It's what Areyan calls an "invisible community," though it produced the hardly invisible Judge Ricardo Cordova, Redondo Beach Councilman Steven Colin and attorney Ronald Cawdrey. And let's not forget Amador Espinosa, a World War II flier who worked 50 years in administration with the Redondo Beach Police Department and still -- despite retirement and the fact that his Mexican heritage prevented him from both being a police officer and joining the Redondo Beach Elks Lodge in 1956 -- puts in volunteer hours with the force.
There's a lot here, some of it unpleasant, but much of it family-oriented and full of love and service to these cities and the nation.
Areyan isn't out to get anyone, nor is he out to right old wrongs. What he did and did well with prose and a lot of amazing old photographs in his just released, Mexican Americans in Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach (at Barnes Noble and Borders in Torrance) is tell a poignant story of travail, striving, love and courage. In short, he did what other histories of the South Bay did not do.
"The city founders put their names on things, but it was the Mexican-Americans that did the work," said Areyan, who was nearly ejected from Redondo Union High ('59) for speaking Spanish on campus. As crazy as that prohibition now sounds, consider this:
"Between 1920 and the early 1950s Mexican-Americans could not rent or own property south of Torrance Boulevard," he said. Elsewhere, Dona Berta Gomez, a still very much alive 104-year-old Mexican-American, in 1920 was able to buy the Hermosa Beach home she still occupies.
But only because it was willed her by its previous owners. "During the 1930s we couldn't use the Redondo Beach Plunge."
Meanwhile, the Mexican-American community supplied the muscle and expertise, stringing Pacific Electric lines, helping build the Palos Verdes Library, the Edison plant and -- in 1921 -- erecting the original Our Lady of Guadalupe Church with sweat, fiestas and tortillas sold door to door.
But even that devotion turned into a fighting issue when, in 1958, the bishop wanted to hang a less Mexican name on the church building that stands today.
They also built the area's oldest continuously operating nursery (Peter's Garden Center) and the oldest Mexican restaurant (Rosa's in Hermosa Beach) while entertaining movie actor Leo Carrillo, who would ride his horse down from Santa Monica to take part in fiestas.
Areyan knew almost everyone he wrote about in a hard-worked, yearlong effort crowded with pictures like one of Mauricio Colin posing before his farmhouse on Morgan Lane.
There is amazing dignity in the older faces and so much pure American enthusiasm in their children playing for area high school teams and wearing the uniforms of their country in three wars.
Areyan grew up with the people he writes about, all the aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who traveled to the Central Valley to work the harvests but called the beach their home.
"We were to this area what the Irish and the Italians were on the East Coast.
Only here it took 100 years before people realized that we were going to stay awhile," said Areyan, who will host three Hermosa Beach signings, at Rosa's (322 PCH) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.
m. May 19; Our Lady of Guadalupe (320 Massey St.) from 9 a.
m. to noon June 10; and at the Hermosa Beach Historical Society (710 Pier Ave.) from 2 to 5 p.
m. July 21.
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