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Speaker 1: From Puduro Media ADRX. It's let you Know, USA. I'm

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Speaker 1: Marino Rosa today the Battle over Chavis Ravine in Los Angeles.

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Speaker 1: As baseball season is in full swing, we thought you

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Speaker 1: would enjoy this episode, which we first aired in twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 1: What you're hearing is from an electric game at Dodgers

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Speaker 1: Stadium in the twenty eighteen World Series between the Los

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Speaker 1: Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox. The Dodgers went

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Speaker 1: on to lose the World Series, but fans lived an

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Speaker 1: unforgettable experience watching the games from the stadium. But often

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Speaker 1: when you're taking in the game, you're not thinking about

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Speaker 1: the decades old history of the stadium, especially for example,

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Speaker 1: an iconic one like Dodger Stadium. So for some deeper

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Speaker 1: history on the Home of the Los Angeless, here's producer

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Speaker 1: Jennie Jimocha.

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Speaker 2: So have you been to a game?

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Speaker 3: I was.

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Speaker 1: I've been to two games, one when I was like

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Speaker 1: nine in Chicago and then one like ten years ago

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Speaker 1: at Yankee Stadium.

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Speaker 2: Well, as an Angelino, I've been to Dodger Stadium. It's

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Speaker 2: up on a hill, it's surrounded by palm trees, it

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Speaker 2: has a ton of parking lots and it has one

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Speaker 2: of the best views of downtown LA And the Dodgers

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Speaker 2: have a ton of Latino fans, especially Mexican fans, and

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Speaker 2: a lot of it had to do with Fernando Mania.

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Speaker 4: Fernando Valenzuela has opened the nineteen eighty one season with

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Speaker 4: a shutout, and.

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Speaker 2: So Fernando Balinzuela the superstar rookie. He was a kid

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Speaker 2: from Mexico, Sonora, Mexico, and he led the Los Angeles

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Speaker 2: Dodgers to the World Series in nineteen eighty one. Fernando

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Speaker 2: Mania was super intense.

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Speaker 1: And the legend of Fernando becomes known to all the world.

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Speaker 3: Hodo el Mondo, my dad, like I said, came during

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Speaker 3: the Fernando Mania.

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Speaker 2: So that's be sent into His dad immigrated from Mexico

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Speaker 2: in the early seventies and really embraced for and he

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Speaker 2: wanted to share this moment with his son, so he

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Speaker 2: gave he senta a Fernando Valenzuela Dodger's jacket on his

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Speaker 2: ninth birthday in front of the whole family, including he

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Speaker 2: sent his grandfather and my.

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Speaker 3: Grandpa early flipped on hup. But he just goes really

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Speaker 3: and he walked out of the room. I think he

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Speaker 3: knew he was going to blow up to that point.

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Speaker 1: WHOA because of a dodger's jacket.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, And we sent this. Dad was totally shocked. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it was just a dodger's jacket. Then he sent his

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Speaker 2: grandfather did something radical.

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Speaker 3: My dad was never welcome back into their.

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Speaker 1: Home because he gave him a dodger's jacket.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: So Vicenta, who was nine years old at the time,

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Speaker 2: he was super confused and he didn't really understand why

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Speaker 2: his grandfather reacted that way most of his life until

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Speaker 2: his early twenties when he finally understood one day, as

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Speaker 2: grandmother Adella pulled him aside and laid out this entire

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Speaker 2: family history that Vicente had no idea about.

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Speaker 3: You could see in her face that which she was

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Speaker 3: a out to tell me was something that was It

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Speaker 3: was it had set in her mind for a long time.

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Speaker 3: And when she told us about the community, I mean

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Speaker 3: you could see them like in their face, you can

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Speaker 3: see them get so emotional.

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Speaker 1: What does he mean, like the community?

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Speaker 4: Who's he talking about?

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Speaker 3: Okay, my grandfather is John de Nava and he grew

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Speaker 3: up in the community of Palo Verda. His wife is

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Speaker 3: Adella Danava and she grew up in Baala Verda too,

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Speaker 3: and they both met there.

