Denver City Council chose to honor that history on June 26, when its members voted unanimously to make La Raza Park the city’s third historic cultural district, a rare designation given to geographic communities that have had a significant cultural impact on Denver. The only other two areas that carry that title are the Five Points Historic Cultural District (since 2002) and La Alma Lincoln Park Historic Cultural District (since 2019).
Since 1967, Denver City Council has designated 360 individual landmarks and 58 historic districts for preservation, but only 13 percent of those designations are “explicitly including historically excluded communities,” according to the city.
Sandoval introduced the proposal for La Raza’s designation in late May, after a study by the city titled “Nuestras Historias: Mexican American/Chicano/Latino Histories in Denver” concluded that public officials need to “diversify the Denver Landmark portfolio with more sites and districts for underrepresented groups.”
Sandoval says the park played “a significant role” in her upbringing, and that she attended quinceañeras, Día de los Muertos festivals and summer solstice celebrations there. In 2020, the councilwoman succeeded in having the park renamed La Raza Park. A similar effort had failed in 1988, when now councilmember-at-large Debbie Ortega represented the district.
La Raza Park was then known as Columbus Park; this part of town had been home to a large Italian community in the early twentieth century. But after the neighborhood became mostly Latino and the park became an important gathering place, the push to rename it offered a sense of “community control,” and the idea that residents had some say over the place where they lived.
La Raza means “the race” or “the people,” and the term was prominent during the Chicano movement of the 1960s and ’70s. The Mexican American Youth Organization, a Chicano group from Texas, created the La Raza Unida political party in 1970; the Southwest Council of La Raza, a civil rights advocacy group, formed in Arizona in 1968.
One of the activists who worked as a lifeguard at La Raza Park was Nita Gonzales, the daughter of Crusade for Justice founder Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales. With Gonzales in the lead, the Crusade for Justice organized the splash-ins just a few months after the group worked with students to push the West High School Blowouts in what would become La Alma Lincoln Park.
Corky Gonzales used the park for graduations for Escuela Tlatelolco, the dual-language alternative school he founded. In 1972, the Crusade for Justice opened Servicios de La Raza a few blocks from the park, offering the Chicano community affordable, bilingual social services. But the park itself could be a battleground.
On June 28, 1981, when hundreds of men, women and children came to the park to celebrate the start of summer, police told them to disperse, then released tear gas and attack dogs, according to the landmark designation application.
“The role La Raza played as a ‘liberated’ area — under community control — is a source of pride for the community today, as it was in the 1970s,” the application notes.
While La Raza Park is only Denver’s third historic cultural district, there could soon be a fourth. Gay community members are pushing to create the city’s first Queer Cultural District in an area they’ve dubbed Lavender Hill, which includes parts of Capitol Hill, City Park West, Cheesman Park, Baker and Five Points.
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