Media Summary
In finishing out Avila's book, I wanted to bring to the class's attention a political struggle that has been happening since 1959, along with the rest of the interstate-craze laws described in Folklore of the Freeway, but very much continues to shape my hometown's political climate to this very day.
The websites for the 710 Coalition (also known as Close the Gap) and the No 710 Action Committee both contain claims to environmental impact, public health, public safety, and the economy all meant to sway voters (and perhaps Metro Committee Members) either for or against the extension of the I-710 through the San Gabriel Valley from southeastern Los Angeles.
Both websites contain massive amounts of information, but as a short summary, the Close the Gap group is made up of many of the San Gabriel Valley's less affluent cities with larger minority populations and the school districts contained therein (with the notable exception of San Marino, one of the country's most affluent communities) while the No 710 group is made up of concerned citizens and elected representatives from South Pasadena, Pasadena, and La Cañada Flintridge, three of the area's wealthiest and whitest cities. In this case, rather than simply having white affluent cities fighting against freeway construction, white affluent cities are fighting against freeway construction despite intense campaigns from all of the surrounding cities who represent lower income people of color in favor of freeway construction. Because this real-life scenario pits race/class interests on almost directly opposing sides of the freeway construction question, I thought this might be an interesting case to look at when considering Avila.
Reading Summary
Avila, Eric. Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Communities Lost & Found: The Politics of Historical Memory
In his third chapter, Avila describes two different outcomes in fighting freeway construction and provides a handful of examples of each outcome. First, Avila introduces the successes had by communities of European descent in the battle against freeways by discussing the French Quarter's blocking of the riverfront highway in New Orleans.
In New Orleans, the wealthy white elite of the Vieux Carré banded together against a Robert Moses-designed plan for a freeway route that would block the French Quarter's access to the Mississippi River and eliminate its historic waterfront area. The primary argument, both rhetorically and legally, lay in the notion of the French Quarter as an invaluable piece of New Orleans' history, and by extension, the United States' history. In fact, the case of the French Quarter and its preservation was so well-argued that it led to legal precedent in the fight against the modernization of urban spaces. By the end of the 1960s, historic preservation amendments were made in both the 1966 Federal Highway Act and the Department of Transportation Act, and the National Register of Historic Places was created. While the black New Orleans neighborhood of Tremé was decimated in favor of the construction of the I-10, despite its cultural significance, the French Quarter became a symbol of historicity winning out against modernization and cultural value winning out over utility, as long as that history and culture were both white.
Next, Avila turns to the cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway or LOMEX as a result of the resistance from groups like the Italian-American community in an effort to save the Little Italy neighborhood. While the Little Italy fight is Avila's starting point in Lower Manhattan, soon the quest to save the so-called "cradle of Italian-American culture," was not the sole strategy deployed against the Moses-designed LOMEX. Similar to the historical preservation strategy of New Orleans, the residents and property owners in Greenwich Village strategized to craft Greenwich Village as a "historical district" for the purposes of preservation. Indeed, even the more industrial (though at this point decidedly deindustrialized) SoHo neighborhood took up the cry of historical preservation in an attempt to block the construction of LOMEX.
Avila's examination of communities' failed attempts at fighting freeway building focuses less on the failures themselves, and more on the ways that these communities sought to reclaim the memories of the lost physical spaces.
In the case of Rondo in St. Paul, Minnesota, Avila first describes Rondo as a significant area of black growth, both culturally and economically, despite being an overall diverse neighborhood. In recent years however, in attempts to reconstruct the memory of Rondo, the narrative constructs Rondo as a decidedly black neighborhood. There is an annual festival devoted to the remembrance of Rondo in St. Paul, and it has more broadly become a celebration of Twin Cities' black culture and Twin Cities' black cultural history. Even in the book compiling dozens of oral histories about Rondo, the predominant narrative that is crafted is one of Rondo's black community. Avila posits a variety of explanations for this phenomenon, but the most powerful is the idea that it was Rondo's black community which lost out the most in the process of displacement that happened subsequent to the interstate's construction. Both through the festival and these oral histories, the Twin Cities' black residents are able to lay claim to a municipal cultural heritage that was taken from them in a way it wasn't from other Twin Cities residents.