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Speaker 2: Palo Verda is one of three neighborhoods that made up

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Speaker 2: a predominantly Mexican American community. They were Paolo Verde, La Loma,

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Speaker 2: and Bishop and they had over a thousand families and

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Speaker 2: altogether they made something bigger, something that you may know,

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Speaker 2: Maria as chav Is.

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Speaker 1: Ravine, the chav Is Ravine. So it's about a community. Okay.

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Speaker 2: Today the rest of the world may know chava Is

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Speaker 2: Ravine by another name.

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Speaker 4: The the Lucky Ones are here today at Dodger Stadium.

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Speaker 2: Dodger Stadium.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Jennis, So how about if you take it away

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Speaker 1: and tell us the story of the job is Ravine.

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Speaker 2: So let's talk about it before it was the home

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Speaker 2: of the Dodgers, when it was actually home to over

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Speaker 2: a thousand families, because it was a place where we

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Speaker 2: sent his grandparents fell in love and started a family.

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Speaker 3: My grandma says, you know, well, this was the Luna

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Speaker 3: Demen and they always used to talk about stories about

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Speaker 3: how the dances that they used to have in the

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Speaker 3: community every weekend.

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Speaker 2: It was a lively neighborhood in the thirties and forties

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Speaker 2: when we sent his grandparents were growing up, so.

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Speaker 3: There was almost like a party or a disco night

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Speaker 3: out there where they would go and they would have

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Speaker 3: the band.

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Speaker 2: Plane and they even had a house of their own.

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Speaker 3: They really felt privileged because they had that stepping stone

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Speaker 3: of owning a home.

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Speaker 2: Overall, life was good for them and chavas Ravine. It

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Speaker 2: was located in the valley and it was a little isolated,

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Speaker 2: but overall it was really close to downtown LA. And

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Speaker 2: even though this was a neighborhood where they threw weddings, kintignets,

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Speaker 2: let their doors unlocked, grew their own produce and even

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Speaker 2: raise their own livestock.

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Speaker 4: The city had a very different perspective of the Chavservine neighborhoods.

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Speaker 2: That's Eric Avila, Professor of Chicano Studies and History at UCLA.

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Speaker 2: He's the author of the book Popular Culture in the

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Speaker 2: Age of White Flight and has written extensively about chavas Ravine.

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Speaker 4: As far back as the nineteen thirties, the city housing

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Speaker 4: authority declared the Chavaservine to be a slum in need

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Speaker 4: of rehabilitation.

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Speaker 2: He told me that this was because chavas Ravine was

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Speaker 2: a low income neighborhood, not well served by transit lines,

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Speaker 2: and most of the time lacked basic needs like electricity.

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Speaker 2: People used candles to light up their homes and their

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Speaker 2: streets at night.

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Speaker 4: So the city in the nineteen thirties targeted the Chavaservine

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Speaker 4: for the placement of a public housing project.

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Speaker 2: And then President Harry Truman was pushing for something called

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Speaker 2: the Housing Act of nineteen forty nine as part of

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Speaker 2: the Fair Deal, which gave federal dollars to build housing

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Speaker 2: projects all across the country. Los Angeles got one hundred

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Speaker 2: and ten million dollars because of the Housing Act that

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Speaker 2: they could directly use toward public housing, and chavas Ravine,

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Speaker 2: without electricity, it's poor transit was the perfect site for this.

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Speaker 4: And this would mean the destruction of the old neighborhood

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Speaker 4: and then the construction of new public housing units in

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Speaker 4: which the old residents would have first DIBs to move in.

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Speaker 2: Here's how it would work. First, they had to get

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Speaker 2: rid of all the residents. Second, they'd have to tear

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Speaker 2: down all the houses. Then they'd build the public housing

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Speaker 2: and the old neighbors could come back into their new,

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Speaker 2: more modern homes. So by nineteen fifty, the Los Angeles

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Speaker 2: Housing Authority sent letters to every home in chavs Ravine

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Speaker 2: telling them that their houses were going to be torn

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Speaker 2: down and new ones built in their place. But not

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Speaker 2: to worry, for the many families who qualify for public housing,

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Speaker 2: they'll get first DIBs on the nu chavs Ravine. Once

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Speaker 2: it was done in about two years, it sounded like

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Speaker 2: a good deal, except that saying no was not an option.

