We call her the Jewel City of the Verdugos.  Because of geography and terrain, we can see the skyline of downtown LA just over the hills of Elysian Park where Dodger stadium sits.  We are the backdoor to LA’s “urban wilderness” – Griffith Park.  We bridge the southland’s two great valleys, the San Gabriel and its more famous cousin, the San Fernando, even though our history is tied inextricably to the former.

In 1769, Gaspar de Portolá, governor of Las Californias, the Spanish colonial province that included California, Baja California, and other parts of present-day Mexico, led 64 men on an overland expedition from Mexico.  The Portolá expedition was the first recorded European exploration of the interior of what is today known as the state of California, and led to the founding of what was called Alta (“upper”) California to differentiate it from Baja (“lower”) California. Alta or Baja, it was all part of Mexico – Spain ruled Mexico for over 300 years, from the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521 until the Mexican War of Independence in 1821. Its territory known as California would not become the 31st state of the fledgling United States until 1850.

With Portolá was a young soldier, Corporal Jose Maria Verdugo, who was stationed in San Luis Obispo and then in San Diego before transferring to Mission San Gabriel, founded by Franciscan friar Junipero Serra in 1771 as the fourth of California’s 21 missions established between 1769 and 1833 along the El Camino Real (“The Royal Road”) which had been named in honor of the Spanish monarchy which financed the expeditions north into California.

In 1779, Verdugo married Maria de la Encarnacion, of Sinaloa Mexico.  Now married and starting a family, he began planning for the future and decided to raise cattle and sell their hides.  Needing grazing land, he found a piece of undeveloped land near where the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River met.

The history of this area was first written down by John Calvin Sherer in 1922.  Carroll W. Parcher incorporated much of Sherer’s information into his book published in 1957, revised in 1974 and expanded in 1981.  Included in Parcher’s 1981 edition, we find mention of young Jose Verdugo whose vision of what could be is the foundation of the modern city of Glendale:

Here in Alta California, in every direction from the mission, were literally thousands of acres of unclaimed land… it was perfectly natural for the young corporal to appraise the untapped riches around him, as he became acquainted with the area.

Verdugo applied for the right to keep cattle and horses on the 36,403 acres.  Grazing rights were approved in 1784 by Governor Pedro Fages and Verdugo received official title to Rancho San Rafael in 1797.  It was the second Spanish land grant made to an individual in California.

Verdugo remained in the Spanish Army for thirteen more years, and asked his brother, Mariano de la Luz Verdugo, to manage his property.  Mariano, who had also come with the 1769 expedition, grazed his own cattle on land near present-day Universal City/Studios to the west, and during this time, Mariano served as alcalde (“mayor”) of the growing pueblo of Los Angeles.

Today, Glendale is the third largest city within Los Angeles County, with a population of around 210,000.  We are proud of our Spanish roots and our historical and contemporary ties to Mexico. Growing up in Glendale, we celebrated that cultural heritage with the annual Days of Verdugo celebration each October, which included a parade, a carnival, and events citywide.  I myself marched in the Days of Verdugo parade as a member of the Cub Scouts.  I did not go on to become a Boy Scout as I decided scouting wasn’t for me when I learned on a camping trip you had to sleep outside on the ground in some god-awful contraption called a “tent” on a regular basis.

I love Glendale.  I am proud to be from there.  It was a wonderful place to grow up, with its tree-lined streets, its many parks, and, with the addition of Galleria I and II in the late 70s and early 80s, its world-class shopping.  Throughout my adult life, I never strayed far – spending most of it before retiring to the desert in Silverlake, which borders Glendale’s southern most tip, an area known as Atwater.  I was just there last week, visiting many of my old haunts.  I’m an Angeleno like my father before me, because Glendale is a suburb of Los Angeles.  My father called Los Angeles (the city of the angels) home for all of his 93 and 11 months on the planet. But I am first, foremost, and always a Glendalian – a son of Verdugo.

I watched with a mixture of horror and sadness a live stream from local LA station ABC7 of the protests and unrest yesterday in Los Angeles as Angelenos poured onto the streets in massive numbers to protest ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids targeting the southland’s large immigrant community.

