it was like, he said people back then made this big deal about the Bay Bridge. And he just remembered that all that was Grand Neal at that time. - Getting back to the Mexican Barrio in West Oakland, what's now kind of considered Old Oakland, I know that there was a kind of famous incident that we hear more about, 'cause it happened in other cities through our California, Los Angeles specifically, but it also happened here. And I'm talking about Zootzoot riots. People, I think maybe have like a vague idea of what that was because Zootzootz kind of came back in fashion for a while I turned the '90s so people know like the big baggy suits with like long tails and flamboyant colors. - I remember that. - Kid swing. - Yeah. - And we'll be swingers came on stuff. So can you talk a little bit about how that fashion came off and what the Zootzoot riots look like here in the East Bay? - Well, before I start that, I'm actually wearing a Zootzoot jacket. (laughing) A throwback retro jacket from a Zootzoot era. But no, the Zootzoot riots is something that happened and it was famous in Los Angeles and it looked like fair. That's where it happened, the big element of it happened. And it was basically a clash between white sailors who were coming to Los Angeles to go fight the war but they were coming with this testosterone, with this I wanna kick the Jeffs, I wanna kick the Germans. You know, I want this mentality. They were coming with that I wanna kick ass. And they would meet these Patucos or at least these teenagers who were considered Patucos. And Patucos was basically considered, Patucos basically a young Houdlam. That's what the terminology. And the Patucos wore these outlandess suits that had big coats, they had like baggy pants that were tapered at the bottom. They wore shoes with double soles. So, probably we could get you on the ground and beat your ass. (laughing) And they wore long chains as well. And they wore these really big fedoras called condos. And they would call their shoes galcos. And that was a style. And these teenagers, you know, there were machiskas, there were young teenagers, full of adrenaline too. And this was World War II era. But they didn't appreciate these white kids coming through their neighborhoods, prompting them, taking their women, trying to like, position their women for sex and stuff like that. So, that created a backlash. And these clashes happen with those zoo suitors and the sailors in Los Angeles. And they created this huge, it's called a zoo suit rights, where it really was a sailors riot. 'Cause the sailors went around Los Angeles, beaten up anyone. First, it was anyone that was a zoo suitor. Then it just became anyone who was Mexican. So, elements of that hit the Bay Area. They hit San Francisco, they hit Richmond, and they hit Oakland as well. And the first two big, the first three big incidents that happened in Oakland was the first was two zoo suitors. And I showed you the picture earlier. Two zoo suitors, Leo Velasquez, Rodriguez and Ignacio and 20 Shipyard Chipper. And Leo Velasquez, 21 Shipyard Welder, were arrested for clashing with zoo sailors on Atheon Washington, which is in Old Oakland, the Old Baudrill. - So, this isn't surprising to me that there was a confrontation, there was a conflict between whites, sailors and these petrucos and who ends up in the paper getting, you know, basically handcuffs or, you know, by the cops. It's the Latino man, of course, right? The brown guys. So, like, you know, particles in the Oakland jail, that was the headlight to scare the people. Oh my god, these suitors are in Oakland. They are looking pretty fly though. I gotta say in my picture. There's some stylish gear they got on. No, and, you know, that was what they put, you know, the particles in the Oakland jail. So, after this incident, West Oakland was considered out of bounds to sailors, you know, make the prevent any further clashes. So, that was one incident. This is another incident that happened right here. This happened in 1943, and this actually happened a gang that used to be down the street. This was an East Oakland gang called the 23rd Ave Gang. And when I was growing up, there actually still was a Mexican gang in that neighborhood called East 15th and 23rd. Maybe that's the descending to that gang. But, what happened was this gang went to Alameda and they were a mixed gang made up of Chicanos and Portuguese. And so, there were already probably a few Chicanos and Rasalibin and West Oakland at the time. Very small though, but they went to Alameda and they got into a fight with a gang called the Okis, which was a white gang, probably made up of Oklahoma trans clanks. So, it was this big ride in downtown Alameda, and over down Clark Street. And the police didn't go after the Okis, of course. They went after the Patucus and asked a whole headline, 12 youth, health, and brawl. So, that's another one. So, there's also a book called Six Gold Scars, which was written by a guy named Dexter Maskey. We used to be an Oakland police officer back in the days. And he talked about the war on Patucus in Oakland. He talked about how he even got to a point where they were allowed to arrest and strip and cut the hair of Patucus. Yeah. Wow. So, over the last couple of years more and more, have been talking about the quote unquote war on drugs or the crackdown on use of color as part of this prison industrial complex system that upholds white supremacy. But I mean, this goes so