From June 2018

Last week while riding the upper deck of MegaBus through San Jose I glanced out the window and noticed an Historic Camino Real sign and bell staring me in the face. It got me thinking about how, as a child, my mother taught me about El Camino Real and how it was the path taken to build the California Missions. The same missions I was made to construct for school projects, the same missions as the miniature models on display at Knott’s Berry Farm. What she didn’t inform me of was how “los indios” were robbed of their religion and were used as slave labor for the cause of spreading Spanish religious beliefs amongst the natives. The thought that children may have lost toys along the way or that there may be bones of the buried fascinated me. I would do excavations in the backyard in hopes of finding treasures left behind from the Mexican Indians that travelled the 600-mile route with the Jesuits and Franciscan missionaries. Because El Camino Real runs through East LA and Boyle Heights on Whittier Blvd. the land I grew up on had to have been used as a rest stop or even a burial ground. I never found discarded toys but one afternoon mom and I dug up a tiny stone bead from the side of the house. It appeared to be made with crude tools and was cracked. I’ll never forget it. Surely a piece of history. Our history. A history of a people who are still being used and abused by religion and politics. We paved the roads. We nurtured the land. We face persecution and prejudice on a daily basis all because our blood is indigenous to this land. Photo: Los Angeles Times.