By Jaime Ruiz, Staff Writer
Editor’s Note: On June 7, the City of Los Angeles commemorated the memory of Mexican Hollywood at the Cruise Ship Terminal, the historic site of the beloved neighborhood that thrived from the 1920s to the 1950s. The event honored the rich cultural legacy of the Mexican-American community in the Los Angeles Harbor Area. Random Lengths News is reprinting an updated version of reporter Jaime Ruiz’s 2005 story.
Sitting where the Los Angeles Cruise Center now stands, Mexican Hollywood still occupies a special place in the hearts and memories of the people of San Pedro, particularly the people who used to call this neighborhood home.
Described by local historians as a quaint little village, north of Second Street between Harbor Boulevard and the waterfront, the story of how Mexican Hollywood arrived at its name is various, numerous, and anything but quaint. One story has it that in the 1920s, the name emerged due to its obvious contradiction ― namely that Mexicans made up the majority of residents while the neighborhood was anything but Hollywood in terms of wealth or fame.
Delfina Aguilar Rivera who lived on the other side of Pacific Avenue had friends who lived in Mexican Hollywood. Rivera recalls a story that captures the spirit and pride of the residents.
“Years ago, when the canneries were down there, they were filming a lot of the old movies,” Rivera began. “When they used some of the girls as extras, they started saying they were movie stars. And it was Mexican Hollywood because they were all Mexican. That’s the way I understood it.”
Lillie Gonzales Nunio recalled how, “They would say that everybody was so beautiful, because all the girls there were beauties, they really were.”
Joe Sanchez Salazar believes the name was due to the number of performers that lived in Mexican Hollywood. Salazar’s father, Don Jose “Pajaro” Salazar, wrote a song in the 1920s not long after he moved to the neighborhood.
Translated, the song goes:
The angels are beautiful, with the port of San Pedro, where my prieta (dark-complexioned love.) grew up, where I bring my memory, I bring my guitar.
According to Salazar, Mexican Hollywood got its name because there were singers, dancers, and everyone used to get in the act, Joe explained. “Somebody came up with the name Mexican Hollywood. And I asked, Where in the hell did they get that name? Because everybody here was a celebrity.”
Mexican Hollywood has often been described as a “tight-knit” community by those who knew it best. But extensive interviews with some of the Chicanos who grew up in the barrio indicate something more: Mexican Hollywood through familial and extra-familial relations with the creative mechanisms of an informal economy served as a life jacket in a sea of economic inequality.
Great-grandmother and San Pedro resident, Irma Rodriquez Contreras recalls the community spirit she felt during the 1940s. “Everyone that lived in Mexican Hollywood helped each other,” she says. “Everyone worked so hard for their families.”
Still, poverty stood at the forefront of the community’s experience. An examination of the 1939 WPA Census for Ancon Street, Mexican Hollywood, said that the conditions of the houses were marked “unfit for use,” made of wood estimated to have been built in the late 1910s and 1920s.
Not unusual considering that the houses built there, some with recycled building material, were between 1923 and 1924 and were intended to be workforce housing, primarily for single men working on the waterfront. The land was owned by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which was later bought by The Admiral Line in 1916 but retained the former’s name.
Monthly rents ranged between $8 and $12, which included heat, light, cooking fuel, and water. More often than not, several structures stood on the same lot. Houses stood on stilts since residents owned the home but not the lot. Until the 1930s, there were no sewer systems and the streets were still unpaved.
Though people of Mexican descent have existed in the Los Angeles Harbor for centuries, modern Mexican migration into San Pedro began in the 1900s with the ongoing building of the port, railroad expansion, and agriculture. It is not entirely surprising that Mrs. Contreras would have such powerful recollections of her childhood in Mexican Hollywood and its tight community.
Mrs. Contreras was the eldest daughter of Maria and Francisco Rodriguez’s seven surviving children when they began renting at 420 Ancon Street. Their landlord was Don Fermin Gonzales, the uncle of Lillie and Loui Gonzales (also known as “Luyo”), who lived down the street at 423 Ancon Street.
