La Fiesta de Los Angeles

by

Laine Farley

Bookmarks featuring places I have lived have a special appeal as mementos, even if they are after the fact, and they often provide a tiny window into the history of a place. Such is the case with the bookmark for “La Fiesta de Los Angeles 1781 - Sept. 4 to 13 1931.” Although a little faded and worse for wear, this felt bookmark with its Spanish couple interpreted with a slightly deco flair clearly was made for an event I knew nothing about—always a call to research.

This event celebrated the sesquicentennial of the founding of Los Angeles on a scale befitting the sprawling city of dreams. An article titled “Pages of City’s History to Live Again in Fiesta” in the May 24, 1931 edition of the Los Angeles Times summed it up:

The history of Los Angeles comes marching along a dusty, obscure trail out of the distant past, treads through many a stirring chapter of romance and adventure; accumulates, as it proceeds, a surprising impedimenta of beauty, golden episodes, picturesque characters and events, and finally emerges into the full noonday of the present, a surpassing record.

The article goes on to promise that the 150th birthday “will be gay, colorful, lively, significant and memorable beyond anything of the sort ever seen in the West” with the “portrayal of the city’s history an illuminated volume de luxe,” much like a “modern divertissement show.”

The festivities were planned around four periods chronicling the city’s progression “through its various stages from pueblo to metropolis”: the Spanish era, featuring a spiritual motif centered on the Missions; the Mexican era known as California of the Golden Days and celebrating the rule of the ranchos; the Bear Flag period featuring the explorers and pioneers; and the “last and greatest period, the modern era highlighting progress such as air transportation.” Participating in the events were “Indians of the most striking types,” a cavalcade of transportation from covered wagons  and the pony express to the first train, a parade of famous riders from around the world staged by Hollywood studios followed by a rodeo, a water carnival at Venice beach, and an International Air Fiesta at Los Angeles Airport. The last day of the festival concluded with an old-fashioned street carnival and downtown parade “with everyone in costume, and all the grotesque figures, serpentine, confetti, music and mirth incident to an occasion of the sort.”

The September, 1931 issue of Southern Californian has a front cover illustration titled “La Fiesta de Los Angeles 1781-1931” with a stylized pose of a woman in Spanish attire, labeled “Conchita Montenegro—Fox.” She was a Spanish model, dancer and actress who came to Hollywood to work at MGM in June 1930 at the age of seventeen. By mid-1931 she had signed with Fox to play in both Spanish and English films. Could she have been the inspiration for the figure on my bookmark? This issue contains an article on p. A2-A18 titled “The Story of La Fiesta de Los Angeles” by William Gilmore Beymer. He recounts the early days of California history, provides detailed descriptions and a schedule of La Fiesta’s events, and most interestingly, describes the predecessor to the 1931 event. While the festivities were amplified by the sesquicentennial celebration, the 1931 celebration was not the first Fiesta de Los Angeles.

The original event began in 1894, another time of economic distress as Beymer observed, “The year 1893 was a black year. Not just depression. Panic. Los Angeles, like all the rest of the country was ‘flat’.” Marco R . Newmark in the article “La Fiesta de Los Angeles of 1894” in the Quarterly of the Historical Society of Southern California, v. XXIX, issue 2, 1947, pp. 101-111, confirms this state and goes on to describe how the festival came about:

In the early months of 1893, when Los Angeles was well on its way out of the difficulties into which the collapse of the great Land Boom in 1888 had plunged her, the country underwent a major panic. The city suffered its full share of this new affliction, and the merchants found themselves in serious trouble.

With the hope of improving conditions by means of a cooperative effort, the business men of the city established the Merchant's Association. At one of the meetings, during a discussion of ways and means for bettering the local situation, Max Meyberg suggested the holding of a carnival somewhat in the spirit of the annual celebration of the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He expressed the opinion that such an undertaking would attract to Los Angeles many of the visitors to the Midwinter Fair then being conducted in San Francisco; and it was also suggested that the city had hitherto relied entirely on climate as the principal attraction for rich Easterners sojourning here during the Spring, and that something should be done to add to the pleasure of their stay.

The author goes on to describe in great detail the events of the Fiesta and the sometimes whimsical antics used by the event organizers to capture the attention and support of the public including a mock “municipal revolution” staged by Fiesta officials. They were led by “a dignified citizen mounted on a burro” and proceeded to overtake the City Council on the pretext that “inasmuch as the Queen of the Fiesta was but three days journey from the city, the present government should be overthrown and a new one established on her arrival.”