Meanwhile, in Miami, the memory of Overtown is preserved through the creation of the Overtown Historic Folklife Village. The Overtown Historic Folklife Village is an attempt to recreate the historical and cultural significance of Miami's black neighborhood of Overtown which was destroyed by the construction of the Miami segment of I-95. Avila's primary critique of the Historic Folklife Village is in its theme park-like nature. As an idealization of Overtown and an attempt at formulating a single narrative of black life in historic Miami, the Overtown Historic Folklife Village ends up, according to Avila, as a sort of black version of Disney's Main Street USA. On the one hand, it erases the very real history of Overtown by telling its own version of historical Miami's reality, but on the other hand, it is at the very least providing a black version of Main Street USA at all.
A Matter of Perspective: The Racial Politics of Seeing the Freeway
In this chapter, Avila points readers to the two radically different strains of freeway depiction in American art in the post-freeway craze period -essentially, the mainstream or white perspective, and the minority perspective.
From the perspective of white artists, freeway depictions tend away from the emotional and much more toward a documentary fascination. Most of the depictions of freeways by white artists in this period (from Kuntz to Opie) tend to have a similar perspective, known as a planner's view or God's view angle, wherein the freeway is divorced entirely from the people who use it or inhabit the world around it. This angle is exemplified in the Ansel Adams photograph which is pictured in the chapter.
These views of the freeway may view it as modern, or bustling at worst, but at best, they tend to represent the freeway as an inevitable part of innovation. These freeway depictions are either quotidian, or hopeful, but they are certainly never an indictment of freeway culture.
Minority depictions, or as Avila calls it, the Eastside perspective, is totally different. In the work of artists like Frank Romero, the freeway is merely a part of the rest of life in Los Angeles. Take for example this piece, Pink Landscape.
In this piece, the freeway is not the focus of the painting, but rather an important marker of place. In this case, it is the freeway that tells us that this painting is from an East Los Angeles perspective. Looking toward downtown (since Los Angeles' City Hall is in a more distant plane of the painting), the presence of the freeway orients viewers in an East LA setting. This painting depicts aspects of civic, religious, and private life (symbolized by a home, city hall, and a church), but all of these life aspects are delimited by the ever-present freeway. In this way, Pink Landscape is exemplary of the other artists whose work Avila touches on. It utilizes a particularly Chicano aesthetic to touch on personal and political elements, all the while holding onto the freeway as an element for delimiting East Los Angeles.
Taking Back the Freeway: Strategies of Adaptation & Improvisation
Whereas the second half of chapter 3 looks at ways of reclaiming lost space or historical space, this chapter deals primarily with the ways that communities (specifically communities of color) deploy cultural production and cultural practices to claim presently existing space and force the invasive atmosphere of the freeway into cultural relevance. From the jazz parades under I-10 in Tremé, New Orleans to the colorful murals at Chicano Park in San Diego, somewhat spontaneous reactions to the oppressive freeway structures become ingrained as culturally necessary for the survival of these vibrant communities. In many ways, this chapter is not simply a documentation of coping mechanisms, but it is also a celebration of ingenuity on the part of the oppressed. Rather than clinging to an idyllic past like their peers in Rondo or Overtown, these New Orleans and San Diego residents have found ways to force their survival and integrate the freeways into their lives.
Analysis
Chapters 3 & 4 work in the dichotomy between the privileged white perspective and the oppressed perspective of communities of color. In Chapter 3 & 4, Avila asks us to consider these perspectives as somewhat separate from one another, and yet, two sides of the same reactive coin. The freeway is a powerful force.
