California Mexicans and the Terror of the White Invasion
Today is a good time to revive the story of what happened to California Mexicans when the state suffered a white invasion, just 177 years ago.
In Los Angeles and all over the state, terrible things happened to Mexicans. At least 163 Mexicans were lynched there between 1848 and 1860. Ken-Kay Gonzalez deserves credit for this information.
Mobs lynched a boy, 15-year-old Francisco Cotta, in 1861. He was first dragged through downtown. He was hanged close to the intersection of what are now Union Station and the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Lynch mobs took a liking to the spot where Temple crosses Broadway. Few were prosecuted for these crimes, usually committed in daytime hours. Crowds converged on the murder sites to watch the hangings.
Statewide, during those years, 170 lynchings of Mexicans occurred.
I unearth this horrific history because it needs to be told, especially now.
ICE goons are dragging away Latinos to uncertain fates. No matter what crime those arrested may have committed, anonymous goon squads revive thoughts of mob justice.
Nowadays, European Americans are unsettled by the masses of brown people streaming into California. Fears that Latino immigrants come to rob and pillage en masse are demonstrably untrue.
But the fright Mexican and indigenous people in California felt at the coming wave of European Americans was solidly based.
There were an estimated 14,000 Mexicans and 300,000 indigenous people who lived in California.
By the 1880s, the indigenous population stood at 30,000. They were the survivors of systematic slaughter and disease.
Credit for this work goes to historian Arturo Marcial Gonzalez. He wrote of a period in American history that has been cast into the void.
It is a well-documented narrative of one of the many chapters in United States history that lay bare the sometimes brutal and racist behavior of European American occupiers.
The mass influx of European Americans into California is one such period. A handful of scholars, among them Leonard Pitt, extensively documented the Californios’ traumatic experience of suddenly being transformed from large landowners to peons.
They feared loss of their rights, but much worse took place: violence, some of it fatal.
The killings were not limited to lynchings. Some victims suffered death by beating.
During the Gold Rush, Mexican miners and workers, simply seeking a better life, were attacked by white mobs eager to claim their gold and land.
Those murders and lynchings rarely included police arrests. Newspapers of the time often justified or even celebrated the violence.
Many names and stories have been lost, hidden in forgotten court records and yellowed newspaper clippings, or carried quietly in the memories of those who survived.
For decades, we, California Mexicans, have seen the demographics transformed. It’s hard to imagine Los Angeles County when I was growing up there in the 1950s.
More than 93 percent of residents were white, and we, Mexican Americans, comprised a bit over 7 percent. And we lived in distinct, shabby neighborhoods. White America existed in a parallel world.
Our restrained acceptance and acculturation into White customs have been smooth. No white folks have been lynched.
We all know what is happening to our brothers and sisters under the Trump regime. Aside from scattered protests, we have quietly accepted our dehumanization. Think of Alligator Alley. Do we need to be presented as macabre theater?
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 