far back. I mean, it really goes to the beginning of America, but like this is just another chapter of it that I think most people, you know, aren't as familiar with, which is right here in Oakland in the 1940s, basically cops are driving around and harassing, arresting, corralling, picking up these groups of young Chicano men and probably beating their asses, like you said, shaving their heads, throwing them, locking them up. And I mean, it's just like to this day, this is the same thing that people are still fighting against. All the way back to that era, they criminalized black and brown you forever. It's nothing new. It's nothing that started yesterday. It's been going on in Oakland and LA or New York or wherever. It's been going on for a long time. And unfortunately, it's not just the criminalization of youth in terms of like the way that white power manifests itself. It's also the destruction of entire neighborhoods. And speaking of that, can you talk to me a little bit about what happened to the original Oakland Barrio, this this net Mexican neighborhood that used to be where Old Oakland and West Oakland is now? So there's two parts to it. The first is the freeway, the second is the bar, but let's go with the freeway. So in the 50s, people don't realize that in the 50s, cities went and it was just just just happened in Oakland. This was widespread. So at that era, at that time, this was the era of urban renewal, right? So it happened all over the place, you know, happened in San Francisco. And yeah, so I'll let you continue on. So the urban renewal thing was called occasions at that time. They didn't appreciate the older neighborhoods. You know, today we appreciate the older neighborhoods we want to save them. We have all these preservation things. But at that time, they didn't care at all. They were like, these neighborhoods are blinded. They have bed bugs, they have racks, they're in fescue way, black and brown people and even poor white people in some cases. Let's just tear them down and build a freeway or build a new city center or build a new city hall. So what happened was West Oakland was one of those neighborhoods that they considered an old, blinded neighborhood. Obviously, West Oakland is the original neighborhood of Oakland. So they built the 80, you know, progress, right? They built the 80 and it went right through the neighborhood. Then they built the 980 or highway 24, which went through the neighborhood. And they just completely decimated all of West Oakland. I mean, I've talked to people who got eminent, domain twice by that process and they didn't get fair market value for their property either. You know, the government was basically like, here's your check, take it or leave it either way. Yeah, we're going to bulldoze your neighborhood. I believe they didn't get anything. But yeah, it's basically you were in your house one day and the next day you were told you got to leave. Here's some money. Good luck. You know what I mean? And they tore down the original boundary and they tore down the original black neighborhood of Oakland. They just completely decimated. They built the Cypress freeway, the old freeway will now come on Delacarqueway but in the old day, there was Cypress. And that cut West Oakland in half. Exactly. That cut West Oakland into two. And the park came along and I was further destruction of West Oakland. So they completely just wiped a whole sector of West Oakland gone forever. And that explains how just a generation or two later, people even of Mexican descent, like you who grew up here in East Oakland and Jingle Town in the freeway area didn't even know that there was a Mexican neighborhood just, you know, two miles to the west. Exactly. I had no idea, no clue whatsoever. And that's where the shift goes from West Oakland to East Oakland. So basically before the destruction of West Oakland, there were, there were small pockets of Mexicans in East Oakland before. And I think a lot of them used to probably come to the fruit bell area to these areas. So naturally, a lot of the people that were being pushed out of East Oakland, I mean West Oakland, the Mexican families, I think they already had families living in Jingle Town all around fruit bell. And also this was during the era of white flight. So a lot of white people who had been living in East Oakland were moving out to the suburbs at this time. So this, this property is becoming available. And also it's, I mean, especially in Jingle Town, it's a very industrial neighborhood, right? So it's closer to these kind of blue collar jobs. Exactly. So, you know, we know that Jingle Town was the Portuguese neighborhood. There was also a lot of Germans and Irish in fruit bell area back in the days. Those communities started getting old. They started dying off or they just simply moved away. And the Mexican and the black community started moving into the fruit bell area. I think blacks dominated more in Upper East Oakland. That's where the bigger migration was in East Oakland was the upper part of East Oakland. But they were. You say, "Upper, do you mean like sort of like the quote unquote "DBs?" Yeah, like 98th Ave, Brookfield, Sogranic Park, all those areas where we came to dominant black areas. And I think the fruit bell in San Antonio area became more of the dominant Latino and Asian area. So tell me about that process, like the growth of these barrios over here. So all these people that had been in West Oakland