10 MAY 11-17, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | erty to Denver for $50 million so that the city could expand I-25 and RTD light-rail lines). The railroads shaped Lincoln Park’s working-class character for generations as immigrants — including those of German, Italian, Irish, Eastern European, Jewish and Mexican descent — came to work in the yards. Then in 1942, the federal government started the Braceros program, which brought in labor from Mexico to fi ll the void left by men who had gone to fi ght in WWII. One of the benefi ts of the program was free housing. That year, the Denver Housing Authority opened the city’s fi rst housing projects in north Lincoln Park. Originally the projects were for whites only, but the DHA lifted that restriction later in the decade. The combination of work and cheap housing attracted many Mexican immigrants to Lincoln Park during the 1940s. Soon the DHA housing was dominated by Mexican residents, who called them the “red projects” and the “yellow projects” according to the color of the bricks used to build them. During the decades spanning 1940 to 1970, more than 80 percent of U.S. Census respondents in the neighborhood identifi ed as “persons of Spanish language or surname,” according to Denver records. As the demo- graphics of the neighborhood shifted, the private dwellings in the area began to refl ect this shift. While the homes were still brick — mandated decades before by Denver City Council after repeated fi res — the Latino families showed their Southwestern roots by covering some of the brick with stucco, made by mixing cement and sand, like the adobe houses seen in New Mexico and Arizona. Many homes had short iron and chain-link fences ringing their small front yards. The 1960s saw changes in Lincoln Park that went far beyond the physical, however. Latinos began taking pride in their heritage after decades of being made to feel ashamed of their identity. “Even though we had Spanish roots, a lot of the youth from this generation, when they spoke Spanish in school, they were actually beaten with rulers on their hands,” says Martinez de Luna, adding that her mother experienced that growing up in northern Colorado. “They were beaten if they spoke Spanish, so were they knowledgeable about the Spanish language? Not entirely, because they were denied speaking it.” Her father says that his parents, who came to the U.S. in 1926, refused to teach him Spanish because they wanted him to fi t in, and they thought that sticking to English would help him succeed in life. “And they wouldn’t allow Spanish to be used in schools,” Martinez recalls. “It was very diffi cult for people from New Mexico, who grew up talking in Spanish and weren’t allowed to use it.” Growing up in Denver, he remembers that Spanish-speaking classmates were fi ned fi ve cents for each word they spoke in the foreign language. “They were forced to speak Eng- lish,” he says. “And unfortunately, our parents at that time didn’t want us to learn Spanish, because they wanted us to assimilate into the melting pot, so that’s what a lot of people did.” But in the ’60s, activists decided that embracing their history included giving their neighborhood a new name, one that embraced their culture. There was already another Lincoln Park — in front of the Colo- rado Capitol — and residents of this Lincoln Park “certainly didn’t identify with Abraham Lincoln,” Martinez says. Among the names they considered was Se- milla, which means “seed,” and Aztlán, which refers to the mythical homeland of the Aztecs. “We decided La Alma would be more appropriate for the community because of its meaning,” Martinez says. “People in the community were really comfortable with that, because it was a Spanish name and something they could really identify with at the time.” But because many in the neighborhood had never spoken Spanish, they were unaware of the language’s gram- mar rules — and their exceptions. Unlike in English, the article “the” is gen- dered in Spanish, and the right form must be used to match the gender of the word. Words that end in -a tend to take the femi- nine “la” rather than the masculine “el.” La luna, la tierra, la lluvia, las frutas and la niña, for example, all follow the rule. But there are ex- ceptions, such as el planeta, el agua, el día, el aroma and el alma. The name of the neighborhood “speaks to a larger problem that was happening in the United States, es- pecially in the South- west,” Martinez de Luna says. “The reality is, yeah, they thought it was La Alma, and they called it La Alma, and we just all decided at some point, okay, it’s going to be called La Alma, even though it’s incorrect.” La Alma emerged during a decade of political movements, including protests against the Vietnam War and the fi ght for women’s liberation. Denver was ground zero for the Chicano movement, La Alma continued from page 9 continued on page 12 EVAN SEMÓN EMANUEL MARTINEZ EVAN SEMÓN Emanuel Martinez’s 1978 mural (upper left) on the rec center that introduced the La Alma name; other scenes from the neighborhood. EVAN SEMÓN
