Muche Magnifier

Sasha Muce
Professor Andrew Mathews
Anthropology 146 – Environmental Anthropology
2nd Ed., 24th of August, 2012

Sasha Muce
Mathews
Anth 146
12, March, 2009

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Introduction
 

Southern California is naturally a dry area subject to infrequent but severe floods.  Most of the year, it is intensely hot and rivers run mostly dry.  Even during times of rain (scarce compared to most other places), rivers usually raise only a little.  Yet, as spring arrives and snow melts from the mountains, the water from the snow and the rain rushes down to the ocean.  In years of heavy snowfall and big spring storms which sometimes last for weeks, the outcome has been catastrophic.  One such case was in Orange County, California during the Great Flood of 1938.
 

This was the most impacting flood in Orange County history, the Santa Ana River jumped its course and the area experienced the largest flood in 70 years.  Almost all Orange County is located in a flood plain.  Area fifteen miles long and seven miles wide was inundated.  This essay will discuss who was made to be most effected by this calamity and why necessary precautions to prevent it were not taken in advance.  I will use the Pulido article on environmental racism in addition to outside readings by Davis to discuss social trends, and Wisner to discuss vulnerability of people who are economically disadvantaged to prove my position.  Also, I utilize oral tradition from former inhabitants of Atwood, California, at the time of the flood: my grandmother Ednadina Sandoval and her older sister, my great aunt Beatrice Bolasquez.  I use another historical ethnography interviewing other Atwood inhabitants from the flood composed by OC Weekly writer, Gustavo Arellano.

 

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Problem Statement

Early Orange County was planned to place low income, Mexican United States’an workers in areas of danger during times of disaster.  My topic of concern for this analysis is environmental racism expressed by community planning before and following the Great Flood.  The people involved in the outcome of this catastrophe are lower income, Mexican-United States’an communities forced to live in the course of disaster, and better off White-United States’an communities living and profiting off crops in protected areas, in addition to Orange County government of the time.  All future inhabitants of Orange County also become actors in this social injustice drama.  The time frame for this issue extends as far back as 1868 – the year Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, composing most of Orange County, is partitioned.  Before this, Southern Californian land was owned by Spanish or Mexican rancheros for large areas of land owned for cattle grazing. Population was minimal, so sporadic floods did little property damage during the earlier time. 
 

In the time of the 1938 flood, Orange County was almost entirely agricultural consisting mostly of its namesake Orange groves.  As such, workers were needed to sustain operations.  Continuously exploited Mexican workers had no choice but accept work for little pay and do most Orange County labor as Orange pickers and packers.  The Mexican-United States’an working families were offered cheap near free “colonia” land to justify low wages from employers.  This land was “donated” because of location: separated from white and segregated downtown areas by miles of Orange trees and railroad tracks.   Since workers were paid so little they could barely afford costs of survival, few could purchase homes elsewhere. 
 

Land for colonias was selected as such because of lacking commercial value.  Placentia colonias of Atwood and La Jolla were built right in the flood path should the river overflow, as it did in large amounts from year to year, which land owners considered “would be detrimental for the crops.” 
Since these poor workers had to build houses themselves from very low wages, colonia homes often had to be built below safe standards.  Many lacked foundations and were made only of wood boards or scrap metal (Sandoval, E. 2009).  Since flooding happened yearly, these shacks were built on stilts to protect from water damage and could be crawled through underneath; a fun hobby for kids in the summer (Bolasquez, 2009). 
 

I will next analyze implications of hierarchical social stratification of the Mexican-United States’an population.  As I show, these and other oppressed people experience great vulnerability to environmental dangers as stratification takes form.
 

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Literature Review
 

Much like Pulido, I look at environmental racism of Southern California, where populations are forced to live in more vulnerable conditions based on ethnicity.  Even when law demanded equality, environmental racism is enforced by opportunities allowed and not allowed by social powers imposing this discrimination, along with social values controlled by the white elite.  As race exists in different spheres, racial meanings may become manifest in language, psyche, and social structures (Pulido, 2000: 13).  Since white elites control land and recourses, they made the rules.  Through decision making process control, white elites manifest racist beliefs in social engineering and planning against the Mexican-United States’an minority.
 