got displaced over here to the fruit bell area. And what started happening was when the white flight started happening, what fruit bell became undesirable. It can't start becoming the ghetto, the hood. And obviously when a neighborhood becomes the hood, it brings its problems. And that's where the drugs, police brutality come along. And that's where the 60s come along. [Music] We just took a little break here because you have got just this pile of newspaper clippings and files in front of you trying to get it all organized. We're starting to get into the 1960s. I mean, just massive topic, so much change happening in that decade. The rise of the kind of power movement, the growth of the fruit veil. Where do you want to start? So we have to remember there was a rise in immigration from Mexico in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And naturally when they came to Oakland, they seen Mexican fruit bell like, "Oh, cancel, this must be where we live." So that's how the community started growing. So you know, the Chicano movement, let's go a little bit back. It started forming with some of the original nonprofits around here. Let's be fair, the Unity Council, the Spanish-speaking citizens foundation. And a few other organizations had already started that process of Chicano rights. Central La Gal, Clinica de La Raja. Later, those were the first ones. The first ones were the Spanish-speaking and the Unity Council over the first original ones. But they weren't radical groups. They were more like community groups. The radical element of it happened. And I'm getting the newspaper ready right here. He's the murder of a young man. He was 23 years old and his name was Charles Dominic de Baca. But in the neighborhood, in the screech, he was known as Pinky de Baca. That was his nickname on the screech. And in February 6th of 1968, he was supposedly breaking into a car on 35th Ave. He ran from the cop and the cop shot him in the back right through the heart. The officer named was Walter Gibbons. And the family of Charles de Baca, who I know, I actually know his family, they were devastated. I mean completely devastated. They started forming a coalition of Chicano and Oakland to combat police brutality. The first organization that they created was called Latinos United for Justice, which is where the name Oakland, Latinos United come from. That's why I named my project that was after them. Yeah, keeping that legacy alive. Yeah, because that was where the Chicano movement quote unquote, at least a radical element started in Oakland. So from that murder, you had like, you know, the United States just because actually right here, I have a newspaper report that they actually took over City Hall like, you know, the United States just as in demanded that the officer give us we brought up on charges. And so this was like a sit down occupation type situation? Exactly. And from that, you started having other organizations who were seeing what was going on in LA. And they invited the Brown Berets to come to Oakland. So the Brown Berets from LA formed a chapter in Oakland with the help of students at Mary College, which is where the Black Panther started. So you had the Brown Berets in Oakland, like, you know, the United for Justice in Oakland. And then the war movement was going on at the time. In 1970, Chicago's in Los Angeles, including Corkego and Salis, who was from New Mexico, Reyes Quijerina, who was another revolutionary from New Mexico. Corkego and Salis, I'm sorry, was from Colorado. Reyes Quijerina was from New Mexico. Those guys organized the Chicano Moratorium, which was basically Chicano saying we don't want to get drafted to the Vietnam War in Guy because a lot of Chicanos were dying in big numbers in the Vietnam War. A lot of Latinos in general, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos. And before the Chicano Moratorium, let's talk about that. There was an organization called Frank De Libre de Ciudad del Queblo, which was started actually by this guy right here, Manuel Ruben del Gado. And he was one of the-- And you're holding up his book right now, which is called The Last Chicano. He was one of the leaders of the Third World Liberation Strike. He was part of the Mexican-American Confederation, which was one of the groups that was part of the Third World Liberation at Berkeley. So he started working in Jingle Town in the Fruball area. And he had an organization called Frank De Libre de Ciudad del Queblo. And with Frank De, he organized-- Manuel Ruben del Gado, they organized a Chicano student walk out. It was actually in '69. This is a scooting, smarting down Fruball app. So what happened was a scooting walk out of all Chicano students of every single school in Oakland, every single high school. So Fremont was the main one with Chicanos. But Fremont was one. Oakland Tech, Oakland High, Castle Monster, all the Chicanos that day walked out of school. And they marched to a place called the Fairfax Theater, which used to be up there, a Fairfax in Fudio. And from there, they marched to the Oakland induction center and closed the shutt again. That's down next to City Hall. Yes, exactly. And what happened was that the Fairfax Theater, they watched a movie about the Vietnam War. They actually got to see a live reel of what was going on with gruesome pictures. So the students got to see the reality. And when they went to the Dutch and said they were clumped, like, you know, we don't want