When her son set up a website memorializing the heyday of Mexican Hollywood, Mrs. Contreras received an email from a grandson of Frank Castillo Sanchez who now lives in Northern California. In 1923, Mr. Sanchez was born and raised in the house Mrs. Contreras’ family had adopted. According to Frank, the house was built by his father, Don Eduardo Sanchez, known as “El Panadero” for his bakery in the backyard. Sanchez said his dad knew how to “hustle” ― meaning he was adept at making extra cash.
Behind the house, he built a little shed out of which he baked Mexican bread to sell, Sanchez explained.
“As I grew older he used to make menudo on weekends when me and my older sisters and brothers used to go down to the barrio, and at every house on Sunday morning, knock on doors and ask the people if they wanted menudo. Selling for a nickel a pot, “We would take the pot and the nickel back to dad and he’d fill the pot with menudo and we would take it back to them.” And this was just a couple of the “side hustles” in which Don Eduardo was engaged.
Weathering the Depression
Tough choices faced Mexican communities during the Depression. Like today, their labor proved crucial to the lifeblood of key industries in the US economy, but during economic downturns, they become scapegoats for structural deficiencies inherent in capitalism.
In the late 1920s and 30s, most Mexicans like the Gonzales family, who had lived and contributed for decades, stayed in El Norte and continued their struggle to survive. Others had no choice, as the US and Mexican governments collaborated to force nearly a half-million residents and US citizens of Mexican descent back to Mexico in a process known as “Repatriation.”
Families such as the Salazars tried their luck in Northern California picking fields. But Don Eduardo Sanchez decided to return to his birthplace with his family. After losing everything, including all his bank savings, coupled with being labeled an “undesirable” for spending time in jail on a cockfighting charge, Frank Sanchez recalls his father saying, “No, no me voy para mi Mexico.”
The Sanchez family spent the next two years in Nogales, Mexico where “we almost died of hunger.”
Louie Gonzales learned early about survival and working for the family. For extra cash, he began shining shoes and selling newspapers by the age of 10. Like other boys his age, Gonzales woke up at 4 a.m. when Navy men docked in the harbor and needed their shoes shined for inspection.
“So you’d go over there with your shinebox and shine shoes for five cents,” Gonzales explained. “But you had to go early in the morning because they had to be aboard ship by seven. A lot of them didn’t want to shine their own shoes. So we shined them.”
During the epic 1934 coastwide longshore strike, Gonzales, still carrying his shoe shine box, watched and waited for scabs. He recalls that “longshoremen would get the scabs, beat them up, and throw their money in the air.” Gonzales and the other kids would then pick up the money.
“We used to go into like Todd Shipyard ― they had a press and punched a hole that would have a piece of steel an inch thick round, and we used to make slingshots and throw them at the scabs,” Gonzales recalled.
Longshoremen appreciated the show of solidarity. “The longshoremen had a big tent on 11th Street and there was a big cafeteria. So they’d give us a pass for a free lunch for throwing the steel at the scabs.”
When he was 16, Gonzales told the principal he was 17 to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps, earning money for himself and the family as the government sent back a portion.
The only jobs available to Mexican Americans were in lumber, fish canning, and parts of the waterfront. Mexicans were often assigned some of the dirtiest and most dangerous workarounds. However, the predominately Mexican scaler’s union followed the path of the longshoremen, first as a non-unionized shape-up hiring to a union with a dispatcher. Before the union, “They used to go to the corner of Ancon and O’Farrell in a truck and pick you, you and you. Get in the truck,” Gonzales recounted.
A scaler’s work, as Gonzales explained, was dirty.
“You come out dirtier than hell. Anything dirty, the scalers used to do it. You come out full of oil, or you come out full of soot or full of paint or any god darn thing that was a filthy job, that was it. But it paid good,” Gonzales said. “That’s the only type of work Mexican people could get.
With the United States’ entry into World War II, the port transitioned into a wartime economy as Uncle Same called on draftees and volunteers to serve.
