Historic Hispanic sites eyed for saving
Two Texas locations are among seven recommended nationally for protection in a report criticizing the disproportionate lack of Hispanic landmarks in heritage and conservation sites in the United States.
Castner Range, surrounding El Paso, and that city’s Duranguito neighborhood, bordering Mexico, have long histories related to Hispanic culture in Texas.
Less than 8 percent of designated landmarks represent the stories of American Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans or women. But the report, called “Place, Story and Culture: An Inclusive Approach to Protecting Latino Heritage Sites,” emphasized that “Latino sites continue to bear the brunt of said inequalities.”
“Even though for generations Latinos have continued to prove they are essential to the United States, sites that commemorate Latino heritage are disproportionately excluded when it comes to officially designated heritage and conservation sites,” said Manuel Galaviz, co-author of the report released this month.
The report is based on a study by the Latino Heritage Scholars, an initiative of the Hispanic Access Foundation, a nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C., that advocates for Hispanic equitable access and opportunities in several areas of society. The scholars are a group of young Hispanic professionals who described their mission as ensuring that Latino history is protected, shared and celebrated as part of the U.S. narrative.
National parks, heritage areas and monuments are designated by a process outlined in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, which was authorized through the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. But the process is plagued by mechanisms that maintain what the authors called a “diversity deficit” in the desig
nations.
Among the structural deficiencies perpetuating the problem “is the lack of representation of Latinos, African Americans and people from nonwhite communities in the boards and committees involved in the decision making process to designate” the sites, said Brenda Gallegos, who’s with the Hispanic Access Foundation’s Texas Conservation Program.
The report makes recommendations for the federal government to make the process more inclusive, beginning with the need to update the criteria to evaluate the value of sites to be included in the register.
Gallegos mentioned as an example that one of the criteria for choosing a site is that “it must have a distinctive character; they (must) possess artistic construction or architectural value, artistic value.” However, she added, “it takes us back to the lack of representation in committees because, who are the people defining that value? How is a Caucasian person that has never been part of this community more qualified to determine what is or isn’t artistic or architecturally valuable?”
Duranguito, one of the sites recommended in the report, “is a place full of Latino history that we are losing as we speak,” said Gallegos, referring to efforts by developers in El Paso to demolish what is left of the centuries-old neighborhood in the city’s downtown. Historians date the neighborhood origin back to the late 1820s. The report said the site, at the border with Mexico, is the oldest neighborhood in the city, dating from the era of the Spanish colonizers. It was converted into a “zona libre” area during the U.S.-Mexico War.
Castner Range, the other site proposed in Texas, is 7,081 acres hugging the city that has a variety of natural and historic importance for Latinos. The land was the ancestral home of the Comanche and Apache peoples, who left evidence of their existence in the region. The report said Native American and Mexican American communities continue to conduct ceremonies on the range, as many people consider it sacred.
The military history of Castner Range is also highlighted in the report. The Army’s Fort Bliss acquired part of the range in the mid-1920s to create the Castner Target Range, which would be extensively utilized for training of anti-tank weaponry during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Gallegos said conservationists and community activists are fighting in El Paso to protect both sites from gentrification and destruction.
Three of the places recommended in the report are in California: Chepa’s Park in Santa Ana, Friendship Park in San Diego and Hazard Park in Los Angeles. The others are Fefa’s Market in Providence, R.I., and the Gila River in New Mexico.
“Our hope is that in highlighting these locations, we can raise awareness about why we need to preserve these locations and how essential they are to telling a more complete story of the contributions of diverse communities to this nation,” said Norma Hartell, a co-author of the report.