La Raza Park isn’t very large as Denver parks go. Occupying one metropolis block between Osage and Navajo streets, it’s simple sufficient for drivers on West thirty eighth Avenue to zoom by with out desirous about the pyramid-shaped kiosko construction on the middle of its grassy lawns.
However the little park has made an outsized imprint on Denver particularly when it got here to Chicano tradition within the metropolis. And now it’s set to develop into a completely protected a part of historical past by being named town’s third historic cultural district. It’s a designation that may qualify the park for state funding that may very well be used to protect it and its legacy.
The story of the park dates again to 1906 when town purchased it and opened one of many first playgrounds in Denver there, in keeping with Denver landmark preservation employees analysis. It carries on by way of the Nineteen Thirties and 40s when it was named Columbus Park in recognition of the Italian immigrants and their youngsters who settled in north Denver and a public pool first opened there.
Within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, as demographics continued to alter within the metropolis’s Northside neighborhoods, the park turned one of many focal factors of the Chicano Motion in Denver. Chicano individuals gathered in parks to have fun their distinctive ethnic heritage, construct neighborhood, get politically organized and push for equal rights and higher financial alternatives.
On June 28, 1981, it additionally turned the positioning of a infamous police use of pressure in opposition to Chicano residents gathered there to have fun the unofficial opening of the park for summer time. Citing an absence of a allow for the gathering, cops carrying batons moved into the park that afternoon to close down a gathering of a whole lot of individuals together with girls and youngsters. The gang threw rocks and bottles and police responded through the use of tear fuel, in keeping with metropolis analysis.
“The historical past of La Raza Park is the historical past of Denver’s northside,” reads the applying to make the park a protected historic district.
Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval sponsored the landmark designation. The Metropolis Council vote on that software this week is seen as principally a formality. The park might be added to town’s historic properties portfolio.
Sandoval was born and raised in northwest Denver. Her late father, Paul Sandoval, served within the state Senate and operated eating places within the space.
The town final 12 months accomplished a context research of Mexican American, Chicano and Latino historical past in Denver. That report delves into the historical past of La Raza Park. It ends by recommending metropolis leaders do extra to work with property homeowners and companions on alternatives to appoint extra locations with important Latino historical past for historic designation.
In response to a 2021 evaluation, at the least 97% of town’s historic districts and individually acknowledged landmarks have been related to white individuals and historical past, primarily prosperous white males, in keeping with metropolis planning employees, a quantity that falls effectively in need of reflecting Denver’s range.
That very same 12 months, the Metropolis Council voted to make the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood a historic cultural district due to its function within the Chicano motion. It joined town’s 5 Factors neighborhood, acknowledged as an epicenter of Black artwork and tradition within the American West in the midst of the final century, as the one two locations in Denver with that particular designation.
With town proudly owning La Raza Park, Sandoval took her efforts to designate the park on to Mayor Michael Hancock and labored with the parks division and metropolis landmarks employees on the hassle, she stated.
“I stated, ‘Mayor, I don’t need this to be one other planning doc that doesn’t have implementation behind it,’” Sandoval stated. “I advised him this story about La Raza Park having a pool and there being a conflict between the police division and the individuals of coloration utilizing the pool. He completely supported it and I acquired the go-ahead of parks and rec.”
What makes this designation distinctive in Sandoval’s view is the size of what metropolis planners name the “interval of significance.” As the applying makes clear, La Raza Park has been part of Denver’s historical past going again to when it turned certainly one of Denver’s first public areas greater than a century in the past.
“I didn’t simply need it to be the Chicano Motion story however I wished it to be in regards to the historical past of the park,” Sandoval stated. “It’s so essential as a result of it tells the story of Denver.”
Sandoval performed a direct function in the newest chapter of that story. She sponsored the Metropolis Council motion in 2021 that lastly modified the official identify to La Raza Park from Columbus Park. La Raza roughly interprets to “the race.” The rallying cry “Viva La Raza” celebrates the distinctive ethnic historical past and Indigenous roots of Chicano individuals in America.
