Historians and Toros examine Los Angeles’ role in displacement of Latine families.
Los Angeles is a baseball town, and on any given day at CSUDH, you see Toros showing off their pride for the Dodgers. As the team made their play for another World Series Championship last month, the campus was awash in Dodger blue and white.
In fact, when the Dodgers sealed the deal against the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series on Saturday night, Nov. 1, some students skipped class the following Monday to join the postseason celebration on Nov. 3.
The Dodgers mean a lot to Angelenos, especially those from Latine communities and backgrounds. The team hosts several themed events and promotions during the season to honor Latine heritage and history.
For Mexican-American Angelenos, the love affair with the “Boys in Blue” can be traced back more than four decades. It was in 1980 that Hall of Fame pitcher Fernando Valenzuela first took the mound at Dodger Stadium. Valenzuela inspired “Fernandomania” throughout the city while legendary announcers Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín called the action in English and Spanish, respectively.
“It was like a movie, this guy drops from the sky,” said Mark Langill, the Dodgers’ official historian, in an interview with the Bulletin. “The difference between [Shohei] Ohtani and Fernando is, no one saw Fernando coming.”
The connection the Dodgers have to Latine communities runs deeper than everyday fandom. The team’s past holds stories of the people who once lived on the land the stadium was built on.
“There are a lot of people that do not know the story of Chavez Ravine,” said Dodgers fan Angel Mejia, a freshman biology student. “The Dodgers could have [handled] the situation differently instead of kicking [people], [especially] Hispanic people and knowing that nowadays they take pride in [hosting] ‘Salvadoran Night,’ ‘Mexican Night,’ and ‘Guatemalan Night.’ It’s all very hypocritical.”
The plot of land where Dodger Stadium stands now was known as Chavez Ravine. Before the 1950s, the area was home to three Mexican American communities who had been barred from living in other neighborhoods due to redlining—a discriminatory practice that blocks certain groups, based on race or ethnicity, from receiving services like loans, insurance and healthcare.
“Families were displaced because of gentrification [and] redlining,” said Julian Sanchez, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at CSUDH, adding that generations of Latine communities were affected by the construction of Dodger Stadium.
Mexican Americans and other Latine communities affected by redlining in LA eventually settled in Chavez Ravine, which was considered “undesirable,” “risky,” and “hazardous” by lenders. The area was divided into three distinct areas: Palo Verde, Bishop, and La Loma.
After World War II, LA launched a massive public development project to address the housing shortage in the area. The city targeted areas like Chavez Ravine for the project, called Elysian Park Heights. The project was to include more than 1,000 housing units, high-rise buildings, townhouses, and new schools and playgrounds.
The redevelopment project failed in 1953, ultimately, following the election of Norris Poulson as mayor. Poulson, a conservative, was a staunch opponent of public housing, denouncing such projects as “a secret communist strategy to create communist cells in the heart of downtown.”
Under Poulson, Chavez Ravine was reacquired from the federal government, on the condition that it be used for a public project. City officials soon began scouting for sports teams interested in coming to Los Angeles.
“The only reason the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles was because their ball park was built in 1913 and there was no chance for expansion—they had a 31,000-seating capacity,” explained Langill, the Dodgers’ historian.
Langill said the Dodgers bought a Little League baseball field from the Los Angeles Angels as leverage, in case the team couldn’t remain in Brooklyn after selling its ballpark.
In 1958, Dodgers owner Walter Francis O’Malley made a deal with the city to relocate the team from Brooklyn to LA. After a public referendum passed by just 3%, O’Malley purchased Chavez Ravine for a fraction of what the city had paid, and development for what would become Dodger Stadium began in late 1959.
Residents in the area resisted the stadium for a decade, in what would become known as the “Battle for Chavez Ravine.”
According to Langill, O’Malley was largely unaware of the political turmoil surrounding Chavez Ravine when he negotiated with the city. He said O’Malley relied on maps and city officials, but did not learn the full history of the displaced communities until after arriving in LA
Langill noted that the team “couldn’t operate in a vacuum,” explaining that the displacement stemmed from decisions the city had already made. He added that the Dodgers paid property taxes for 20 years before the land reverted back to the city.
Los Angeles historian Nathan Marsak argues that the responsibility for clearing Chavez Ravine rested entirely with the city—not the Dodgers. Writing in May 2024 for his website, “Bunker Hills Los Angeles,” Marsak noted that Los Angeles failed to deliver the land as promised and mishandled the eviction process long before the team became involved.
“The City of Los Angeles had one job: deliver an empty plot of land. The city, being the city, in the grand tradition of bureaucracies, of course did a poor job of this. Then the city had to play mop-up at the 11th hour,” Marsak wrote. “The Dodger corporation was in no way involved in removing people who had lost their homes years before.”
For some Toros, learning the history of Chavez Ravine reshapes the way they see the Dodgers’ legacy.
“I did not know [the Dodgers] claimed that…that is an outrageous statement,” said Alicia Flores, an art student. “It is crazy to think they are not taking accountability for something that they clearly did and how history and records [show] them basically taking that land …[Families] had to figure out where to live and it is crazy.”
Mejia, the Dodgers fan and biology student, said the families and communities who lost their homes deserve far more than token recognition by the franchise.
“The Dodgers did know at the end of the day—they knew where they were going to build the stadium,” he said. “I do get it, that the city was the one enforcing those raids and kicking people out, but at the end of the day, it all has to do with the Dodgers.”