Land owners decided what workers received for their hard labor, laws of the land, where schools went and who attends each school, resource

accessibility, and all other aspects of society.  The white elites also decided where city centers – seats of their empires – were located.  They controlled with land prices where separate quarters for working hands would be.  While Pulido studies modern factors determining the environmental racism, namely pollution, I examine original means through which it became manifest: natural disaster vulnerability.
 

Property value is one of the most influential factors to maintaining the status quo.  In Southern California, the most powerful social movement is of affluent homeowners (Davis, 2006: 153).  This trend has been in existence since United States became tenet of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana.  Land owners aimed to create a sense of exclusiveness.  Racial standards made minorities: especially Indians and Mexicans, along with Japanese and Chinese, most often were not allowed access to same living situations because of property price and reality that then integration just got put down.  Racist white elites began a petition for removal if a Mexican moved into a white community, even years after the flood (Sandoval, R. 2009).  The Mexican-United States’an workers had colonias and Whites-United States’an’s had the city.  The wealthy elite also constructed large ranch houses far enough away to be separate and exclusive from the city so they had distance from lower class white people as well, but not so far to be inconvenienced.
 

Exploited workers who are forced to live in areas of disaster since considered as “the help” makes liability an issue.  Marginality makes vulnerable populations (Wisner, 1993: 130).  Kept on a day to day income basis, workers could not afford construction by safe standards or even basic necessities for living like food.  By employers only allowing Mexican United States’an workers live in unsafe areas, they were kept vulnerable.  Justification was floods were detrimental to orange business revenue so “it was better” to have workers live there and suffer disaster rather than lose profits.  Although employers realized negative implications for worker communities, since Mexicans-United States’ans by their standards were considered second class, they decided these people did not matter.  Worker inhabitants, unable to choose otherwise, were victimized.
 

Because of social position of superiority, whites did not care what happened to the valuable and vulnerable minority.  “White Privilege” allows whites access to best areas of Orange County (Wisner, 1993: 133).  Non-rich white people thus also lived in protection.  Distanced from the issue in segregated bubbles, whites could separate themselves from what should have been a community issue for everyone in Orange County to solve.
 

Although they created basic levies to prevent large scale flooding from effecting monetary gains, these were found inadequate for how close the river was to the colonias.  Problems were made to effect workers instead of profits so property owners did not care, viewing improvements as a waste of money.  The issue was on poll nearly every year from 1917 to 1936, yet the measure lost by wider and wider margins (Arrellano, 2005: 2).  Some even reasoned a flood would be good for the marginalized, vulnerable people.  Measures to create a more safe flood system finally passed in 1937 (too late to help), only once Federal Works Project Administration took initiative and agreed to help financially.
 

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Discussion and Analysis
 

Once the Great Flood of 1938 affected everyone, Orange County (meaning whites who controlled it) really realized needs for change.  On March 3rd, around 2:00 am, the Santa Ana River skipped banks at the mouth of the Santa Ana Canyon and sent an eight foot wall of water through the canyon.  At canyon end and flood plain entrance was Atwood: the river smashed through like a tidal wave, taking whole houses and even the Catholic Church which floated for several blocks (Arellano, 2005: 1).  The houses compounded together blocking the rivers’ natural flow and the river continued pounding against the levy, made of abandoned cars and old tires cemented together, collapsed and made a new course for the raging river.  Next the river plowed through La Jolla doing same damage to the frail lean-to’s of that colonia.
 

The flood continued through the flood plain (almost all Orange County).  In total, the flood inundated 250,000 acres, extended fifteen miles long and seven miles wide (waterplan.water.ca.gov).  Property damage reached $182 million and 87 people were killed, most of whom were from Atwood or La Jolla.  While there were warnings to people of these areas, they were last minute and not convincing.  According to local occupants, the residents viewed these only as rumors (Bolasquez, 2009).  They saw them as threats from white people, who they did not trust anyway. 
 

Some, like my great, great uncle, who waited on his roof until the flood subsided, refused to leave.  Thankfully, he built a foundation for the house and was safe but for other not so fortunate people, circumstances were harrowing.  My grandma recalls him telling about a man who climbed a pole and was stuck all night calling for rescue; finally he was; OC weekly account writes of the same man (Sandoval, E. 2009; Arrellano: 2005).  [After re-reading Arrellano’s article for 2nd Ed. ERIEOA and after 3 years more family research, I’m quite sure Pio De Casas who was driving home and had to climb the pole to survive was my grandma’s cousin.  Uncle Marcello also has the surname De Casas.] Even those able to swim could not do so because of the strength of the flood wall of water – it became more like a tidal wave than a river (Bolasquez, 2009).
 