Chapter 3 asks us to think about the strength of white resistance to freeway projects, thereby considering the freeway as a destructive force, despite the progress narratives of Haussmann or Moses and their depictions of history as a problem to be solved by modernity. In establishing the power of this resistance and the complexity of white success, we glean something about the consequences of black and brown failure. By establishing the importance of the white struggles, Avila implies the significance of the loss experienced by communities of color. This loss is then compounded by Avila's descriptions of the communities now gone. Avila doesn't paint them as tragic, however. He paints them as resilient. Memory and performance are deployed as tools to invoke the same kind of healing and preservation available to white communities through political power. White political agency is presented alongside communities of color creating their own agency through memory. Even in the way Avila has structured this chapter, they are presented as equivalent.
In many ways, Chapter 4 is simply the exploration of art that fits thematically with Chapter 3. White political agency is summarized through the God's eye perspective; Latino political agency (or perhaps a contemplation on a lack thereof) is summarized through the omnipresence of the freeway in Latino cultural production.
Chapter 5 releases readers from the dichotomy by focusing on the ingenuity of people of color in integrating the freeway into their communities through art and performance. In this way, rather than yielding to the freeway as an agent of destruction, the freeway becomes a site of active resistance through ritual, music, or painting. Avila's framing of this chapter as a phenomenon on its own serves as a celebration of these communities' resilience, and it offers a hopeful outlook to the future in a world where freeways are an ingrained part of the landscape. Having this be the last chapter (aside from concluding remarks) leaves readers with the notion that surviving the freeway landscape is not only possible, but incredibly creative.
Discussion Questions
How are contemporary questions of infrastructural development shaped? Are things like historical preservation still deployed by affluent white communities as tactics?
How can memory function as a method of community preservation when physical spaces can not be preserved?
Is there a dichotomy of perspective to every infrastructural development?
Discussion of "Freeway Battles From Both Sides of the Coin by Javier Cienfuegos"
Gente or Gentre?: Complicating urban development in the 21st century
In response to Javier's first question, and to Avila's closing summations at the end of the book, I find it helpful to think creatively about how communities that are not white and affluent engage in development. Keeping in mind the holistic reparative project accomplished by The Folklore of the Freeway, our class should be wary in applying dichotomous ideas to urban planning and look instead at the elasticity of these actions. In particular, I find the phenomenon of gentefication, where wealthier second and third generation Mexicans Americans are going back to their parents' neighborhoods and buying up old property. (most notably in the Boyle Heights region discussed in Avila's book) A riff on the term "gentrification," it nonetheless draws striking parallels between what Chicanos did with the freeways in the 1970s and 80s. This gentefication is indeed motivated by a sense of historical preservation and cultural patrimony, but also tensions between different generations and class backgrounds. We can envision this process as the next step in the processes delineated by Avila. It necessarily takes into consideration the spaces created by the freeway and claims to ownership by the people moving in and out of them. I encourage our class discussion to move past the binarism of white-non-white urban development to better consider the complexities within a given community/ethnic/political space.For further reading on gentefication, check out these articles from the NY Times, Southern California Public Radio, and LA Magazine.