The elaborate parade celebrated many of the same themes as the 1931 event but with a “Gay Nineties” flair of its own.  According to Newmark:

Some of the floats quite elaborately represented landmarks in California history—the landing of Cabrillo (Old Spanish Life) one hundred Yuma Indians in native dress, gathered by Harrison Fuller, dancing wild dances underway; an irrigation scene; a scene depicting a group of emigrating forty-niners; floats portraying the Boom and the Boomers, the busted Boom, and many others. The floats and other features were designed with detailed attention to realistic settings. For the emigrant float, fourteen burros, for the feeding and corraling of which Fuller had been awarded the contract, were packed with bedsteads, mattresses, stoves, boxes and other emigrant train equipment “in such a manner as to delight old-timers and amuse the tenderfeet and well-nigh obscure the little animals.”

The founders’ hopes were realized for the success of the event.

Several thousand visitors came to Los Angeles and remained for stays of varying duration. They spent a substantial sum of money while they were here; business revived, and a bright optimism supplanted the dark pessimism that had prevailed during the early months of the year.

Indeed, the historians of Los Angeles agree that the Fiesta led to a period of buoyancy and prosperity which constituted a new era in the growth and development of Los Angeles.

Beymer did some research on the economic benefits of the first few years of the Fiesta and realized that the new money brought in by it was minimal; however, it did contribute to the population growth along with increased winter tourism. As he concluded, “The fiestas of the Gay Nineties showed what could be done in the way of putting Southern California in the eye of the world.”

The event was discontinued in 1898 in part due to the Spanish Civil War but was reinstated in 1901 and held sporadically during the 1910s. I was not able to find a definitive list of dates, but it seems to have tapered off in the 1920s prior to the 1931 revival. Since about 1989 it has been known as Fiesta Broadway and the latest event was held in May 2011, touted as “The largest Latino event in the nation’s largest Latino market.” In contrast to this claim, the event has had its share of controversy when it comes to portraying California’s cultural heritage and being inclusive of groups who have contributed to it.

Many of the accounts of the Gay Nineties celebrations mention the success of the Chinese participation although they were almost excluded after volunteering for the 1894 event. According to Newmark, “Best remembered, perhaps, by those still living, who witnessed this parade of fifty-three years ago, was the Chinese float. As one reporter enthusiastically observed, ‘It seemed as if all the genius of the Orient had been brought in to make it beautiful and artistic,’ and to add a further touch of the exotic, a group of residents of the then large Chinese section ambled along, clad in their native costumes, wearing queues, symbolic of subjections to the Manchu dynasty, burning incense and playing the instruments which had greeted the attentive ears of Marco Polo some six centuries before.”

He goes on to described their contribution in 1895:  “It included the replica of a dragon brought down from San Francisco for the occasion. One hundred feet in length, it was covered with blue and green silk, and it was supported by a shoulder brigade of forty Chinamen hidden by drapes hanging from its side. They trudged along with a peculiar side to side movement, which created the illusion that the beauteous monster was moving, reptile fashion, along the street. Symbolizing the Emperor, the dragon was accompanied by a gaudy bird of paradise which symbolized the Empress.”

An even more enthusiastic report was provided by S. Willie Layton in the June 1895 issue of The Women’s Era, Vol. II, n. 3, in the section on California, “La Fiesta de Los Angeles”: “The Chinese portion was brilliant and picturesque, and will go down into history as the most striking success of La Fiesta, ‘95. Their barbaric splendor was imposing because it was genuine—a great moving living picture of historical events from the land of Confucius, dating back 2000 years, with real accessories from the Asiatic birth place, depicted by the people therefrom.” This tone continues with further details and flourishes about their exotic performance.

In contrast there were controversies over other ethnic groups through the years, in particular during the 1931 event. According to Dan Luckenbill in The Pachuco Era: Catalog of an Exhibit, University Research Library, September-December 1990, University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Dept. of Special Collections, 1990, the term “Mexican” was avoided in 1931 because “alien workers were seen as threats to employment” during the Depression years. Events were called “Spanish barbecues” or “gay Spanish fandangos” rather than referencing anything Mexican.