to fight this damn war. And that was the beginning of Chicanos and Oakland, organizing against the Vietnam War. [MUSIC PLAYING] So let's go into what happened after the Chicano movement. To now. And many things happened. But I guess we'll wrap it up in a quick summary. So the Chicano movement began to lose strength because the face that a lot of people, the Cone Cal Pro, get a number on it, for sure. But also, they flooded the neighborhood with drugs. Heroine started coming in in large numbers to the fruit bell area. We got to remember big drug dealers like the Ward Brothers and Felix Mitchell came to play at the time. The Pimp culture became very big. But also, the Cholo culture became very big. And the Chollos were basically the modern version of the Patucos. Actually, before that, they were called Handels in the '50s and '60s. I don't know why they were called that. But after that, they became Chollos. And Chollos is actually a word that means indigenous, as well. It's a word that originates from indigenous people in Peru. But the Chollos became the thing. And this is starting to get into the time when you were a kid growing up here. Exactly. And I grew up around. So the Cholo culture became big. The low rider culture became big. Satton and Park was actually the place where all the low riders would meet. They would surround the whole park and low riders. And then with Cruz down East 14. This was a little bit before my time. But I do remember little elements of it still being around. With that came the gangs. So different Chicano gangs started claiming different streets. You start having gangs like Jingle Town, 36 locals, 38 locals, Fruitvale gangsters, East 15th, or they call it Gainset. And you have all these different gangs. And that's where the gang was started. And that's where the documentary "Tryout and Violence" was made in 1982. And that was a family called the Parking Family, which was a family from Texas originally. And they were from up there from '65 to have. And their gang was called the '60s or a Bauderio '60s. So all these gangs started fighting-- for anyone who wants to see that, it's available on YouTube. It's just really incredible documentary called "Children of Hounds." I think came out in the early '80s. I think PBS aired it. But it's a very deep and empathetic look at this family. And their struggle as these young guys kind of get caught up in the gang life and how it affects their mothers and aunts and abuela's and things like that. And I would definitely recommend watching that. So what happened was that a lot of the prison politics started coming into the streets. And it was this big division in prison between two gangs called the Nuesca familia and the Mexican Mafia. So basically, if you were from LA or Southern California, you were with the Mexican Mafia. Or they call them "Suranios." Or if you were from Northern California, you were with the Nuesca familia, which were called "Norcanios," which were northern, northerners. So those gangs, the original gangs in Oakland, became Norkenio gangs. So now they were aligned to the prison politics. So what happened was around late '80s, '89, '90, a new gang formed. There was against them called the border brothers. And they were-- they were beginning to become a migration of people from Fruvell to the deep east. So the Mexican community started slowly growing in the deep east, which was considered the black community at that time. But this gang called the border brothers formed up there. And that group was "Anthony Norkenio." So this became even more violent. And this was really when Oakland was like even more than now because the murder rate is still really bad. But it was really considered a war zone. It was like during the crack day. Because you have the crack era. Oh, yeah. That's another thing. The crack came in Oakland in the '80s. And the crack era, the black gangs were fighting over control of drug turf. But the Mexican gangs were fighting over the same control of drug turf and territory. And it just became this-- just genocide. That's what I call it. And the worst of it was, I would say, between '89 to about '94. And then it became big again between 2003 and about 2010. That's when they made that documentary "Gang Wars" on "I'm Discovery Channel" that I showed you. And that's a much more sensationalistic, kind of cable news style documentary about fighting between the border brothers, the Norkenios and the Serenios. Yeah, I know. But I want to back up for a second because I'm curious about how, as a young Latino man growing up in Oakland during the era, how it affected you and your own family. You know, was so much violence on the streets back then. It affected me a lot because I had two older brothers and they were gang banging. They were part-- one of my brothers was from 36 locals, which was one of the gangs in the Fruball area. They were always fighting with the border brothers and with other gangs. They were always doing drugs, selling drugs. So Coke, PCP was big back then. All those drugs were always around me. I never got into that stuff because I just didn't want to go down that path, down that rabbit hole. And yeah, it affected me a lot. My brother actually committed a very serious crime in front of me when I was a kid. I don't want to say what that crime was, but it really, really messed me up for a lot of years. My brother-- he's alive, but he's living on borrowed time because I don't know how he survived