ARTICLES
May 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
The Wall
Proposed AIDS Memorial Angers Latino Residents
By Jose Madero
It's a done deal.
After nine years of lobbying, fundraisers and dozens of stories in the newspapers, bulldozer crews are set to begin construction on a AIDS memorial that will stand in the middle of a park in Lincoln Heights -- a park considered the quintessential Latino green space in Los Angeles.
But now some residents who claim that the memorial, "The Wall-Las Memorias," is about promoting a gay lifestyle in their community -- especially to their children -- have made it their mission to stop the project. The group, calling itself the Friends of Lincoln Park, say that they have nothing against gays, but that this development is not suitable for an environment like Lincoln Park, where thousands of families gather every week to get away from it all.
Las Memorias, which will consist of nine-foot walls (eight detached panels which will have murals on them and one that will include thousands of names of people who have died of AIDS) will take away green space from inner city children, said Hugo Pacheco, the founder of the Friends of Lincoln Park. He added that most of the Lincoln Heights community does not know about the project or does not support it at all.
The Friends see themselves as Davids against Goliaths in their battle against powerful politicians who back the construction of Las Memorias. Even the archdiocese of Los Angeles is lending moral support to the project, in spite of allegations that it would promote a gay agenda to children who visit the park. In fact, said Hugo Pacheco and his wife, and Mary, Las Memorias is a project that has been stealthily introduced by Richard Saldivar, a community activist who learned politics firsthand from Art Snyder, the former city councilman from East Los Angeles. Saldivar may have the support of the politicians and the archdiocese, the Pachecos said, but he does not have the approval of the community.
"Why should this project be forced upon us?" asked Pacheco. "Why not do The Wall at County USC Hospital, where it would remind doctors and people of the threat of AIDS? Why should Latino parents be forced to talk to their children about sexuality?"
But Richard Saldivar countered that he does have the support of the community and of local religious leaders for his project, which will be built on an acre of land in the park just next to a playground and a skateboarding rink. In fact, he added, the archdiocese has been behind Las Memorias since its inception.
Saldivar said that the Friends of Lincoln Park are a small group that refuses to see that there is a widespread threat of AIDS in the Latino Community. "They are still in denial about AIDS," said Saldivar. He added that Las Memorias is not about promoting the gay lifestyle to kids, but about informing people about AIDS and being a place of healing for families who have lost loved ones to the disease.
Saldivar said that the project, which has been approved by the Los Angeles parks and recreation commission, has the support of community leaders like Governor Gray Davis, state assemblyman Gil Cedillo (who made possible a $400,000 state grant for The Wall), Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, and local councilman Ed Reyes. It will almost certainly be approved by the city council. Construction could start before summer.
Yet, siding with the Friends of Lincoln Park is the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club, the environmental rights group. Susan Nelson, Sierra Club leader for the metro area, said that she is all for the Las Memorias project as long as it's not done in Lincoln Park. "There a shortage of green space in the inner city as it is," said Nelson, who, like the Pachecos, believes that a park is not an appropriate place for an AIDS memorial. "Besides," said Nelson, "it's not like The Wall is going to commemorate Benito Juarez [a historic Mexican president]."
In the middle of the fracas between the Friends of Lincoln Park and Las Memorias supporters is the archdiocese, which has seemingly sided with Saldivar's group. The Pachecos say that this is the sorriest part of this battle -- that the archdiocese and the local clergy have preferred to support a group that would allegedly promote a gay lifestyle over residents that oppose it and prefer counseling abstinence as a form of battling AIDS.
The Pachecos, who are catechists and bereavement counselors at Sacred Heart parish in Lincoln Heights, claim that Saldivar phoned the Pachecos' pastor at the church and complained about the Pachecos and the Friends of the Park. The priest spoke to Pacheco about the complaint. "That was the saddest part for us, that they would try to silence us through our parish," said Hugo Pacheco. "Our pastor told us about the complaint, but he said that he would not get involved in this."
Other Friends of the Park say that the Pachecos should not have been surprised to learn that their local Catholic priests would side with Las Memorias. The archdiocese wholeheartedly supported the project as far back as 1994, according to stories in the Los Angeles Times. The Pachecos add that it was East Los Angeles priests like Father Juan Santillan who have been supporting Saldivar's project since it began in 1993.
Some of the Friends of Lincoln Park say that it was priests like Santillan that gave Las Memorias a sort of seal of religious and spiritual legitimacy. Every year, during December, an interfaith service for those who died from AIDS is held at Sacred Heart or Our Lady Help of Christians church, followed by a candle-lit procession to Lincoln Park.
Santillan, who, according to the Las Memorias website, sits on the board of the project, is currently under investigation by the Los Angeles police department for allegedly having molested a teen-age boy at a Boyle Heights church. Santillan left for Bolivia in 1998 and is reportedly now in Europe.
Still, archdiocesan support of Las Memorias seems to stand. Two stories praising the project have recently appeared in the Tidings, the archdiocese's newspaper, saying that the construction of The Wall is imminent and a dream come true for many.
