Love, in Chicano Park, if you can

Panormamic images in Barrio Logan

I visited Chicano Park in Barrio Logan, San Diego last Wednesday and took the above panoramic shots with the camera in my Galaxy S9 cell phone. I wanted to capture the park in a way that captured the passage of time in the place, as well as its unique vibe.

The 7.9-acre park, located under the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, is known for the colorful murals that populate the bridge abutments and walls of surrounding city structures.  Barrio Logan is a predominantly Mexican American/Mexican migrant community, and the murals speak both to the history of this community and to the wider context of Latin American history as well.

Some of the murals speak to the fraught history of the Barrio Logan community which had suffered a lot through the loss of 5,000 homes to make way for highway construction, not to mention the loss of access to the beachfront after the construction of naval installations blocked community access after World War II.  

In 1969, community activists won approval for the park site by the San Diego City Council. However, no action towards park development was taken by the city. Instead, bulldozers moved in to begin construction on a California Highway Patrol Station and a parking lot.  The community rebelled.  Local high school students joined the protests. Activists formed human chains around the bulldozers, and planted trees, flowers, and cactus. The occupation of the park lasted 12 days. The city was forced to negotiate with the community.  

I’ve been to Chicano Park many times. I’ve been there as lowriders stopped in the middle of Logan Avenue. I’ve watched as their owners talked shop about hydraulics and suspension while their vehicles popped up and down like horny teenagers under blankets. I’ve also been a spectator at exhibitions of Aztec dancing. One time I visited while the monthly steering committee meeting took place on the central gazebo, which is designed to resemble Aztec and Mayan architecture. Not everything is always so celebratory and welcoming.  Once I watched with an angry resident and her daughter as dozens of San Diego cops entered the park. One of the men who was talking to the police, dressed like he was homeless, was actually an undercover cop, she said.  When I asked one of the officers why they were there, he told me they were removing graffiti from the bathroom.  But this presence seemed less like a beautification campaign and more like a show of force. But the force of capital is visible very much in the nearby upscale apartment blocks, a beachhead of gentrification in the barrio.

This time around I paid a visit to the adjacent Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center. There was a display of colorful silkscreen posters by Sacramento-based Ricardo Favela and the artists of the RCAF (the Royal Chicano Air Force).  The colorful work, much of it reminiscent of the psychedelia popular in the 1960s and 1970s, promoted political talks, art shows, and performances. 

Favela and his group aimed to make “cultural arts accessible to the working class” per the wall text. But 2025 raised its ugly head in a pair of more contemporary posters next to the door of the gift shop, in English and Spanish, outlining what to do “IF YOU SEE ICE.” The posters reminded residents to react appropriately when they see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents—reminding them to verify the identity and purpose of the agents, to document their activity, and to spread awareness rather than fear.  

I asked the woman behind the museum desk if any ICE agents had made their presence known in Chicano Park and Barrio Logan.  She said that there hadn’t been any sightings in the park but during the previous night there had been sightings of ICE agents “hiding in alleys” conducting operations along Logan Avenue.

When I got home, I wrote this poem based on the text of a mural I’d seen in the park, thinking that the Trump regime had succeeded already in changing the “SI” if this mural from a YES to an IF, at least in my mind:

AMOR, SI SE PUEDE

Yes, love if you can, 
in this park where locals transformed
an armpit of an underpass 
into a park full of cacti, flowers,
and altars to the dead,
where moms and dads dote on their children
in the playground,
where the murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe, 
Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara 
rise up on murals to a heaven proscribed
by rebar and concrete.

Love, if you can 
evade the new regime
that descended on America 
like The Sopranos descended on HBO,
but if you feel the wallet-size cards 
passed around San Diego—
reminders of your constitutional rights—
will be less protection
than the Royal Chicano Air Force 
against Seal Team 6,
don’t be afraid to ask neighbors for help
unless they’re wearing that FU face
more common than MAGA hats these days.