Wedged between two cream-colored house complexes on a knoll in South Pasadena is a time warp.
The 180-year-old Adobe Flores is likely one of the final remaining buildings from the time that Southern California was a part of Mexico. A small grove of palm bushes surrounds a cactus backyard within the entrance. To the facet is a flagpole with the American flag above the Mexican flag. Bronze plaques on the porch state that the whitewashed one-story constructing is on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations and is the place Mexican Gen. Jose Maria Flores stayed earlier than agreeing to a ceasefire in 1847 throughout the Mexican-American Conflict.
It’s a personal residence now, so all I might do once I visited final Saturday morning was stare at it from the driveway. Then, Felix Gutierrez and Lori Fuller Rusch confirmed up.
He’s a retired USC journalism professor; she teaches artwork historical past at Cal State L.A. They’re members of the South Pasadena Preservation Basis. Collectively, they took me again to a time when grasslands and cattle lined what in the present day is asphalt and automobiles, and made the argument that July 4 ought to imply one thing extra to Southern Californians than simply Independence Day.
“This was all open area as much as the [110] freeway 50 years in the past,” Gutierrez stated, waving out to the horizon as we stood within the shade of the palm bushes. Two automobiles sat within the driveway. I questioned if we might go inside.
“The final time the residents allowed us inside was 12 years in the past,” he stated with a shrug.
On this present day 175 years in the past, the US and Mexico proclaimed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American Conflict. The settlement established a brand new border, which meant the northern half of Mexico turned the modern-day American Southwest. It additionally assured to the Mexicans who stayed “the enjoyment of all of the rights of residents of” their new nation.
Everyone knows how that labored out.
American historical past has lengthy handled the settlement as a bump on the street to Manifest Future. Mexico, in the meantime, sees it as one among its most humiliating moments. For Mexican Individuals, the treaty is a psychic wound that has by no means healed, proof that the American authorities — and gringos, by default — can by no means be trusted.
Activists used its damaged guarantees to arrange resistance. In 1972, for example, the Brown Berets occupied Catalina Island for almost a month, arguing that for the reason that Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo didn’t point out it, they had been reclaiming the Island of Romance for Mexico.
Retired USC professor Felix Gutierrez stands in entrance of Adobe Flores in South Pasadena. The home is on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
I’ve at all times related grievance with the treaty. Gutierrez and Fuller Rusch needed me to see it in a very completely different context. He got here armed with a folder filled with clippings and a guide concerning the historical past of the treaty; she carried an iPad.
“There’s been quite a lot of deal with the land that was misplaced” due to the Mexican-American Conflict, Gutierrez stated. “However there must be equal emphasis on the folks that remained.”
“We [California] are a microcosm of the place the world goes to be,” Fuller Rusch added. “Residing collectively is just not at all times harmonious. So we now have to be taught from one another and respect one another and struggle for one another.”
“And that struggle” for Mexican Individuals, Gutierrez stated as he gestured towards the Adobe Flores, “began proper right here.”
Gutierrez, whose ancestors got here to Southern California within the 1840s, grew up with tales of Californio bravery within the face of American empire. The Mexican authorities had stripped them of heavy artillery, so all of the Californios might struggle the “Yankees” (Gutierrez’s time period, not mine) with had been lances, lariats and pistols.
These invaders initially “obtained the rear finish kicked out of them,” the profe stated with a glad smile. The Californios received battles by way of the autumn of 1846 in present-day Dominguez Hills, the San Pasqual Valley in San Diego County and the San Gabriel River close to Montebello. However American forces, led by males corresponding to Kearney, Fremont and Stockton, whose final names nonetheless pepper the California panorama, had been marching on Los Angeles with extra males and firepower.
Adobe Flores in South Pasadena. Bronze plaques posted on the porch state that the whitewashed one-story constructing is the place Mexican Gen. Jose Maria Flores stayed earlier than agreeing to a ceasefire in 1847 throughout the Mexican-American Conflict.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
Flores and different Californios gathered at an adobe ranch home in Rancho San Pascual, a Mexican land grant that encompassed most of Altadena, Pasadena, South Pasadena and San Marino. These discussions culminated within the Treaty of Cahuenga, which the Individuals and Mexicans signed in modern-day Studio Metropolis on Jan. 13, 1847. A long time later, the adobe was named in Flores’ honor.
“Flores informed the Individuals, ‘If we don’t come to phrases, we’ll turn into guerrilla fighters and flee to the hills,’ ” Gutierrez stated. “It’s the one peace treaty in American historical past dictated by the shedding facet.”
The armistice allowed Californios to maintain their property and promised “equal rights and privileges.” However the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stripped these ensures a yr and a half later. It’s that loss, Gutierrez stated, that we must always bear in mind on the Fourth of July, particularly since this nation has for too lengthy handled Mexican Individuals as little higher than vassals.
“We [Mexican Americans] have rights as Americans,” is the Californio message that ought to nonetheless resonate for everybody 175 years later, he stated. “We’re simply nearly as good as you [Yankees]. Simply give us an opportunity to point out it.”
I requested Fuller Rusch what she realized concerning the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo rising up. “Zero,” she stated with amusing, then added: “It’s one sentence in highschool textbooks in the present day. Possibly.”
The profa takes pleasure in instructing her Latino college students concerning the treaty in lessons the place she’s “the one gringa within the room. I inform them, ‘Your ancestors are proper right here, and you shouldn’t lose their historical past, so go discover it!’
“The youthful they’re,” she added, “the much less they know — however the faster they be taught.”
The textual content of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is in Richard Griswold del Castillo’s guide, “The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Battle.” The treaty ended the Mexican-American Conflict 175 years in the past.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
Fuller Rusch flipped by way of photographs and work of Adobe Flores by way of the many years: as a ranch home, a boarding home, a tea room, an deserted mess and eventually the gleaming slice of California historical past it’s in the present day. She famous that Anglos had been those who preserved it as a substitute of demolishing it, like too many buildings of the period. The identical household has owned it since 1967, holding it as a rental property.
“Others are in a position to inform its historical past,” she stated. “It is a mannequin for learn how to stay.”
Tenants from close by house buildings blithely walked previous Gutierrez and Fuller Rusch as they gave their mini-lecture. Automobiles drove previous us. The pleased shouts of households having fun with a picnic bubbled over from close by Garfield Park.
Gutierrez posed for a photograph in entrance of the flagpole, with its twin nationwide flags, and cracked, “I’ve been ready 175 years for this second.”