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Speaker 2: The city had the power to force them to either

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Speaker 2: sell or get evicted. It's something called eminent domain. What

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Speaker 2: eminent domain basically means is that cities have the power

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Speaker 2: to take private property as long as it's for public

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Speaker 2: use like parks or roads, after they pay the owner

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Speaker 2: of that property a fair price. But in many cases,

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Speaker 2: even today, the government tries to low ball property owners,

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Speaker 2: offering only a fraction of the property's value, and the

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Speaker 2: owners could get a lawyer to try to get a

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Speaker 2: better deal, but you need to spend money for that.

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Speaker 2: So in many cases, even when people don't want to leave,

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Speaker 2: they take the deal, which is what many did and

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Speaker 2: their houses were soon demolished.

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Speaker 4: By nineteen fifty two, almost all of the residents had

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Speaker 4: moved out on the premise that they would be able

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Speaker 4: to return to the old neighborhood moving into these new

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Speaker 4: public housing projects.

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Speaker 2: Some families resisted, but overall, even if it felt shady,

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Speaker 2: it seemed like a good deal. Think about a college campus,

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Speaker 2: tall towers, lush landscape, being modern structures with modern facilities, electricity,

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Speaker 2: wa are the works everything that the residents lacked in

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Speaker 2: Chavis Ravine. That's what the city told the residents they

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Speaker 2: would get if they sold their homes. So slowly residents

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Speaker 2: trickled out of Chavas Ravine. Meanwhile, one mile south, things

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Speaker 2: were changing at city hall. The mayorship of LA was

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Speaker 2: about to change and the new candidate, his name was

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Speaker 2: Norris Pulsen. He was a congressman that had a ton

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Speaker 2: of well connected friends, like the Chandler family who owned

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Speaker 2: and operated a little newspaper called The Los Angeles.

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Speaker 4: Times, and they were staunchly opposed to the idea of

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Speaker 4: public housing in the immediate vicinity of downtown Los Angeles.

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Speaker 2: And there were a few reasons for their opposition. One,

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Speaker 2: they believed that public housing would not maximize the economic

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Speaker 2: value of downtown and another reason was.

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Speaker 4: This idea of racial integration in the immediate vicinity of downtown.

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Speaker 2: So Paulson, the man running for mayor, made anti public

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Speaker 2: housing the foundation of his campaign, and he used the

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Speaker 2: red scare to attack it, and the rhetoric that he

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Speaker 2: used public housing was a secret communist strategy to create

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Speaker 2: communist cells in the heart of downtown. That's something that

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Speaker 2: Eric calls red baiting.

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Speaker 4: And Paulson, closely coordinating with the Chandler family, the Los

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Speaker 4: Angeles Times, and other downtown elites, effectively used this red

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Speaker 4: baiting strategy. And he promised that if he won the

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Speaker 4: mayoral election that one of the first things that he

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Speaker 4: would do in office as mayor would be the cancel

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Speaker 4: of the city's bid for public housing.

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Speaker 2: And then in nineteen fifty three, Paulson won the election

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Speaker 2: and became mayor, and he kept his promise.

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Speaker 4: One of the first acts that he signed as mayor

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Speaker 4: was the cancelation of public housing, not just in the

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Speaker 4: Chavs Ravine, but another parts of the city as well.

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Speaker 2: So here are hundreds of families who left their homes

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Speaker 2: and now there would be no promised place to live

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Speaker 2: and no Chabas Ravine. It's important to note that not

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Speaker 2: a family left the neighborhood with a government and buy

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Speaker 2: out of sorts. A couple families.

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Speaker 4: Stayed and they were perfectly happy in their home, with

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Speaker 4: their yard and their garden and their livestock and their neighbors,

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Speaker 4: and they had no interest in leaving.

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Speaker 2: It was basically a ghost town. Most of it had

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Speaker 2: been destroyed and the ravine satin limbo. But once the

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Speaker 2: plans for public housing were gone, it made way for

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Speaker 2: something else to be built, something bigger.

