Sons of Guadalupe.

Don’t eat the bear Sometime before its eighteenth century settlement by Spanish priests and pobladores, California had been referred to as El Rincon del Mundo (the edge of the world). To the Spanish mind of the age it was truly out there at the edge of their known world. It was too far north from Mexico and the rest of Spain’s vast empire. Some thought it might be an island called California inhabited by women and ruled by a queen called Calafia. California’s name itself was the fruit of the imagination of a Spanish novelist, Garci Ordoñez de Montalvo. He envisioned this California as a place of unimaginable mystery and fantastic visions maybe even paradise itself. Guadalupe, like the southwest itself, has changed hands a number of times: first the Chumash Indians settled and inhabited the area, then the Spanish, then the Mexicans. The United States ultimately forced Mexico to surrender California and the present-day southwestern region through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The vitality of the imagination, its revolving door of ethnicities, the resiliencies of the residents and its return to its essential Mexican roots have enhanced its fundamental quality across the years. Presumably the town takes its name from the patron saint of Mexico: La Virgen de Guadalupe, or from an 1843 (or 1840) Mexican land grant called Rancho de Guadalupe, originally deeded to the original Mexican residents, Teodoro Arrellanes and Diego Olivera. Arellanes and Olivera had acquired a massive 30,000-acre land grant from the Mexican government. Almost certainly their land grant was one of the more than 800 land grants given by the Mexican government in those days as part of its grand plan to secularize the missions and privatize its land holdings. Mexico hoped to populate the region, develop a diversified economy and protect it from European or American interests. In any case, according to the Catholic Church’s religious teachings, La Virgen appeared to a humble Indian, Juan Diego, on December 12, 1531 at the already sacred site of the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin. She was a brown Madonna that spoke to Juan Diego, a young Indian, in his native Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs and the dominant American language at the time of the Spanish Conquest in early sixteenth century. The fact of her appearance confirmed the very humanity of the Indians of Mexico at a time when thei

Juan’s King Falafel

One of the most remarkable features of this little town is its veritable United Nations of citizens within its boundaries. To my great surprise I learned that the current Mexican population dominance is a relatively recent development. While there is no disputing California’s and Guadalupe’s Mexican roots since both the Spanish and Mexican republics once ruled these lands and brought the original pobladores or settlers, its current Mexicanization is surprisingly recent. Decades before the Mexican population soared and dominated the city, Guadalupe’s social, cultural and economic life was influenced by an assortment of European and Asian immigrants that imprinted the city with a distinct mixture of cuisines, languages and businesses. Guadalupe, prior to the 1950s was a town of Chinese laundries, restaurants and opium dens, Filipino grocery stores and gambling rooms, Japanese candy shops, jewelry stores, liquor stores and ice cream parlors, Swiss cafes, Mexican restaurants and cantinas and the First Bank of Italy. English was a second language in Guadalupe. In fact, prior to the 1940s and World War II, Japanese immigrants not only comprised a significant percentage of Guadalupe’s residents but also dominated its business community. Some say that before World War II up to 80% of Guadalupe’s residents was of Japanese origin. Names like Minami, Katayama, Kurokawa, Aratani, Shimizu, Yoshihara, Ishi, Oishi, Nakano, Takano, Aratani, Tomooka and Masatani, were much more common than Jones or Lopez. Their business prominence is made more surprising by the fact that American laws prohibited their American citizenship and land ownership. Guadalupe’s minorities have always been its majority. These were the parents and relatives of many of the Sons of Guadalupe. Most Issei (Japanese immigrants) had arrived in the United States between 1885 and 1924, following in the footsteps of the Chinese immigrants. Around 275,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii and the mainland of the United States by 1924. Around 72,000 Japanese lived in California alone. The Issei, like the Chinese before them, could not become naturalized citizens. Citizenship was only extended to white European immigrants. All Asians were excluded from congressional legislation in 1870 that extended to “aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.” the right of naturalization. Chinese and Japanese immigrants in California, who were neither white nor black, were classified as “aliens ineligible for citizenship” in 1913. This was an indirect means of discriminating against Asians since, Asians, including Filipinos, were the only racial group that were relegated to the status of “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” The law also prohibited the Issei from purchasing agricultural land or selling land to fellow Issei and restricted leases to three years. Many Issei farmers, however, managed to circumvent this law by purchasing land in the name of their U.S.-born children. Some Issei in the Santa Maria Valley managed to acquire thousands of acres of land and turn it into productive agriculture, using Filipino and Mexican labor. Around 1920, Issei owned farms produced crops that represented about 10 percent of the value of the California harvest working around 500,00 acres of farm lands. Not until 1952 were Asians allowed to become naturalized American citizens. The Japanese influence in Guadalupe was also evident in the businesses community. For example, almost directly in the middle of igrants it attracted and the residents that made the town their new home. As the demands of agriculture expanded the need for cheap labor so did the dependency on Mexican labor and the growth of the Mexican-origin population in the United States. Prior to World War II agricultural laborers had come from various countries including Mexico, Japan and the Philippines and to a lesser extent Europe. As these sources of cheap immigrant labor from Asia and certain European regions were restricted through congressional legislation, such as the National Origins Act of 1924 that plahanges were on the horizon as the 1930s approached. Soon they would face the first great challenge in the United States.
No Forks allowed: …we