When a building cries

What happens when a building loses the humanity that once inhabited it? When its history is hidden from people?

In another post, I wrote about how buildings are killed, sometimes by neglect but also conscious attacks on the history. A few days ago, I walked in El Segundo Barrio where Dr. David Dorado Romo and I once directed a community museum on S. Oregon, Museo Urbano. In 2011, our landlord raised the rent in the belief that the on-going "revitalization" of downtown, just north of El Segundo would allow her to almost double the rent. We couldn't afford it. We were forced to move. The space remained empty for quite a long time and then at some point, a new owner took over.

The building, which lies at the center of El Segundo's Mexican community to the south; the historic Chinese community to the north; and the history African American community to the east has a rich history reflecting the different cultures that once thrived there.

When I saw the building, once alive with history and people, I stopped in my tracks, the memories of six years ago flooding back.

​On opening day of our Museo Urbano on S. Oregon in 2011, we had over 700 visitors. People of all ages came to enjoy the festivities and view the exhibits that graduate students, artists, and others had created. They came to share stories of growing up in El Segundo in the 50s, in the 20s, and more recently.

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For months in 2010 and 2011, university students, community volunteers, artists, cultural workers, and Segundo Barrio residents had worked to create a vibrant and historic space for our community. When residents saw muralist David Flores working on the mural, "Pachucos Suaves," they asked if they, too, could paint murals in the space. With the permission of the tenement owner, they did. 

One mural, a very striking yet simple, rendition of the United Farm Workers eagle (you can see it in the photo to the left) once drew in an older woman who connected to the image. She was walking home from church and saw me sweeping the courtyard. She asked if she could enter and look at the farm workers symbol. She related the story that she had been in a farm workers union in the 1950s and out of her wallet she pulled her tattered union membership card, over sixty years old. She proudly told me that she had participated in a strike all those years ago

Art + history is a strong partnership that can elicit stories and memories.

The building, once alive, is now dead. The murals have been painted over with beige paint. Ironically, the artwork by David Flores that once enlivened the building was featured in a museum exhibit at the Smithsonian Hewitt Cooper Deigns Museum recently.

The courtyard where people danced and gathered to tell stories now has a "no trespassing sign."

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At a time when the phrase "build the wall" fills both the news and popular culture, I was saddened to see this wall built around the history that belongs to my community and that is the patrimony of both the United States and Mexico.

What do you think? How can we free the history that belongs to all of us?

Perhaps what was most painful to me, however, was to see the the front of the building fenced in.  This was a corner where young men sat, waiting for day jobs and where old man sat telling stories.  There was laughter and talk. Now it's fenced in to keep the men, and the stories out. The historic marker that tells one of the fascinating histories of this site, the story of internationally renowned healer Teresita Urrea who was exiled by Porfirio Diaz in the 1890s, is now fenced in as well.