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Speaker 1: Coming up on leat you know, USA, we continue the

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Speaker 1: story of the Chavis Ravine. Stay with us. Were back

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Speaker 1: and before the break we were talking about the history

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Speaker 1: of Dodger Stadium and the land that it's located on,

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Speaker 1: chav Is Ravine.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 1: At the time, many residents of Chavs Ravine had sold

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Speaker 1: their homes after being promised public housing, but those plans

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Speaker 1: were canceled by a new mayor and the ravine itself

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Speaker 1: where their old homes were, sat in limbo. Here's Janice

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Speaker 1: with the rest of the story.

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Speaker 2: Over on the East coast, Walter O'Malley, the owner of

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Speaker 2: the Brooklyn Dodgers, was unhappy with his location in Brooklyn.

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Speaker 2: The stadium was old, the neighborhood was changing, and New

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Speaker 2: York City officials weren't helping him. O'Malley wanted out, so

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Speaker 2: very quietly nineteen fifty three, nineteen fifty four, nineteen fifty.

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Speaker 4: Five, city officials began working behind the scenes with Walter

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Speaker 4: O'Malley to negotiate the possibility of a relocation from Brooklyn

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Speaker 4: to Los Angeles.

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Speaker 2: And guess what LA City officials suggested.

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Speaker 4: The bait in their negotiations with O'Malley was the Chavaservine.

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Speaker 4: And that's when many officials began to see the Chavaservine

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Speaker 4: as the perfect site for a modern Major League Baseball stadium,

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Speaker 4: the kind that O'Malley was asking for in New York,

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Speaker 4: but city officials would not give him so.

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Speaker 2: Eventually, the City Dodger contract was created in nineteen fifty eight,

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Speaker 2: and it essentially handed chavas Ravine over to O'Malley as

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Speaker 2: a kind of gift. It was an offer O'Malley couldn't refuse,

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Speaker 2: and that's when it became a full blown political battle.

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Speaker 2: Mexican American city councilman Edward Royball led the resistance.

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Speaker 4: And his criticism was on behalf of the displaced residents

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Speaker 4: of the chavas Ervine, saying, how can you argue against

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Speaker 4: public subsidies for decent housing for poor people and then

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Speaker 4: turn around and provide corporate subsidies for Walter O'Malley and

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Speaker 4: the Los Angeles Dodgers by essentially handing the Chavaservine over

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Speaker 4: to a very wealthy, very shrewd successful negotiator private businessmen

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Speaker 4: like Walter O'Malley.

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Speaker 2: At the end, all was for naught. The contract was

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Speaker 2: approved in nineteen fifty eight, five years after the public

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Speaker 2: housing plans were canceled. It was a final green light

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Speaker 2: for building Dodger Stadium. There was just one thing standing

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Speaker 2: in the way, the families that refused to leave, including

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Speaker 2: the Erechigas, who later became the face of resistance to

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Speaker 2: this eviction. On May eighth, nineteen fifty nine, the city

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Speaker 2: of Los Angeles took matters into their own hands. The

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Speaker 2: Eli County Sheriff's deputies arrived in a bunch of patrol

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Speaker 2: cars to evict jevs Ravine's final residence, and.

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Speaker 4: When the people inside the home refused to leave, the

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Speaker 4: sheriffs with a warrant went in and physically removed the

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Speaker 4: people from their home.

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Speaker 2: An old Mexican woman was lifted from a rocking chair,

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Speaker 2: children were crying, A young woman was dragged out by

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Speaker 2: four deputies, pulling her apart by each limb. Everyone and kicking, screaming,

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Speaker 2: and weeping, And once everyone was out, the bulldozers were

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Speaker 2: on scene, ready for destruction. At the time, live broadcast

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Speaker 2: journalism was taking off in the United States, so cameramen

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Speaker 2: and television reporters were on the scene and the viewers

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Speaker 2: watched with the family as their house turned into rubble.

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Speaker 4: The broadcast of these images on national television. Live images

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Speaker 4: on national television left a very bitter legacy of racial

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Speaker 4: tension between LA's Mexican American community and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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Speaker 4: And this is the legacy of conflict upon which Dodger

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Speaker 4: Stadium was.

