HispanicVista Columnists

The Decline and Fall of the Californios: The End of Chicano Representation

By John P. Schmal/HispanicVista.com

In California, the Mexican-American War ended with the Treaty of Cahuenga, signed on January 13, 1847. A year later, on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced Mexico to hand over to the United States 525,000 square miles of landing, including all of present-day California.

 

Of the treaty’s twenty-three articles, four defined the rights of Mexican citizens and Indian people in the territories. Californians were given the freedom to live in ceded territories as either American or Mexican citizens. The new American citizens would be entitled to “the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the constitutions.”

A year later, forty-eight delegates met in Monterey to put together the first California Constitution. For six weeks from September to November 1849 the Constitutional Convention created a constitution that would guarantee rights to all citizens living within California’s borders.

 

Article XI, Section 21 of California’s 1849 Constitution reflected the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s guarantee, declaring, “All laws, decrees, regulations, and provisions… shall be published in English and Spanish.” Article II, “Right of Suffrage,” Section 1, stated that “Every white male citizen of the United States, and every white male citizen of Mexico, who shall have elected to become a citizen of the United States, under the treaty of peace… who shall have been a resident of the State six months next preceding the election… shall be entitled to vote at all elections...” Eight Californios – six of them Mexican Californians – represented Hispanic interests at the Convention. They were as follows:

1. Antonio M. Pico from San Jose
2. Jacinto Rodriguez from Monterey
3. Pablo de la Guerra from Santa Barbara
4. M.G. Vallejo from Sonora
5. José Antonio Carrillo from Los Angeles
6. Manuel Dominguez from Los Angeles
7. Miguel de Pedrorena – a native of Spain – representing San Diego.
8. José M. Covarrubias – a native of France and a naturalized citizen of Mexico – representing Santa Barbara.

The sad reality of this bilingual convention is that the gradual disenfranchisement of the Chicano population was already beginning. During the next three decades, several prominent land-owning Californio families of Spanish and Mexican origin shared the reigns of power with the foreigners who were arriving in their territory in ever-greater numbers. A steady stream of American, English and French immigrants started moving into various sections of the state where their increasing numbers would eventually give them political clout in their respective communities.

 

The First California Constitutional Legislature, which commenced on December 15, 1849 in San Jose, was a harbinger of what was to come. This landmark event was attended by nineteen delegates who came from the northern states of the U.S. Another ten representatives hailed from the southern states, but only two men with ties to Old California were involved in the Assembly.  The first legislative session lasted four months and adjourned on April 22, 1850. Less than half a year later, on September 9, 1850, California would be admitted as the thirty-first American state.

One of two Californio delegates at the first Convention was Jose M. Covarrubias, who was recognized far and wide as a Californio landowner from the Santa Barbara area even though he was born in France. Well respected by his political peers, Señor Covarrubias would represent his Santa Barbara District in the California State Assembly off and on between 1849 and 1862 and hold other important offices in the County.

 

The first session of the California Legislature after statehood commenced on January 6, 1851 and lasted until May 1, 1851. One of the delegates representing Los Angeles for the Whig Party was a well-known Californian named Andres Pico. Andres – the brother of the last Mexican Governor, Pio Pico – was the Mexican military officer who had fought the American forces under his commander, General Jose Maria Flores. In the early days of 1847, General Flores, recognizing that he was losing control of the situation, turned over command of his forces to his deputy, Andres Pico, and fled south to unoccupied Mexican territory.

 

On January 13, 1847, Andres, seeing his own situation as untenable, met with Lieutenant-Colonel John C. Fremont, the commander of the American forces who was occupying the San Fernando Mission. On this date, Fremont and Andres Pico, Commander-in-Chief of the remaining Mexican forces in California, signed the Treaty of Cahuenga in the San Fernando Valley.
 

Andres Pico became the first Californio to be elected to the Assembly as the representative of District 2 (Los Angeles) in the 2nd (1851) and 3rd (1853) legislative sessions. He changed his party affiliation to Democrat and was elected to the Assembly from District 2 once again for the 9th (1858) and 10th (1859) legislative sessions.

 

For the first three decades after statehood, educated and well-bred Chicanos in various parts of the state were able to run for office and represent their districts in the State Assembly.  Pedro C. Carrillo of Santa Barbara served as a delegate from the 2nd District in 1854-55. Manuel A. Castro served as a delegate from the 2nd District (San Luis Obispo) in 1856-57 and from the 6th District (Monterey) in 1863. Esteban Castro from Monterey served in the State Assembly as a delegate to the 3rd District (1857-58) and the 6th District (1863-65).