Author William David Estrada points out other slights to ethnic groups in the book The Los Angeles Plaza, University of Texas Press, 2008 in chapter 7:

A highlight of the sesquicentennial event occurred at the Plaza with a “reenactment” of the 1781 founding of Los Angeles. However, in 1931, the founders of the city were thought of as the white European ancestors of the Anglo Midwesterners who were then ruling the city. Consequently, the forty-four people who were selected to portray the “original” pobladores were the friends and family members of leading businessmen and elected officials; the selection drew harsh criticism from the black community for wasteful spending and conscious denial of the city’s African heritage.

Over time, these tensions and controversies have shifted if not disappeared, and the current Fiesta Broadway is associated with and held prior to the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Although there are many photographs (such as this collection from different years of La Fiesta from the University of  Southern California), descriptions and interpretations of La Fiesta during its early years, there is very little information on the souvenirs and other mementos that were surely produced during the events. Some libraries have scrapbooks and other ephemera in their physical collections but I found only a few items that have been digitized.

A reproduction poster for 1896 is available that mentions “Spanish Caballeros, Indians and Chinese” but displays a dancing woman who does not quite have the Spanish look. The cover of the California State Library Foundation Bulletin, no. 98, 2010  illustrates the poster for 1897 which has lovely gold California poppies on a pinkish red background and a lady in gold dress with olive trim, all of which have an Art Nouveau feel.

The colors in this poster are very much in keeping with the official colors of the event described by S. Willie Layton:

Decorations are gorgeous—the city color mad—from electric light poles and wires lazily flap the tricolored flags of gold, scarlet and olive, (emblematic of the orange, wine and olive productions of our state). Children scamper along the streets, like tropical birds, in their frocks of blended gold, scarlet and olive; carriages and tallyhos, tandem and cart are bright and gay with garlands and ribbons. From windows and steeples flutter the La Fiesta colors; street cars breaking into gay bunting become fanciful things of locomotion; horses prance proudly in their gay trimmings; and forlorn indeed is the dog that sports neither tri-colored collar or bow.

The official colors had been proposed by J.T. Sherwood in 1894 to symbolize the three principal products of Southern California, oranges, olives, and wine. The original colors of my bookmark may have been red (or perhaps a more tepid color symbolizing rose wine) with yellow/orange although there is no evidence of olive. Color was a key element through the years and these three colors really are emblematic of California. This photograph from USC titled “View of Broadway, looking south from Seventh Street during Fiesta Week, November 1931” is not in color, of course, but does give a sense of the vivid display of banners and flags, many of which look like Spanish shawls, that lined the streets. The three signature colors were eventually incorporated into the seal for the city of Los Angeles that features olives, oranges, and grapes.

Layton also mentions  that “the fraternity of street fakirs, yelling ‘La Fiesta badges,’ is patronized by the sailors and country cousins who have ‘come to take in Fiesta’,” and I found that a leather badge from 1896 recently sold on eBay for $75. Two tickets from the 1931 La Fiesta are currently on offer for $50 each. It is fairly common to see postcards from La Fiesta as well.

A history buff posted the cover of a souvenir magazine for the 1931 La Fiesta that features another variation of the Spanish (or Mexican?) couple on my bookmark, with a definite deco influence in the shape of the flowers on her shawl and the angular geometric designs on his outfit.

Fortunately the Autry Libraries in Los Angeles posted a charming handbill for the 1931 La Fiesta in their blog on May 23, 2011. It is in the shape of a senorita coyly hiding behind her fan and it’s quite amazing that something so delicate has survived. The author of the blog post made an observation that perfectly describes this little gem as well as my more modest bookmark:

Ephemera by design are fleeting bits of information. A majority end up getting lost, discarded, folded, forgotten or pushed to the back of a drawer. To our great fortune though, there are some that survive and find their way into an archive to be preserved and made accessible for perusal, research and meditation. These pieces add context and color to the minutia. Like a view through a pinhole, ephemeral material such as a business card, school newspaper, admission ticket, or event handbill focuses on one granular aspect of a greater story.

Bookmark specifications: La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 1781 - Sept. 4 to 13 1931
Dimensions: 2 1/8” x 6”
Material: Felt
Manufacturer: Unknown
Date:  1931
Acquired: eBay

Laine Farley is a digital librarian who misses being around the look, feel and smell of real books.  Her collection of over 3,000 bookmarks began with a serendipitous find while reviewing books donated to the library. Fortunately, her complementary collection of articles and books about bookmarks provides an excuse for her to get back to libraries and try her hand at writing about bookmarks. Contact Laine.