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Speaker 2: Built three years and eighteen million dollars later. Dodger Stadium

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Speaker 2: opened its doors on April tenth, nineteen sixty two.

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Speaker 1: An opening day nineteen sixty two.

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Speaker 2: That day, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost six y three

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Speaker 2: to the Cincinnati Reds. We sent them on talvo. The

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Speaker 2: man we heard from at the beginning of the story

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Speaker 2: whose dad gave him a Dodger's jacket. He and most

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Speaker 2: of his family live only minutes away from Dodger Stadium,

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Speaker 2: which stands as a reminder of the shady dealings in

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Speaker 2: violent fiction. His grandparents, his mom, she was about eight

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Speaker 2: at the time, and her siblings left their home in

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Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine, right before the evictions became violent, and

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Speaker 2: that of all the memories we sent, his grandmother shared

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Speaker 2: with him, the night his family decided to leave their

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Speaker 2: home always stands out the most.

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Speaker 3: They were discussing what would the options. Either we leave

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Speaker 3: because they're going to bring force in. They were already

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Speaker 3: threatening them with the sheriffs. So my grandparents said, you know,

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Speaker 3: we got kids, and they said, look, there's only one

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Speaker 3: option we can do, is if we pick up and

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Speaker 3: just give it to them. My grandparents have always told

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Speaker 3: me that we can never use the word compensation because

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Speaker 3: in the sense of compensation, they would have been given

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Speaker 3: fair market value. But they were given were peanuts, and

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Speaker 3: that's what they used as peanuts. It was never to

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Speaker 3: justify what the property was worth.

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Speaker 2: They never became homeowners again.

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Speaker 3: Because we owned our home. They really thought that they

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Speaker 3: had a piece of the American dream, and what they

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Speaker 3: really found out is that it wasn't It was an

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Speaker 3: illusion for them because the American dream had laws, and

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Speaker 3: some of these laws were like inimate domain and inanimate

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Speaker 3: domain is what took their dream away from them.

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Speaker 2: Eventually, his grandparents settled in Eco Park, where we sent

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Speaker 2: the grew up a few miles west of their original home.

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Speaker 2: His grandparents are now in their nineties and he's still

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Speaker 2: learning new stories about the old neighborhood. They sent as

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Speaker 2: a founding member of Buried under the Blue, an organization

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Speaker 2: that's dedicated to preserving the history of the three neighborhoods

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Speaker 2: Palo Verde, La Looma, and Bishop, the parts that made

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Speaker 2: up Chavs Ravine that now lie buried under Dodger Stadium.

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Speaker 2: To this day, whenever we sent this grandfather passes by

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Speaker 2: the stadium.

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Speaker 3: You know, Grandpa used to go up to the gate

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Speaker 3: every time we passed that darn gate and he would

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Speaker 3: spit on the floor and he would give them the bird.

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Speaker 2: He makes his opinion clear.

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Speaker 1: This story originally aired in twenty seventeen. Today VI sent

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Speaker 1: the mont Dago with the organization Buried under the Blue

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Speaker 1: continues to preserve the oral histories of the elders of

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Speaker 1: Chavs Ravine to make sure the stories of their communities

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Speaker 1: stay alive. This episode was produced by Jennie Jamoca and

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Speaker 1: edited by Nadia Raimond. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebau.

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Speaker 1: The Latino USA team includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Elis, Victoria Estrada,

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Speaker 1: Renaldo Leanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Luis Luna, Dori mar Marquez,

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Speaker 1: Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi and Nancy Trucquillo. Penilee

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Speaker 1: Ramirez is our co executive producer I'm your host and

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Speaker 1: co executive producer Maria Noposa. Join us again on our

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Speaker 1: next episode. In the meantime, look for us on all

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Speaker 1: of your social media. I'll see you on Instagram and

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Speaker 1: remember always not yes Jao.

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Speaker 2: Latino USA is made possible in part by California Endowment,

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Speaker 2: building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians.

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Speaker 2: Funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of

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Speaker 2: health is made possible in part by a grant from

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Speaker 2: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Alonso Contu