For almost two decades, Chicanos were able to wield power on a local level in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Twenty-two persons with Spanish surnames served on the Los Angeles Common Council – now known as the City Council – between 1850 and 1886.  Some of these councilman included well-known members of Californio society: Manuel Requena (served 1850-54, 1856, 1864-68), Julian Chavez (1850, 1865-66, 1871-72), Cristobal Aguilar (1850, 1855-56, 1858-59, 1861-62), Pio Pico (1853), and Eulogio de Celiz (1873-75). 

 

One of the most recognized Chicano politicians of Los Angeles during these years was Antonio Franco Coronel who would serve as a member of the Los Angeles Common Council for several years between 1854 and 1867, as State Treasurer from 1867 to 1871, and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1853 to 1854. 

 

But the position of Mayor itself soon became the domain of the Americans. Between 1848 and 1872, 13 men served as Mayor of Los Angeles, but only three of these mayors were of Hispanic descent and heritage. After Cristobal Aguilar’s term in office ended in 1872, no Chicano would hold the title of Mayor of Los Angeles for 133 years (until the election of Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005).

 

For more than two decades, Santa Barbara also remained a stronghold of Chicano representation. Joaquin Carrillo served as Santa Barbara County Judge from 1851 to 1853, a position later held by José María Covarrubias (1861-1863).

 

Raymundo Carrillo was elected as the first known Public Administrator for Santa Barbara in 1852 and served in that capacity until 1855. Joaquin de la Guerra was elected as Santa Barbara County Sheriff in 1857 and served for two years. Thompson and West’s “History of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties” gives very detailed information on Santa Barbara’s early elections and, as such, illustrates the gradual elimination of Chicano candidates from the general elections during the 1860s and 1870s. After the 1873 elections, Chicano representation in Santa Barbara was effectively ended.

 

Several native Californians also held important positions in the judicial sector of California’s local government. Ygnacio Sepulveda of Los Angeles who served in the California State Assembly in 1863-65 as the representative of the 2nd District went on to become a Judge of the Seventeenth Judicial District (one of the first two Superior Court Justices in Los Angeles County).

 

The Mexican-American Pacheco family of California produced two notable figures who held office in Sacramento. Mariano G. Pacheco served as a representative of California’s 3rd District (San Luis Obispo) from 1852 to 1854. But it is Mariano’s brother who stands out as the most spectacular Chicano legislator during California’s Nineteenth Century. Born in Santa Barbara in 1831, Romualdo Pacheco was a proud Californian who also had roots in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

 

Señor Pacheco originally served as Superior Court Judge in San Luis Obispo from 1853-1857. Romualdo moved on to serve in the State Assembly in 1853-55 and 1868-70. In 1857, he first started serving in the California State Senate and he continued to serve intermittently, also in 1861-63 and 1869-70.

But Romualdo Pacheco’s best days were ahead of him. Governor Leland Stanford appointed him as a brigadier general in command of the First Brigade of California’s Native Cavalry during the American Civil War. During the Republican State Convention of 1863, Governor Stanford nominated Pacheco for the position of state treasurer. Fluent in both Spanish and English, Romualdo Pacheco was a popular politician who got along well with both Californians and Anglos-Americans.

In June 1871 Pacheco received the Republican Party nomination for Lieutenant Governor of California. In 1875, when Governor Newton Booth was elected to the U.S. Senate, Pacheco became the Governor of California. His stay in the Governor’s office was relatively short and, in November 1876, Romualdo ran for and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to serve in the Forty-fifth Congress (1877-1878), winning by a margin of one vote. He later served in the Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1879 to March 3, 1883).

During the 1860’s and 1870’s, the gradual erosion of Mexican-American’s rights became more pronounced. The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States had promised “the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

 

However, California delegates to the 1869 Democratic state convention rejected the 15^th Amendment to the Constitution, stating that “if adopted,” the Amendment would “degrade the right of suffrage” and bring “untold hordes of Pagan slaves… into direct competition with [the White man’s] efforts to earn a livelihood.” Although the wrath of these politicians was primarily directed at Chinese and African Americans living in California, there was little doubt that Mexicans and Eastern Europeans could easily be included in their definition of undesirable people.

A further erosion of Chicano rights actually became embedded in the law with the adoption of the 1879 California Constitution. The revised Constitution officially rescinded the linguistic protective provisions of the 1849 Constitution, providing that “no person who shall not be able to read the Constitution in the English language and write his or her name, shall ever exercise the privileges of an elector in this State.” With one fell swoop, the guarantee of bilingual publication of laws was revoked and no documents relating to elections were thereafter published in Spanish.