that, but he survived it. But my other brother left Oakland fairly early to get away from all that. And yeah, I've had many friends who either died or are now drug addicts on the streets homeless because they got caught up in that lifestyle, man. Or some are doing life and jail. You're not like a history professor. You've got to talk to people sometimes who are like authors, you know, working at K-Hell or whatever. But you're like a self-taught historian. You just got obsessed with this and are so folks on it and are so knowledgeable about it. And you've been into this for decades now. Do you feel like that? Curiosity about sort of self-education is one of the things that kind of like protected you when you were growing up or how did that all fit together? You know what? This is a term that I heard on a YouTube channel that I best describe me. You ever heard of Ricky Ricks, the rapper from Oakland? Yeah, yeah. He was part of the East Bay Dragons, I believe. The motorcycle club. Probably. And he was part of a rap-- one of the original rappers called 415. Yeah, and he was a big influence on two parts. So he said a thing on Vlad TV. He said, I was a cool square. And I think that's what I was. I was a cool square. I was a square kid. But because I had a brother-- brothers who were gang banging, who were known in the streets, as soon as they heard, you're so and so's brothers like, oh, OK, leave him alone. So that helped me out a lot. And I felt that I didn't have to get forced to become a norganian or a boarder brother or any of that. I kind of just-- I knew it was around me. I knew the players. I knew the gang members, the drug dealers. I knew them. I can see their faces now. But I decided to stay away from that. I was always very knowledgeable about history. I was always that kid that everybody thought was kind of weird. I was kind of like a two-pock in a way. Just got-- he's kind of-- but he's kind of smart and I was kind of like that. I was kind of like that. I'm a vocal local, Chicano from the body, from the hood, from East Oakland. That's where I'm from. It's town business every day, but I'm a very smart dude and I know a lot of things. That doesn't mean because I came from the hood and my mind is straight stuck on the hood. I had to expand my mind and I think my mind has always been expanded since I was a kid. Did your brothers ever try to like pressure you to get into that lifestyle? Do you think that because they had seen the detrimental effects of it that maybe they were protective and thought it would be better for you to not get involved and to stay away from all that violence and drug dealing? Yeah, they never pushed me into it. And, in a matter of fact, I think they were happy that I didn't get into it. I mean, I got in trouble. There was a small time where I hung around a few gummies and I was like, rebelling, you know what I mean? And I got in trouble here and there. But luckily, that was just a small phase of my life. And I learned real quickly that I don't like this. This is not what I want to do. So I gravitated towards other things. I gravitated towards social justice. I gravitated towards history. I gravitated towards music. I gravitated towards a lot of other things. Do you want to give your band a shout out real quick? So maybe after the pandemic, so will people who come see you play? Yeah, I'm part of two bands. One's called Kalafea Armada. The other bands call those Bayanacos. And what we play is music from Colombia, Guumbia, Bayanaco. We play more of the traditional sense of the music. And if you guys ever want to check us out, check us out on Facebook. And on Instagram. I'll wrap up in a minute here, but I have a couple more last minute questions. I was asking around to people, friends, like I'm going to talk to the sky who's like an expert on Oakland, Latino history. What do you curious about? And one of my friends who is Chicano, he was like, what do you think makes Oakland's Latino or Chicano community unique compared to other Latino communities throughout California or throughout the United States? That's a good question. I would say the diversity of Oakland, I would say that if you look at some other California cities, especially LA, there's a big division between Black and Brown, I think in Oakland, we've kind of built a bridge on that division. And because we grew up around a lot of African Americans, I mean, Oakland's quote unquote, a Black town, that we always have this common like friendship with Black, with African Americans. And we got a lot of cultural borrowing from African American community. And they got a lot of stuff from us as well. I mean, asking African American what a daughter or a burrito is, he's going to tell you, yeah, I know what that is. So, you know what I mean? But there's this kind of like uniqueness that we have friends at our Asian, we have friends at Black, we have friends at our Simone's, we have friends at our White. We kind of grew up when a diversity here in Oakland is a little bit different. And we have this history of social justice because there's kind of like this cautiousness in Oakland that a lot of cities don't have. I always say that Chicano is in Oakland, we have a Chicano style, but it's a uniquely Oakland Chicano style. We even have our own way of talking, you know what I mean? And that's true. It's a, it's dying out because of the gentrification. But yeah, like when I was growing up, I could tell if a Chicano was from Oakland, just