The email Larry Herrera Cabrera sent me in May was at once polite and defiant.

He contacted me shortly after The Times editorial board wrote about a proposed state bill that would try to right the wrongs of Chavez Lavine.

The bill, introduced by Assemblywoman Wendy Carillo, would require the city of Los Angeles to erect a memorial for the families, many of whom were Latino, who were displaced in the 1950s to make way for the construction of Dodger Stadium. It would also require the city to create a task force to explore compensation for the “long-standing and profound inequities” faced by those families and their descendants.

Mourning what happened at Chavez Ravine is part of the gospel of modern Los Angeles. I've read essays by former residents denouncing what happened, read books and watched plays and documentaries that capture their plight, and enjoyed Ry Cooder's 2005 concept album, Chavez Ravine, which brought together Chicano music legends like Little Willie G, Lalo Guerrero, Elci Irvis and Don Tozzi to sing the horrific story from start to finish.

That's why I was so intrigued by Herrera Cabrera's email.

“My wife and I are descendants of three families that lived in Chavez Ravine until 1950,” he began. [Carrillo’s bill]”Despite legends on the Internet and elsewhere, our family was never impoverished, nor did we feel bitter about our move.”

He also presented a different story I hadn't thought of: that Chavez Lavigne's family bought homes elsewhere with money provided by the city and continued living there. Their descendants felt insulted by Carillo's bill's implication that they needed help. Herrera Cabrera's memo added nuance to a story that has long been thought of as a clear, black-and-white case of racial discrimination by the city.

Priscilla Leyva, a professor of Chicana/Latina studies at Loyola Marymount University, spoke with Herrera Cabrera as part of “Chavez Ravine: An Unfinished Story,” an interdisciplinary project involving hundreds of photographs and dozens of oral histories that she co-led with former resident Carol Jack. She wasn’t surprised by my surprise.

“The Latino story is always trivialized, but especially [the Chavez Ravine] “The evacuation is so bad that residents will be forced to evacuate,” Leyva said.

She noted that the public long ago stopped paying attention to “what came before and what happened after,” which means “a lot of people don't want to recognize or acknowledge any nuance.”

Earlier this month, I visited Herrera Cabrera and his wife, Katherine, in their spacious San Juan Capistrano home, perched on a hilltop similar to the neighborhood where his parents grew up, but this is upper-middle-class suburban housing, not the “poor man's paradise” that one photographer described as Chavez Canyon and that Cooder sang about.

In her study, where a Biden-Harris sticker sits above a photo of her late mother, Sally, next to pictures of her father and maternal uncle in World War II uniforms, Herrera Cabrera describes herself as a “progressive bureaucrat” who worked in city and county government for decades, proudly recalling standing up to racist politicians in Santa Barbara County in the 1980s and officiating a same-sex wedding as Long Beach city clerk after the Supreme Court legalized it in 2013, two years before she retired.

“By having that connection [helping] “Community was really important to me,” he said, sitting at his kitchen table looking at family photos taken in Chavez Ravine in the 1940s: three maternal uncles in military uniforms surrounding his mother in a park; his mother and sisters in sunglasses and bobby-sock skirts and sweaters; a group of unidentified young pachucos.

“Our family history gives us strength,” the 71-year-old continued. He's tall and has bright eyes that shine even brighter behind his glasses. “I know they suffered hardships. Things don't always go well, but you have to keep moving forward.”

Her grandparents bought a house in nearby Lincoln Heights with money they received from the city of Los Angeles; Herrera Cabrera was born there in 1952. Nine years later, her mother and stepfather moved to Rosemead, but she frequently visited her Uncle Joe, who lived in Solano Canyon, at the base of Dodger Stadium, where Chavez Lavigne's family had moved. City officials had promised them a place to live in a public housing project to be built on top of their bulldozed homes; instead, the stadium was built.

“You used to be able to sit on the hill and watch the games for free,” Herrera Cabrera said. He and his family would occasionally go to games, but he preferred to hang out with his cousins ​​outside Uncle Joe's house while the older kids listened to the games on the radio and reminisced about Chavez Ravine. “They talked fondly about those days. No one complained about having to move.”