In emergency relief response, social hierarchy is enforced.  “Normal process” of relief aid reinforces the status quo.  Recovery relief goes mostly to elite, since they loose ‘the most’ in terms of money profits, although in reality most Mexican-United States’an workers lost their whole lives, for many literally.  Those marginal before disaster remain marginal after disaster (Wisner, 1993: 30).  While American Legion’s, YMCA’s, and schools established flood relief settlements for displaced families to have food and shelter, the aid was short lived; with the great racism in early Orange County, white people soon got tired of helping the Mexican workers and put them back to work.
 

March 23, 1938 OC Register issue tells that the Spanish War Veterans’ group complained all aid was going to “indigent Mexicans instead of solvent citizens,” so the board “expressed sympathy with his viewpoint,” (Arrellano 2005, 4).  Since manipulation forced vulnerability in disaster’s direct path on workers, powers causing oppression had liability and responsibility to provide aid.  In Orange County we continue in need of positive intergroup relations if we want future of success.  Otherwise, chaos is eminent.
 

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Conclusion
 

It was not the huge loss in the colonias’ which made people finally see need for positive political ecology.  The 1938 flood put danger in the perspective of those who could change things; by making it real to them.  Now, most O.C. ancestry is not local, and social settlement patterns completely changed.  Ten years after the flood following WWII, Southern California became a center of migration for many from across the country and increasingly by refugees from our little brother country, Mexico.  Many of the rich white inheritors of original Orange County estates, like the Kraemer family [, one of Kraemer daughters whom my grandma was able to go to Marywood Catholic High School with thanks to the hard work and support from her family and her mom marrying into formerly rich Mexican Era family name; ‘the girls’ including grandma (or ‘the nuns’ or ‘the widows’ as grandpa calls them:) continue tradition of getting together for each other’s birthday: like on Mrs. Kraemers’ birthday this week] - moved to other places since Orange Groves became instead chaotic population influx (Sandoval, 2009). 
 

The river system development made it possible to develop everywhere in the county.  Centers of Industry were made in former flood areas, (where colonias still are.)  After the flood, business and industry wealthy took steps to ensure their future protection from “mishap” with the fortified dam.  New houses were built, and the rich strived maintain image as best and moved from cities’ centers to newer houses so cities spread out in circles and connected; soon Orange groves vanished.  Since all former floodplain space was taken it became trend for rich to build houses high up on formerly unpopulated wild flower hills of Orange and Anaheim and on Newport bluffs. 
 

City centers formerly inhabited by rich social elite become centers for “minority” Mexican-United States’an (now really majority) including Refugee Immigrant population.  Then, formerly ‘new’ houses surrounding these made after river flood programs are occupied by lower income people – both Mexican-United States’an and white - as the rich move to newer houses up high.  So, when disaster happens again despite prevention efforts, environmental racism will continue.  The poor – of all races – will be effected first and the most and the rich will watch from their hilltops.
 

Just now it is not a matter of races but of classes.  If oppression continues, there will be war against rich stealing of Rights, killing True Democracy of Equal Opportunity the United States was founded for, and for ending the American Dream.

 

Bibliography
 

Pulido, L.
2000. “Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in Southern California.” Annals of the Assn of Amer Geographers. V.90(1): pp. 12-40. Print.
Wisner, B.
1993. “Disaster Vulnerability: Scale, Power, and Daily Life.” GeoJournal 30,2, pp. 127-136. (1993). Print.
Davis, Mike
2006. “Home Grown.” Cities of Quartz. Verso Publishing: London, UK.  Pp. 153. Print.
Arrellano, g.
September 15, 2005.  “The Tragedy of it all.”  OC Weekly. (1-4)
California Department of Water Resources
http://www.waterplan.water.ca.gov/
Sandoval, Ednadina:
2009. Grandmother, Daughter of Rosa Ruiz;
Sandoval, Richard: 
2009.  Grandfather, OC History buff and local of Fullerton, on Valencia Ave area (with plans soon to be stolen in eminent domain).
Bolasquez, Bea
2009.  Great Aunt, Daughter of Rosa Ruiz.