Posted on 19 November 2014, 4:36 pm by Christofer Rodelo | Permalink
The Power of the Mural
As Avila notes, Chicano Park represents "one" community's struggle to "reclaim the space beneath the freeway and reintegrate it into the cultural fabric of one of California's barrios" (Avila 150). The representations and messages that these murals present have the capability to be transformed by the human imagination. The more exposure that people have to these incredible pieces of art the more history they can discover. The icons presented in these murals, like the Our Lady of Guadalupe and Cesar Chavez, are tools that allow conversations to form and ideas to travel from city to city. Furthermore, Avila mentions that the geographical placement of these murals, like painting them under the freeway, are tactics used by political activists because they understand the value of space (Avila 168). Space can offer community and it offers room for movement. It allows personal development and an avenue to learn and grow in. To add more to the conversation on murals, visit this link to read my blog post on Murals found in the city of East Los Angeles. I would also recommend Guisela Latorre’s “Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California" to learn more about the political Chicana/o movement that California began to see in the mid-twentieth century. Her book provides examples of both contemporary artists and artists who led the Chicana/o art movement.Posted on 19 November 2014, 8:46 pm by Alfonso Toro | Permalink
The Gendered High/Freeway
Chapter 4 of Folklore of the Freeway was my favorite, as it talked about how identity politics may affect the ways an artists captures a structure or landscape as the freeway. Avila focuses on the White/Chicano dichotomy of the art, which is important, but I was also interested in thinking about how the highway can serve as a gendered space. In Avila's book, there is no mention of gender as it plays it out through mobility within the structure of the freeway. On the contrary, women are depicted as antagonists to the freeway, which was the case for the most part. It is important to consider how Chicana women used art, for example, to record the memory of displacement brought upon by the construction of freeways. It's important that Avila discusses the ways that Chicana women were proactive, creative storytellers and critics through art. But I think I would have liked to hear some discussion about how Chicana women and mobility on the freeway - were women driving? If so, was it a liberatory experience? How can we think of the highway as a non-oppressive space that offers possibility for women, as a sphere of its own?I therefore want to push back a little against Avila's positing of white and/or white female artists like Opie as depicting the freeway in a non-gendered way. Vija Clemin's painting Freeway actually depicts the experience of driving/riding on the freeway as being in a private space looking out into the private realm. In this way, I think we can think about freeway art as not only being about the external and mere infrastructure, but also being affective in the way that Chicano artists were creating their art. I just wanted to bring up this example to nuance Avila's claim about white artists and their abstract interpretations of the highway. For more on Celmin's painting: http://blogs.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/worksofart/freeway/
Posted on 19 November 2014, 11:27 pm by Ivonne Gonzalez | Permalink
Is there a White/Non-white Dichotomy?
I'm glad that Chris pointed out the white/non-white binary perspective that Avila brings to his study of the freeway. The interracial impact of freeways is also important to consider, and as Chris observes, non-white adaptation to freeways very greatly within any given race. That said, I think Avila’s book argues successfully that public art and performance beneath freeways reveals a perception of a white/non-white urban planning dichotomy that is held by the people most dramatically affected by them. I found the examples from the New Orleans neighborhood of Treme to be particularly striking in this way. The jazz concerts held beneath the overpass are remarkable celebrations of blackness that assert the presence of black people beneath an unwelcome infringement of their unique cultural space.Posted on 20 November 2014, 10:15 am by Joshua Mandell | Permalink
The Preservation Tact
I think Javier’s analysis of Avila’s portrayal of the way that he depicts the losses communities of color go through as resilient is right on point. I feel that in a way, it is a common narrative with communities of color facing defeat when it comes to fighting for rights. Thinking of how communities of color had to ‘survive’ the freeway plays into the same kind of narrative, one in which the desires of our communities are heard, but not actually listed to.Javier’s question of historical preservation reminds me of my hometown--Aurora, Illinois. I took a community college class when I was in high school called “Historical Preservation.” Looking back on the things we covered then and with the knowledge of Avila and this class as a whole, drives me to rethink the situations at hand. For part of the class, we covered how historical homes in the city were being abandoned due to how expensive it was to renovate them according to the historical society’s preservation guidelines. This area is highly Latino/low-income/immigrant and has a history of white-flight (our high school went from basically all white to now ~80% Latino). One consideration put out to increase the allure of purchasing one of these homes was to provide grants by the city to be able to make the renovations according to the strict guidelines. This did not happen, and it makes me think about the reasons behind what overall would provide an economic good to the city. Is historical preservation just a tactic used by the preservation board (all white) to try to maintain the areas they can with a homogeneous population?
Posted on 20 November 2014, 10:24 am by Karen Lazcano | Permalink
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