The House That Used to Be in Mexico

Up the street and around the corner from my family home in South Pasadena is a single-story adobe with red roof tiles and a cactus garden. When I was a boy, El Adobe Flores seemed an outdated relic. But what happened there on Jan. 11, 1847, greatly affected my ancestors, me and my children. What we learned can also benefit all Californians.

One hundred fifty-seven years ago, Californios under Mexican officer Jose Maria Flores met in the adobe on the Rancho Rincon de San Pascual to discuss making peace with invading U.S. forces. Eight months earlier, the U.S. had declared war on Mexico and claimed California, then part of Mexico, as its own. Mexican troops had moved south, seizing many weapons as they went.

But the pobladores, or settlers, of Los Angeles rose up in September 1846, pushing the U.S. occupiers onto ships anchored at San Pedro. Using pistols, lances, lassoes and superior horsemanship, the Californios enjoyed “a long winning streak, from late September to mid-December, capturing the Americans at Chino ... defeating the Navy at San Pedro ... and exacting a grim toll at San Pasqual and La Natividad,” according to historian Neal Harlow.

In December, 600 U.S. troops regrouped in San Diego and moved north. Ahead of them lay Flores’ homeland defense force of 500 Californio militia members and volunteers. Their “courageous determination to defend and preserve their nationality offset the disparity of weapons, munitions and numbers of soldiers,” wrote historian Antonio Maria Osio in 1851. But the Californios were outgunned in battles by the San Gabriel River and at La Mesa. On Jan. 10, the U.S. reoccupied Los Angeles.

The next day, the Californios met in the adobe to assess their options, which included a peace offer from Lt. Col. John C. Fremont. (El Adobe Flores honors Jose Maria Flores, the Californios’ last Mexican commander, who continued fighting in the south.)

On Jan. 12, Andres Pico’s “Californian Forces under the Mexican Flag” met Fremont’s commissioners in the home of Don Tomas Feliz. The following day, they signed the Treaty of Cahuenga, which promised “equal rights and privileges ... to every citizen of California as are enjoyed by the citizens of the United States of North America.” But this and similar provisions in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.-Mexican War about a year later, were not respected. Californios were subjected to a conqueror’s unequal justice, lynchings, land frauds and other abuses well into the last half of the 19th century.

El Adobe Flores is more than a historical footnote to me. My ancestors were among the Californios who fought invading U.S. forces.

Like many Latinos, my presence in the United States is the result of America’s self-proclaimed Manifest Destiny. We didn’t come to the United States. The United States came to us via its Army, Navy and Marines. Its territorial expansion into Latin America swallowed up us as well as land.

My father once told me without anger, “The Anglos came. We welcomed them. Then they turned against us.” Others said, “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.” Though Mexicans caught in the U.S. expansion could relocate to Mexico -- across the new border -- my ancestors had no Mexico to go back to. Like most, they stayed put. And we’re still here.

My great-grandfather headed north for gold in 1848, made a fortune, then lost it when the 49ers arrived. Later, a blacksmith in El Monte, he repaired covered wagons and shoed Union Army horses during the Civil War. Friends included Californios and Anglos whose surnames now grace Southern California cities: Pio Pico, Bernardo Yorba and Juan Temple.

Baptized at the San Gabriel Mission in the 1870s, my grandfather became a cement contractor, laying irrigation ditches and sidewalks as agriculture and housing boomed. He played baseball for the Monrovia Merchants and was a deputy sheriff in Arcadia.

Born in 1918, my father entered school speaking only Spanish. He grew up in a “polyglot neighborhood of many paisanos, Negroes, a few Italians, Jews, Spaniards, Americans and a Japanese family” in Monrovia, where he endured the “segregations imposed upon Mexicans, Negroes and Filipinos.” Adopting an “I’ll show ‘em” attitude, he went to college and became a teacher.

Although adapting to an Anglos’ world and offering to share our ways with them, my forebears discovered that many newcomers believed the only meaningful remnants of Mexican California were the colorful names of mountains, rivers and towns. They felt we could learn more from them than they from us. And learn we did. My family absorbed both sides, learning the language and ways of Anglos without rejecting its own culture and language.

I grew up and still live in a multiracial, multilingual and multicultural world. I live in what used to be Mexico. Nearby is a Mexico whose people cross borders and live on multicultural borderlands. My Mexican-born mother grew up and graduated from college in the U.S. Though proudly a naturalized U.S. citizen, she told her children about Mexico and the importance of maintaining its values while learning from people of all races.

Living in East Los Angeles through the mid-1950s, my parents had many Anglo friends. But our world was bigger than brown and white. My father’s best boyhood friend spent World War II behind barbed wire with other Japanese Americans. My mother’s closest teaching colleague was African American. We spent time in both their homes.

Latinos today are reshaping the United States’ Manifest Destiny. Though many are immigrants, we don’t fit into the “forget-your-past” melting pot. Our prototype for America’s future is a stew pot in which people retain their identities while contributing to and absorbing the flavors of others.

Though many are dark-skinned, we are not clones of a nation that once viewed race in only black and white. At more than 38 million people and growing, Latinos in America can be white, brown, black and Asian Pacific. We can be Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims and still be full-blooded Latinos.

African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Latinos and Native Americans already make up the majority of Californians and are projected to become the nation’s majority by midcentury. As they and their multiracial children increase, all Americans will need to find ways to live in a world of more than one language, culture and race. Latinos have been doing this for generations. Others might help themselves by taking a closer look at how we’ve done it.