Monday, April 24, 2006

Barrio Logan, in southeast San Diego, is referred to as el ombligo or navel, the center of the world. In the late 1800s the area had been known as East End; the name had been changed to Logan Heights in 1905. Mexican-Americans had settled in the area as early as the 1890s with migrations increasing from 1910 to 1920 as a result of a poor economy in Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Within the mixed ethnic community, the number of Mexican Americans within Logan Heights reached 15 percent of the city's Mexican-American population by 1940.

At one point in its history, Logan Heights had contained the "second largest Chicano Barrio community on the west coast, with a population of almost twenty thousand." The barrio had originally extended to the waterfront, where there had been a local beach and a community pier that had been constructed as a WPN project in the 1930s. When the U.S. Navy and defense industries moved in along the shores of San Diego Bay. Barrio Logan lost access to the waterfront, as well as housing and local businesses. The barrio recovered from these losses as U.S. citizens went to war and Mexicans obtained the jobs that had been created by the navel shipyards and defense industries. The neighborhood began to blossom with a sense of community pride among the residents.

After WWII, the barrio began to change physically. In the 1950s, the zoning laws had been changed by the city of San Diego, from residential to industrial, allowing the influx of Anglo-owned auto junkyards. In 1963, Interstate 5 bisected the Barrio. In '1969 the Coronado Bay Bridge opened with its on-ramps and support pylons piercing the heart of the barrio. Because of the dislocation of families and business closures during these two major construction programs, by 1979 the population of the barrio had declined to approximately five thousand residents. City, state, and federal governments had dictated the policies of change in Barrio Logan. Residents had not realized they could petition City Council and express their opinions; there had been no local discussions regarding community and neighborhood planning. Many of the residents accepted the negative changes in their community as the way things had to be. In 1967, feelings of resignation and hopelessness began to change to those of empowerment, as community leaders began to demand a neighborhood park under the bridge pylons.