Then, in 1891, Assemblyman A. J. Bledsoe introduced an English literacy requirement as a proposed constitutional amendment in the State Assembly. Bledsoe had earlier belonged to the vigilante Committee of Fifteen that had expelled every person of Chinese ancestry from Humboldt. In his introduction, he lamented “the increased immigration of the illiterate and unassimilated elements of Europe” and stated “that every agency should be invoked to preserve our public lands from alien grasp… and to protect the purity of the ballot-box from the corrupting influences of the disturbing elements ... from abroad."

Although the Assembly voted down the proposal on January 21, 1891, a flood of petitions from the public favoring the literacy requirement flooded Sacramento. With such overwhelming support from their constituents, the Legislature hastily adopted Bledsoe’s proposal as a constitutional amendment subject to ratification at the next general election. In 1894, the people of California voted to approve the English literacy requirement, which henceforth before part of Article II, Section 1.

The anti-immigrant attitude – directed at Asians, Mexicans and Eastern Europeans – prevailed well into the Twentieth Century to the point that it was even written into the California election laws. Section 5567 of the California Elections Code, as adopted in 1941, required that elections be conducted in the English language and prohibited election officials from speaking any language other than English while on duty at the polling stations.

Such actions violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and, therefore, were unconstitutional. But the literacy law remained on the books in California until it was challenged in the California courts many decades later.

 

Between 1870 and 1963, only one Hispanic politician was sent to Sacramento to represent his district. Miguel Estudillo was born in San Bernardino in 1870 as the son of a prominent California family that had produced several political figures in the San Diego area both before and after 1848. A graduate of Santa Clara College, Mr. Estudillo became County Clerk in San Diego County in 1890, before moving to Riverside, where he was appointed as Clerk of the Board of Supervisors. After studying law, Mr. Estudillo became a prominent attorney in the Riverside area.

 

On November 8, 1904, Mr. Estudillo was elected to the California State Assembly from the 78^th District and was reelected two years later.

On November 3, 1908, he was elected State Senator of the 39^th District, serving his Riverside and Orange County constituency until January 1, 1913. Senator Estudillo would be the last Latino to serve in the State Legislature until the election of Philip Soto and John Moreno in 1962.

 

An important factor in the resurgence of Chicano power during the latter half of the Twentieth Century would be the coming of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican-American Californians served in the U.S. military, many receiving numerous decorations for their service. These proud veterans returned to their native land, but still experienced various forms of discrimination and prejudice. But, for the first time in a long time, one piece of legislation presented Chicano veterans with an opportunity for advancement in California.

The G.I. Bill Act of June 22, 1944 – or the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act put higher education within the reach of thousands of Mexican-American veterans. The Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952 provided similar privileges to Korean War veterans. Over the next decade, Mexican-American veterans attended local and nationwide colleges and universities to obtain college degrees. In many cases, these vets were the first members of their families to receive a higher education. Armed with the weapon of education, many of these Chicano veterans became the politicians of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. By the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, Latinos represented a quarter of the representatives serving in the California Legislature.

 

Suggested Readings:

“History of Santa Barbara & Ventura Counties, California, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers” (Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1961).

Holmes, Elmer Wallace. “History of Riverside County, California, With Biographical Sketches” (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1912).

 

Library of Congress: “Hispanic Americans in Congress, 1822-1995: List in Chronological Order.” http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/congress/chron.html

Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and William C. Velasquez Institute. “California Congressional Redistricting Plan” (Submitted July 17, 2001, Los Angeles). Online: http://www.maldef.org/publications/pdf/Congressional_Plan_Supplement.pdf

 

Spalding, William A. “History and Reminiscences of Los Angeles City and County, California” (Los Angeles: J. R. Finnell & Sons Publishing Company).

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________

John Schmal was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  He attended Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, where he studied Geography, History and Earth Sciences and received two BA degrees.  Mr. Schmal has been a life-long history buff and is also a skilled genealogist. His genealogical specialties including tracing lineages in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Southwestern U.S.A.  He is the coauthor of "Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (Heritage Books, 2002).  He has also coauthored three other books on Mexican-American themes, all of them published by Heritage Books in Maryland. He is an Associate Editor of www.somosprimos.com and a board member of the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research (SHHAR). Presently, in addition to writing weekly columns for HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com),  he is writing a book on the indigenous peoples of Mexico and on the ports of entry along the Mexican-US border.  Mr. Schmal has a passionate love of Mexican history and has been writing short histories of each state, which are being compiled at the following link:
http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/states.html