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Lopez, Cesar. "El Descanso: A Comparative History of the Los Angeles Plaza Area and the Shared Racialized Space of the Mexican and Chinese Communities, 1853-1933," University of California, Los Angeles, June 2002.
This dissertation examines the Mexican and Chinese social histories of the Los Angeles Plaza area from the 1850s and culminating in the 1930s. My central focus examines the literal and symbolic links between these two communities. The Plaza area was once the social and commercial center of town and is generally acknowledged as the “birthplace of the city.” Currently known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, it is a historical repository of race, conflict and memory. I argue that the Plaza area is literally marked by the social and historical influences of various communities, races and classes that continuously settled, resettled and unsettled the urban landscape. My goal is to rethink the Plaza area and break with the established periodization of its urban history by using the critical outlook of shared racialized spaces. In other words, I situate the Plaza area as a site of memory where the racialization of groups evolved in connection and intersection with one another. Historical treatments of the Plaza area have framed the presence of Mexicans as “mythical” and the Chinese as episodic and minimal in Los Angeles. I frame my analysis using the concepts of Amalia Mesa-Bains’s “descansos” and Edward Soja’s “thirdspace.” As a descanso or site of rest, contemplation and memorial, the Plaza area provides a thirdspace for examining histories beyond socially constructed binaries. Sources used to craft this study include maps, oral histories, journals, newspapers, public art history and government documents. Especially because of its official memorialized status, what I have concluded is that historical scholarship about Los Angeles must recognize the Plaza area’s importance as a site of memory and witness to the shared racialized history of the city.
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