The Columbus Park identify was chosen to honor the Italian American inhabitants within the neighborhood however a extra scrutinous take a look at Christopher Columbus’s legacy of colonization and brutalization of Indigenous peoples in North America has led to his identify and likeness being faraway from public locations throughout the county in recent times. A previous effort within the Eighties to alter the identify, sponsored by Councilwoman Debbie Ortega, failed. The profitable effort 30 years later led to a rededication celebration within the park in 2021.
Nita Gonzales has recollections in La Raza Park that return many years. Her father, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, based the Campaign for Justice. That group was on the coronary heart of the Chicano civil rights motion in Denver. Nita contributed to the historic designation software alongside Sandoval.
“I by no means thought I might stay to see the day of the identify change. I acquired arrested a couple of instances for protesting in opposition to Columbus Day and calling it Columbus Park,” Gonzales stated. “Via the years, many individuals have come to and rallied round that little piece of land that was often called La Raza Park because the Seventies.”
Gonzales remembers when the pool there was crammed in by town parks division in 1984, one thing she seen as direct retaliation for younger Chicanos taking again or “liberating” the park within the ’70s. That liberation concerned taking up administration of the pool so it will be extra welcoming to individuals of coloration and ensuring the roles there have been crammed by individuals residing within the neighborhood, not white individuals from exterior the realm.
The kiosko, impressed by Aztec structure, opened in 1990 the place the pool and bathhouse was. It has develop into an essential gathering place in its personal proper. A Dia de los Muertos celebration has been held within the park yearly since 1982 as a result of that was the 12 months college students at Escuela Tlatelolco demanded their celebration be held there, Gonzales stated. She would know. She was the college’s principal on the time. Her dad based that college to supply a spot the place college students might study Chicano and Mexican American cultural heritage.
Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez will quickly be sworn in as an at-large Metropolis Council member. She is Nita Gonzales’ niece and Corky Gonzales’ granddaughter. Rising up not removed from the park, Gonzales-Gutierrez heard tales in regards to the Chicano motion and the clashes with metropolis authorities within the park. Her mother labored on the pool there as her first job. However by the point Gonzales-Gutierrez was a woman, the park was extra often called a stage for cultural performances and occasions.
“I bear in mind acting on the stage with my grandmother, my mother’s mother,” Gonzales-Gutierrez stated. “She sort of shaped her personal little, all-female mariachi troupe and he or she would get me and my brothers and deck us all out in costume and we’d carry out along with her.”
The historic designation was designed to be versatile, stated Becca Dierschow, a metropolis planner who labored carefully with Sandoval on the designation. If neighbors wish to see the basketball courtroom or the playground there changed, that will be doable beneath the designation, however the kiosko, plaza and public artwork items there’ll now be eligible for Historical past Colorado grant funding to guard them into the long run.
“If something ever occurs to the kiosko or the murals contained in the kiosko, that fund may very well be referred to as up for repairs or preservation work,” Dierschow stated.
That’s good news for Lorenzo Ramirez. Ramirez acquired concerned with the Campaign for Justice as a teen and was among the many younger activists who labored on the La Raza Park pool earlier than it was crammed in. He additionally painted one of many murals on the since-demolished bathhouse. He nonetheless lives inside strolling distance from the park.
Amongst a mountain of community-focused work that retains him busy, Ramirez teaches Mexican people dancing and conventional Aztec dance by way of his studio Grupo Folklorico Sabor Latino Inc. Earlier this month, he joined dancers from throughout Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California for a forty third annual Ceremonia Xupantla on the park, a standard dance ceremony centered on the summer time solstice.
“It truly is within the coronary heart of the neighborhood,” he stated.
However the neighborhood is altering. Gentrification has pushed many households out of the neighborhood. Extra sources to guard that public area and cultural heritage can solely be a superb factor, Ramirez stated.
“For me, it’s a legacy of a neighborhood that’s shrinking,” he stated. “So something we will protect is preserving not simply northwest Denver’s historical past however all of Denver’s historical past and Chicano contributions and Indigenous individuals to this area’s contributions to that historical past.”