He doesn't remember when he first learned of the then-conventional notion that the Chavez Lavigne family was pitiful, but “it didn't bother me.” Neither did Katherine, who soon joined him in the kitchen.

“Who wants to admit they're oppressed?” she said, referring to the Arechiga family, who were among the last to hold out in Chavez Ravine until Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies forcibly evicted them. For years, they had lived in their evicted home without paying property taxes, according to newspaper reports at the time.

“Now they're coming back demanding compensation?” she said.

“[Chavez Ravine] “This isn't just a photo of people being dragged out,” Larry Herrera Cabrera added, referring to the infamous 1959 photo of four Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies dragging members of the Arechiga clan from their home. “This is their legacy.”

In 1959, Aurora Vargas was taken away by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after her family refused to leave their Chavez Lavigne home.

(Hugh Arnott/Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA)

His perspective on the meaning of Chavez Ravine changed after he visited the Belgian Ardennes American Military Cemetery in 2019 to fulfill a promise to his mother. There, he visits the grave of his maternal uncle, Henry Rivas, an Army private who died at age 19 in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. Larry and Katherine have at least 12 relatives who served in World War II.

“It's indicative that they thought fascism was worse than what they faced at home,” she said.

“And they came back and were successful,” Larry added. “One of my uncles worked in aerospace, my uncle Joe worked for the post office, another uncle opened a restaurant, my father Domingo worked in construction, and my uncles Ted and Teodoro started a men's fashion brand.”

Last year, the couple attended for the first time an annual gathering of Chavez Lavigne families who call themselves Los Desterados, or “The Uprooted,” where Larry put up a poster board display of his uncles' service in World War II.

“If I could talk to Wendy [Carrillo]”I told her that story,” he asserted. “To me, they were successes. That's part of the story. They were difficult, but they thrived nonetheless.”

He sent a letter to the state Senate opposing Carrillo's bill, which is before the Senate Appropriations Committee, calling the bill “hypothetical” and bad policy.

“If people really were deceived, that's fine, but why should I, as a descendant, be entitled to anything?” he said.

“The bill says people are in poverty,” Catherine said.Who?”

Vincent Montalvo is a co-founder of Buried Under the Blue, a nonprofit group that has long called for an apology from the Dodgers and for Los Angeles County and the city to pay reparations, while urging people to stop using the term “Chavez Ravine” to refer to the Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde neighborhoods that were bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium.

But they have nothing to do with Carrillo's bill, which he is “85% in favor of.” His group also wants three community centers built and named after Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde. Buried Under the Blue says the land should be returned to the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians, the Kiz Nation, and all parties involved in the eviction should issue a public apology.

Montalvo, who grew up in Echo Park and whose grandparents owned a home in Palo Verde, said former residents have accused him of “begging for handouts.”

“These events are hard,” he said, “but the older generation couldn't even talk about what happened forever. But I told them, 'With all due respect, you do what you're going to do, and we'll do what we're going to do, and some of you will go back to sobriety, and that's OK.'”

Carrillo, whose district includes Dodger Stadium, told me, “I've learned that when we move forward with policy proposals, some will say we go too far and some will say we don't go far enough, but ultimately we're trying to move the needle toward justice and do as much good as we can for as many people as possible.”

In response to criticism that her bill portrays Chavez Lavigne's family as perpetual victims, the congresswoman was more blunt: “There are no victims, but there are survivors.”

Larry agrees with her and Montalvo about building a memorial, but he wants the memorial to focus on the good things that happened to their ancestors, not just the bad things that happened to them.

“My family wasn't uprooted from Chavez Canyon. Most families weren't. Like my Uncle Joe would say, let it all flow, never mind.”

He shed tears.

“If there's reparations, bring them back,” he said of his uncles. “Tell their story. I didn't suffer. What they did should be told.” that It's the legacy of Chavez Lavigne.”