Robert Nakahiro, a board member for the project, told the Mexican American Sun that support from the archdiocese was instrumental to getting Las Memorias growing. It was a requisite for the community to accept the project. "The support of the Catholic Church for the project is very important," Nakahiro told the Sun. "Because if the Catholic Church believes in [the memorial], the community will follow."
Richard Saldivar's dream began in 1993, when he first formed The Wall-Las Memorias, a non-profit organization designed to create awareness about AIDS in the Latino community.
In a 1996 LA Weekly story, Saldivar said that statistics from the county health services department showed that 33 percent of those diagnosed with AIDS were Latinas and that 50 percent of those diagnosed acquired the disease through heterosexual contact. "I kept getting asked, 'when are you fucking Latinos going to get your act together about AIDS," Saldivar told the Weekly. "The Wall will force mothers and fathers to talk openly about sexuality, denial, HIV, AIDS, and protection."
With a disproportionate number of Latinos succumbing to AIDS, a place to mourn them was appropriate, Saldivar said. And what better place than Lincoln Park, where every year a huge Cinco de Mayo celebration has been held for decades? The park is also filled with monuments. There's a bust of Abraham Lincoln, another of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and another of Mexican composer, Agustin Lara.
A former aide to Councilman Art Snyder, Saldivar, 51, is tall, slim, youthful-looking man. Now openly gay, Saldivar, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times, came out of the closet as late as 1990. Saldivar believes that areas like West Hollywood are good for gay people to live their lifestyles openly, but that it doesn't relate as well to gay Latinos. Saldivar says that he loves the Eastside; this area should also welcome gay people, he said. "The gay ghetto mentality is that we can be free to be gay here, so let's work as one united family," Saldivar told the Los Angeles Times in 1997. "In the real world, though, we're all over the place, and we don't fit into the ghetto niche. I love being gay and on the Eastside. This is real life."
Since 1993, Saldivar has promoted The Wall feverishly in the press and has raised funds for the project. He garnered the support of dozens of organizations and businesses, including the archdiocese and hundreds of other churches.
By 2002, The Wall had secured the $400,000 in state funds and an additional $100,000 through private fundraisers to build the project. By late last year, it seemed like a done deal.
But not to the Pachecos. They claim they heard about the project last year.
A middle-aged couple, the Pachecos live in Lincoln Heights. They have grown children; he is a real estate salesman for Century 21, and she works in the USC chemistry department.
Yes, the Pachecos say, Saldivar has certainly done a good job of promoting The Wall outside of Lincoln Heights. But little grass roots effort has been done. "If you ask people in the Park, most do not know about the project," said Pacheco, as he walked through Lincoln Park, right to the spot where The Wall is scheduled to be built. "But I assure you, most will not want it here."
A resident, Arturo Castillo, said that he comes to play soccer with his children at Lincoln Park every time he can. But he said that he has never heard about Las Memorias. "I don't think I would want something like that to be built here," Castillo said, as his sons tossed the ball. "I would have to know more about that project, but I don't think I would want it here."
However, when the Pachecos tried to bring these concerns to the forefront during a meeting of the newly-formed Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council on February 20, they allege that Saldivar and his supporters, of which there are many on the council, clobbered them. A similar incident happened later at a parks and recreation meeting at Lincoln Park on December 20, where the Pachecos showed up to find hundreds of supporters of the Wall -- most from outside of the area. "We were introduced as the 'religious faction' to them," Hugo Pacheco recalls. "Of course we were stomped."
But in a recent meeting at a Lincoln Heights Neigborhood Council in that area's senior citizens building, it was Saldivar and The Wall that were booed. Dozens of residents showed up to sound off against Las Memorias, despite a reluctant opposition from most of the members of the council.
Those opposed to The Wall said that the council -- which serves only as an advisory arm to the Los Angeles city council -- should present their complaint to the city. They told them to tell the city that the memorial was not wanted in Lincoln Heights Park. An unidentified woman with her young son stood up and said: "I don't have anything against gay people, but I don't want my son to be seeing two guys kissing at the park. I have a right not to tell my son about those things at an early age. I will not be taking my son to that park again!"
Some hours before the council meeting, at Dino's, Pacheco and the owner, neighborhood council treasurer George Pantazis, were involved in a furious discussion. As some clients looked up from their pastrami sandwiches and hamburgers, Pantazis, who is in favor of The Wall being built, told Pacheco that the project was a done deal long before the council was formed.
"But why build a project when 99 percent of the community doesn't want it?" Ruben Sanchez (who was at the restaurant) asked Pantazis. Sanchez, a Lincoln Heights resident, grew up in the area.
The Pachecos say that their movement is rapidly growing. The memorial may be a done deal, but the community will not like it, they say. And though the local priests and the archdiocese may be in favor of the project, most of the Catholic residents will be against it, the Pachecos say. They add that they will battle The Wall to the end.
"They may have all this power behind them, but we, the real church, have the power of God with us," Hugo Pacheco said. "I am doing this for God."