Like other Mexican Americans, Mexican Hollywood boys served in the military. Gonzales volunteered after his cousin Fabian Gonzales was drafted and soon after killed in action. Mr. Sanchez ended up in the Battle of the Bulge, was captured, and nearly died as a German prisoner of war. Joe Salazar was a part of the second wave of the Normandy Invasion.
On the eve of WWII, Mexican Hollywood had structurally and culturally stabilized into a permanent barrio. The relative permanency allowed children to receive an education, a journey that took them from Barton Hill Elementary, Dana Junior High, and San Pedro High.
The New Deal and the Works Project Administration (WPA) built a sewage system and the streets in Mexican Hollywood were paved with asphalt.
Across from Barton Hill, Holy Trinity (Now St. Peter’s) Church served the community’s religious needs. Although primarily Catholic, Mexican Hollywood did have at least one Baptist family that held “hallelujahs” in the garage.
Tobeman Settlement House, which began operating out of San Pedro in the 1930s ― maintained a clubhouse in Mexican Hollywood. Toberman offered activities for parents and kids alike and was well-appreciated by the Mexican community for its work.
Nuño remembers the indispensable role that Toberman played in her childhood.
“I remember we had a big playground,” recalled Lillie. A playground was built in a big empty lot next to the clubhouse, complete with monkey bars, swings, a baseball diamond, and a basketball court. Lillie still remembers the director, Mrs. Clark.
“She was always reading to us, and teaching us how to sew, and how to do little girl things,” Nuño said.
Each Christmas, Tobeman House gave gifts to the community’s children ― either a truck for a boy or a doll for a girl.
One of the lead authors of Mexican American Baseball, journalist Ron Gonzalez noted that Mexican baseball teams flourished throughout San Pedro, from the little neighborhood of La Rambla hugging nearby hillsides to Mexican Hollywood.
According to “Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay“Young Mexican men – and women – “organized teams that played at Myers Field at the southeast corner of Ancon and O’Farrell streets in Mexican Hollywood.”
The neighborhood’s original team name was the Hollywood Mexicans, which took to the field in 1931. Team members soon voted to rechristen themselves as the San Pedro Internationals, competing under that name until 1934. Among its managers was longtime baseball aficionado Mike Lomeli Sr., who lived on Ancon Street. Other Mexican teams used the field too, including the San Pedro International Girls, the Hermosa Athletic Club, the Sonora Club, and the San Pedro Sharks.
Mexican teams from throughout the South Bay and Los Angeles County, as did teams representing U.S. Navy ships played there. Mexican Hollywood teams played against many squads fielded along other racial and ethnic lines, including Italians, Croatians, Filipinos, Chinese, and African Americans.
A Community of Play
There were at least two circus acts that came to town, including Barnum and Bailey’s Escalante and the cowboy Tom Mix. Each time they came to town, they would park alongside Mexican Hollywood. Kids from the barrio would work for tickets. Some would help set up tents or as Lillie would say, “Carry water for a free ticket.”
“I remember when we heard that they would be coming in. Everyone was so excited,” Lillie recalled.
Theatres in San Pedro provided another source of entertainment, particularly the Globe Theatre on 6th Street and Palos Verdes since it occasionally featured Spanish movies. Sometimes the darkness of the theatre was disturbed by the light of the exit door, as a kid would purchase a ticket so that several of his friends could get in for free ― a kind of community discount for the price of one deal.
The most unique aspect of the barrio is that it had its own beach called BAB, a beach located in what today would be Berth 93 where China Shipping now stands. The beach was correctly known as “Bare Ass Beach,” though it was more politely referred to as the “Best American Beach.”
“We didn’t have any money to wear swim trunks or nothing,” recalled Joe Sanchez Salazar.
“So we used to go bare ass, Bare Ass Beach.”
BAB had about a block of white sand with two sides, a shallow mudflat side referred to as the “little side” where beginning swimmers would start their journey. Clams and jellyfish abound in this area, officially known as Bosche Slough.