by the way he talked. I hear what you're saying in terms of like, there's a certain kind of culture that's dying out, but I actually was just looking up the census figures the other day, 'XHOW'S CURRIES. And you know, I'm going through in 1950, 1960, 1970, the Latino, Hispanic population of Oakland, it was like 4%, 5%, 6% for a long time, and then starting around 2000, it jumps up to like 20%. And now it's actually still growing. Oakland is a 27% Latino now according to these estimates. So I mean, it does seem like even though I know there's a lot of gentrification displacement happening that we're still seeing the Latino population of Oakland growing. What happened was the old Mexican community of Oakland began leaving Oakland either for gentrification or for the violence. So the old Chicano from Oakland, a lot of them left. So what you're getting now is a lot of new immigrants coming into Oakland from Mexico, and from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala. I'm also starting to see South Americans now, meeting people from Colombia, from Chile, from Peru. So you're getting this new community coming into Oakland, it's different from the old community. And the other day when we were chatting on the phone, you were talking about indigenous people too, from Mexico, can you talk a little bit about that? There's been the last, probably 15, 20 years, there's been a big migration of people from Guatemala, from the Mayan community, and most of them speak a dialect called Mom, M-A-M. Yeah, you're starting to see like Guatemalan restaurants pop up, and the Mexican bakeries are now selling Guatemalan bread. So yeah, it's a big community, it's going to be a big community in the future. And last question, what's next for Oakland Latinos? You need needos. You've got all these files here, you've got all these books, you've been doing this research for years and years. I know you're running the Instagram page, you've got the Facebook group, and the YouTube page, what else are you interested in researching, how else are you trying to spread this history? Well, eventually I want to write a book about this, but I feel because I'm not highly educated, I only made it as far as the community college. I don't know if people are going to take me serious, but maybe that just could be my own confidence messing with me. I haven't tried, but I would like to really make this a book, and make it a historical book about Oakland's Chicano history, whether it was 5% in the past, or whether it's 20% in the past, I was told something a long time ago. I was told that there was more than two Latinos than there was a Latino community. And that's basically how it goes. So we've been here since day one, whether we were big or small, we were here, and we were building roots. And I feel it's important for people to know that story, because I've heard so many ignorant things that Mexicans were these immigrants, that we have no history here, that were living off what black people did in the civil rights movement, that were taking jobs away from whites and blacks that were doing this and that. So we have all this negativity, and there's really this outlook that we don't have roots here, that we're just this immigrant group that came here, that we're ignorant, that we don't speak the language, that we don't simulate, but all this research proves the contrary. - Well, I'm so glad that you are doing this, because like you said, there's not a lot of people who are familiar with this history, who are collecting it and gathering it, and it's incredibly valuable, and I'm so grateful to you for sharing it all with us today. Thanks again for talking to me. - Yeah, yeah, for sure. (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - Thank you so much for listening to East Bay yesterday. I've been your host, Liam O'Donacue. As always, you can find images related to this episode at my site, EastBayYesterday.com. And while you're there, click the donate link to help keep the show alive, shout out to all my Patreon supporters, love you guys. While you're there, you can also subscribe to my newsletter if you wanna stay up to date on local history news, and follow me on social media, if you wanna see me popping up in your social media feeds, with various East Bay history oriented news updates in trivia. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, please tell someone else to check it out. Doing this whole thing more or less by myself, so it really, really helps when people spread the word about EastBayYesterday. I appreciate it so, so much. All the music for this episode was curated by Jose Rivera of Oakland, Latinos, Unitos. He picked Jorge Negrete because Jorge Negrete actually performed at Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland back in the '40s. And another song we played was by Azteca, two of those members of that band, the Escovedo Brothers, grew up in Oakland. Lastly, you just heard a bit of a song from Jose's band, Calafia Armada, and I'm gonna play the show out with one more of his tunes, just 'cause I really like it. If you wanna hear more, I'll throw up a link to Jose's bands at my site. See you all again soon. Here's Calafia Armada with Coach Ambrosa. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Come on. - Azteca. - Come on. (upbeat music) (laughing) - Oh yeah. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) usar egster slits sg sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc