El Salvador Park, Santa Ana

A modern photo of the community center at El Salvador Park

Although not one of the City of Santa Ana’s oldest parks, El Salvador Park – located on what’s now West Civic Center Drive in the heart of the Artesia-Pilar barrio (a.k.a. Colonia Artesia) -- is among its most historic. 

Plans for the park began in the mid-1950s, and city documents from early 1956 refer to its location by the working title "Eighth and Artesia Park Site." By October the name was abbreviated to "Artesia Park." And by 1957, construction on the park was well under way.

At their April 1, 1957 meeting, the City Council not only approved more upgrades for Artesia Park but also (in a seemingly unrelated action) unanimously approved a resolution requested by the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, "endorsing and supporting the establishment of the 'People to People' Program with the City of Santa Ana, El Salvador." People-to-People was a sister-city-type program organized by the U.S. State Department, intended to foster friendship between nations. 

Almost a year later, at a Feb. 3, 1958 meeting, the Council made another decision about their under-development park: "…At the oral request of E. H. Armstrong, Chairman of the People to People Program, … Artesia Park was renamed El Salvador Park.” 

The same proclamation also stipulated that “March 2, 1958 be proclaimed as El Salvador Day, as would “the first Sunday of March of each year thereafter.” The Council also went “on record as officially recognizing the People to People Program,” and directed City staff to authorize the “purchase a bronze plaque and [to] place same in El Salvador Park."

In Fall 1958, the City of Santa Ana purchased the final parcel needed to develop El Salvador Park. They then hired the architectural firm of Finnegan & Wilde to design the community building and in Nov. 1959 hired the R. L. Steinmetz Co. to build it. In June 1960, the city took bids on the construction of a parking lot there. Things were clearly taking shape. 

By later that same year, (according to locals who remember it,) a young Edward "Ted" Kennedy used the new park as a venue for a political rally in support of his presidential candidate brother, John F. Kennedy.

By January 1961, events were being held somewhat regularly in the new community center, and in 1962 Steinmetz was hired again to add handball courts to the park.

But El Salvador Park was destined to be home to much more than sports, playgrounds, and the usual community center fare. Over the years, it would be a bustling hub of activity – both good and bad. Wedged between John C. Fremont Elementary School, the little Corner Grocery store, and rows of modest homes, the park was the scene of low-rider cruise nights, family reunions, and political and social events of varying degrees of significance. 

On Sept. 12, 1970, the park played host to a large march memorializing journalist and activist Ruben Salazar, who’d been killed a couple weeks earlier in East L.A. during a protest by the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. 

Two years later, in early June 1972, about 250 primarily Latino and Black students from local high schools and junior high schools ditched class and marched to the park to protest school conditions. Their demands included hiring faculty, administration, and staff that reflected “the ethnic makeup of the community;” the addition of community oversite to prevent “injustices,” and the implementation of various measures to limit the school’s ability to discipline students. Massive suspensions at Valley High School and Smedley Intermediate School had helped spark the unrest. Ironically, many of the students participating in the protest march were immediately disciplined (i.e. given suspensions).

Cesar Chavez at El Salvador Park, 1972.

 On Oct. 19,1972, Cesar Chavez, noted activist and director of United Farm Workers, gave a brief speech against state ballot Proposition 22 at a rally at El Salvador Park. The controversial proposition, as Chavez saw it, would have limited farm workers' rights to unionize or strike. (It was defeated at the polls the following month.) Chavez spoke in both Spanish and English. Soft drinks and tamales were served. (Local historian Manny Escamilla says Cesar Chavez also spoke at El Salvador Park once during the Delano Grape Strike, which took place between 1965 and 1970.)

Since at least the late 1960s, the park has also been known as a hub for crime – from arson to narcotics to murder. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the gang known as F-Troop and the Mexican Mafia controlled the park. Both the L.A. Times and the Santa Ana Police Department called it "one of Santa Ana's deadliest neighborhoods."

In 1992, El Salvador Park was the site of a gathering of 200 members of fifty warring local Mexican-American gangs, called by Mexican Mafia leader Peter "Sana" Ojeda (a.k.a. “The O.C. Godfather”). It was said to be a truce, but police surveillance discovered another agenda. Ojeda addressed those assembled and told them to end drive-by shootings and to demand "taxation" from neighborhood drug dealers. It turned out this meeting was just a test run. Because it proved successful for the Mexican Mafia, they soon held similar meetings across Southern California. It was a critical turning point in the rise of the Mexican Mafia, which made gang crime more efficient (if no less lethal), much less visible to the public, and less blatant a target for police and politicians. 

According to journalist Sam Quinones – who has long covered gangs in California – this event ultimately changed a number of things. First, property values in old gang neighborhood went up – a boon to working-class folks whose homes were suddenly worth more. Secondly, those higher prices drove people on society’s margins out of previously low-rent homes and into homelessness. But it also made the average person on the street safer from violent crime. At least on the surface, professionalizing gang activity helped clean up the streets. 

For a host of reasons, events in unassuming little El Salvador Park have played a significant role in the course of California's history.