Swimmers at the beach swam across the main channel and divers jack-knifed or swan-dived off telephone poles and a two-story building, putting on a show for onlookers riding on the Red Car. The conductor blew the car’s whistle to cheer the divers on. Mike Contreras, Mrs Contreras’ husband and retired longshoreman, said that the motto of the divers was, “We don’t jump, we dive,” reflecting the flavor of the daredevil divers. Contreras’ brother, Steve, and fellow divers known as Popeye and Charlie Castenada had a reputation for being great divers. Popeye Castenada recalled with pride, “I was eight when I first swam across the channel.”
The fields between the beach and the homes made for a farm for the exclusive use of Mexican Hollywood residents. “If you were at the beach and you were hungry, you just go to our field and pick some fruit or vegetables and eat tomatoes or carrots, Lillie Nuño recalled. “They would help themselves.”
The community grew potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, and onions. “On the other side,” Nuño remembers, “they had all the animals, goats, turkeys, chickens, rabbits, and geese. We even had a plow horse named Virginia that my dad let me ride while he was plowing land.”
From time to time, kids from the barrier swimming at the beach would “borrow” tomatoes and corn for a bonfire shindig, catching the ire of Mexican Hollywood residents.
Gonzales recalled how he and some friends would build bonfires in the evenings, at the corner of O’Farrell and Harbor where there was an empty lot.
“We’d go over there and build a fire. And before that, we’d go get a couple of buckets of clams,” Gonzales explained. “Then we’d sit around the fire and put the claims along the fire. And when they heat up, they opened up.” Elders told stories about trips to Alaska or the days of Pancho Villa, the great northern caudillo during the Mexican Revolution.
About once a month, the community had a celebration for one thing or another, birthdays, holidays, jamaicas. Sometimes, celebrations lasted days from Friday night through Sunday night. Perhaps a pig would be roasted, enough to feed everyone in the barrio, along with music and dancing.
On Cinco de Mayo, Mexican Hollywood cordoned off Ancon Street for a block party. Everyone in San Pedro was invited, while residents of Mexican Hollywood set up tables and sold various forms of prepared food.
These benevolent relations reflected a town known for its union culture and its cosmopolitanism. As local historian Art Almeida says, “…this was a kind of meeting place of people traveling over land, riding the rails, coming across the border and jumping ship.”
Also known for its roughness, Mexican Hollywood residents recall the city’s dark side as well. San Pedro’s European immigrants, many of whom were first and second-generation, referred to them as “monkeys that fell out of trees,” or threw such epithets as “spic” or the ever-popular “greaser.”
In one instance, a young Chicano was voted queen for Barton Hill’s May Day celebration, only to be told by her teacher that she wanted another girl who happened to be white to fill the position.
The Demise of Mexican Hollywood
The transformation of the barrio into a passenger-cargo facility took time, as residents of Mexican Hollywood were gradually removed beginning in the late 1940s. By the mid-1950s, they were gone. Apparently, the Board of Harbor Commissioners at the Port of Los Angeles agreed to build a passenger-cargo terminal at Berths 90-93, giving preferential assignment to American Presidential Lines (APL) according to its 1958-59 annual report. This continued the path of port industrialization, which over the twentieth century continued to distance the communities of San Pedro and Wilmington from the waterfront in exchange for commercial growth and environmental destruction.
It was also in 1959 that the last Mexican-American residents were expelled from Chavez Ravine, to make way for Dodger Stadium, also at the end of a decade-long process.
As renters of land and owners of the housing structures, residents reportedly were notified in advance and given a small settlement. Rather than a brush fire of destruction, the wooden houses were bulldozed each time a family left the neighborhood.
Irma’s family moved from 420 Ancon Street to the Rancho San Pedro government housing, which was built to house the burgeoning number of laborers working on the waterfront a few blocks over. The Gonzales family moved to Harker Street in Mexican Hollywood, only to have to relocate again when preparations were being made to build the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
While destroying Mexican neighborhoods in the name of progress is a time-honored act for many U.S. cities, the values learned and communal nature of surviving in the face of extreme economic odds remain strong among former residents and their descendants.
As Mrs. Contreras says, “To this day, we all have a strong bond with the families that lived there. The memories of living in this lil barrio will never be broken.”