12 MAY 11-17, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | which promoted pride in the population’s Mexican and Hispanic origins. Boxer-turned-activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales started the Crusade for Justice, a Chicano-rights advocacy group, and played a key role in organizing the West High School blowouts of 1969, which saw students at that school in the Lincoln Park neighborhood walk out to protest racism and show solidar- ity with the 1968 blowouts in Los Angeles. Martinez, who attended Manual High School in the area then known as the East- side, joined the demonstrations and was even arrested. Tony Garcia, executive artistic director of Su Teatro, one of the longest-running Chicano theater companies in the country, grew up in Auraria in the ’50s and ’60s. In 2010, Su Teatro found a permanent home in the heart of La Alma, in the old Denver Civic Theater on Santa Fe Drive. Garcia wrote a play about the West High blowouts in 2019, and likens the renaming of Lincoln Park to La Alma with what the Chicano movement did for Mexicans in Denver. “Chicano was a re-identifi cation of our- selves,” Garcia says. “It was about your iden- tity, who you are, and the movement was all about cultural identity, who are we, where do we come from. That was such a revela- tion. You didn’t come from anywhere. You’re where your home is.” When the West High students walked out of their school, they met in the green space at Lincoln Park, remembers Jay Alires, who grew up in the neighborhood. He went to Mullen High School and wasn’t at the blowouts, but he recognized their impact. The protests “created a generation of activ- ists,” says Alires. Many had already become politicized after the 1968 death of Louie Pineda, who was shot twice in the back as he ran from police after he’d been caught vandalizing parked cars at O’Meara Ford at Mariposa Street and Colfax Avenue, on the northern edge of La Alma. Garcia says he remembers walking up and down the streets and seeing signs that read “Justice for Louie” in yards and windows. “It activated the neighborhood quite a bit,” Garcia says. “I didn’t know him. He was related to friends of mine, and I was surprised that they had become activated by that.” Chicano activism was focused in Lincoln Park, Garcia recalls, but it soon spread to other parts of Denver. The life of young Latinos in Denver was heavily defi ned by sports. The Lincoln Park neighborhood had basketball courts, a base- ball fi eld and an open space used for football, and kids from the area would travel to other neighborhoods, such as Columbus and Cur- tis Park, to compete against young Latinos and Italians there. Meanwhile, Latinos who grew up in other parts of Denver came to La Alma to play. “Mexicans were really concentrated in the Westside neighborhood and in the East- side, around Five Points,” Garcia explains. “But in the Westside, it was concentrated. We grew out of the Auraria neighborhood.” Although Garcia was from Auraria, he saw himself as a Westsider because “it was all the Westside at the time.” Like La Alma, the Auraria neighborhood was predominantly Mexican by the late ’60s. The 1965 fl ood that had caused signifi cant damage to the metro area set in motion plans to redevelop Auraria into an urban campus; Latino families were told to leave their homes in 1972 so that the city could complete the project. Chicanos who were already wary of being displaced from areas that had been their homes for multiple generations looked at what was happening to Aura- ria and became more active in claiming their own neighborhoods, particularly Lincoln Park. “Consequently, you had people who started to talk about community control, which is one of the tenets of the Chicano movement,” Garcia says. “This neighbor- hood was ripe for that because we were in those institutions where we could gain some level of political power and could have some say.” In 1971, Emanuel Martinez converted a tool shed in the park into a recreation center where he could teach arts and crafts. With input from the community, he decided to name the new building “La Alma.” Since he “couldn’t speak much Spanish,” Martinez says, “I had no idea at the time that when we named it La Alma that we were incorrect.” It was more about pride than grammar. “During that time period, the renaming became part of that community control and taking back and claiming things,” Garcia says. “It was a sign of defi ance to go into the park and use the other name rather than use the name the city imposed on it. It was the same thing as calling ourselves Chicanos rather than Spanish or Mexican.” “We really felt that we needed to change the name,” Martinez adds. “It all started in west Denver, but other Chicano communi- ties started doing the same by taking over their swimming pools and doing murals. We really created a movement throughout the city of Denver at that time.” The renaming of Chicano neighbor- hoods “was very informal,” Garcia recalls. “I don’t think anybody was interested in going through a formal renaming or city review process.” But fi nally, the city did get involved. In 1987, “Mestizo” was added to the name of Curtis Park. And after decades of de- bate, in 2020 Denver City Council fi nally changed the name of Columbus Park to La Raza Park, a label the community had used for decades. By then, the city had offi cially renamed Lincoln Park as La Alma Lincoln Park. That move came in 2013. Six years later, La Alma Lincoln Park became only the second his- toric cultural district in Denver. Last year, the Chicano/a/x Community Murals of Colo- rado Project was honored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The fi rst murals in the city were in the La Alma neighborhood, Garcia says, but it was Martinez’s mural, painted in 1978 on the side of what was already known as the La Alma Recreation Center, that really helped solidify the area’s identity. His daughter was baptized in front of that mural. Martinez de Luna loves to tell the story of the neighborhood and its name, “because the reality is, that generation was denied and weren’t able to speak their language,” she says. “They weren’t taught it, so it’s very profound.” Email the author at [email protected]. La Alma continued from page 10 LUCHA MARTINEZ DE LUNA The Martinez murals by the swimming pool and a nearby wall are gone; the decorative design remains on a housing project. LUCHA MARTINEZ DE LUNA LUCHA MARTINEZ DE LUNA