Horror because of the violence and destruction I was witnessing from the safety and comfort of the Coachella Valley 2 hours to the east.  Cars, including police cars, set on fire.  People chipping away at cement street curbs to obtain projectiles to throw at police, building barricades out of benches ripped out of Gloria Molina Grand Park in front of city hall to slow the advance of the authorities, occupying the 101 freeway, a major artery through downtown, and forcing its closure.  Police, for their part, trying to keep the peace, protect private property, and ensure public safety, but with a target painted on their backs by Donald Trump and Tom Homan (whose official title is the Gestapo-esque “White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations”). All this amid news that Trump had “federalized” California National Guard troops against the wishes of California governor Gavin Newsom and LA mayor Karen Bass and placed active duty Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton on alert to deploy – that’s the US military turned on US citizens on US soil! The situation could not be more fraught with genuine peril, for the city and for the country.

Sadness because, as every schoolboy learns in one of Glendale’s very fine public schools, unless one is descended from the area’s native Tongva people, who lived here for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, we are all immigrants.

The Tongva people lived in villages spread out in this region of southern California over 4,000 square miles; in the area around what we would call metropolitan Los Angeles today, their villages stretched from Topanga Canyon in the northwest, to the base of Mount Wilson in the north, to San Bernardino in the east, and to Aliso Creek in the southeast.  In the area of present-day Glendale, the Tongva villages of Wiqanga, Tujunga, Hahamongna, Ashwaangna, and Maungna were established to oversee local resources and provide trade with other Tongva villages further away.  According to Richard Toyon, a fourteenth-generation Native Californian who is active in the local Tongva community, “Those villages in turn traded and established relations with other village sites … It was all rather complex but provided a stable system of balance, trade, and stewardship.”  The Tongva were more than just a culture, they were a civilization with a far greater claim on the area than we Americans have today.  With the arrival of the Spanish, the Tongva people were forced into labor (and Christianity) at the missions.  As the Spanish presence increased, the Tongva became known as Gabrieleño.  As Richard Toyon points out, “Because of the missionary system’s near destruction of their way of life, it set the stage for rapid urbanization that followed, which nearly destroyed any last vestiges of the thousands of years of inhabitance, culture and stewardship.”

I am _______________ (please supply your own adjective meaning ‘appalled’ as I am too upset to think of one) that the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, hate troll and bigot Stephen Miller, has seen fit to take to X and spew his nativist venom, seemingly unaware that the mass migration he is condemning was committed by US who call ourselves Americans now and the unraveled society he speaks of was the Tongva.

This is a man who has lost the plot.  And while I certainly do not advocate nor condone violence or the destruction of property, what we are seeing play out on the streets of Los Angeles is a release of the anxiety, the frustration, and the anger of what we call the immigrant community there and throughout the southland.  Our ancestors sought better lives and greater opportunities in the promise of the “new world.”  Why do we vilify the immigrant today who wants the same?

I think it is important to remember, whether one is from Glendale or not…

THAT WE ARE ALL SONS OF VERDUGO.

Go back far enough in your family’s history, and unless you happen to be Native American, there is a point where someone you are descended from came here across waters or up through Mexico.  Hell, as a native Californian, it’s important for me to remember, acknowledge, and even celebrate that California was part of Mexico until 1848 when Mexico ceded California to the United States as part of the Treaty of Hidalgo, which formally ended the Mexican-American War.

I got up early this morning and checked that live stream from LA.  I read the news online, and I was glad to see that the protests and unrest had calmed down.  And I was filled with pride to read this about my beloved hometown of Glendale:

The California city of Glendale has terminated a contract to house federal immigration detainees, with local officials saying the arrangement had become increasingly “divisive” within the community.

The decision by the Los Angeles county municipality to sever ties with US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) comes after three days of protests in other parts of the LA area. That included Sunday near the Metropolitan Detention Center, about nine miles from Glendale, where cars were set alight as anti-Ice protesters clashed with law enforcement, including the National Guard.