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| King Carlos III |
King Carlos III decided a city should be founded for Spain in Alta (upper) California. An earlier fear of English colonists
migrating westward and Russian fur traders coming down by way of Alaska initiated the Mission system and established the California
coast as Spanish territory. The task was soon to begin for the recruiting of interested indivuduals (preferably
with a farming background) and their families to embark on a journey - a mission to settle a city far
away from home with the promise of land grants. From a prior expedition, the area by the Los Angeles river
had been deemed a prime location for a settlement. So, after traveling by foot for months, 11 families made
up of 44 individuals escorted by Spanish soldiers are responsible for giving birth to El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles
sobre el Rio Porciuncula, "the town of the Queen of Angels on the Porciuncula River.” Little did they know that their humble
pueblo would eventually turn out to become one of the largest and most influential cities in the world. As they say, the rest
is history.
I first became aware of my connection to LA settlers from my cousin Felix Medina. He was an original member of Los Pobladores
200, an organization of descendants of the founding families of Los Angeles which began in 1981, 200 years after the city
was born. He presented family members with certificates and genealogy charts detailing our lineages, but at 19 years of age
I hardly had an interest in such things. I credit my wife with eventually getting me hooked after she read in the LA Times
in the summer of 2004 an article explaining the Pobladores' (settlers) annual 'Walk to LA' was to occur the coming weekend.
I read it also and discovered that this was the same group "Uncle" Felix used to be with and she encouraged me to go and participate.
Every year LP200 honors their ancestors by walking the same path that completed their journey from Mission San Gabiel to the
Olvera Street plaza, the birth place of Los Angeles. I agreed it would be fun and I planned to take my son Anthony. Terri
was pregnant with our daughter Alex then and would have to meet us at the end for the ceremony and festivities.
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| Depiction of the long journey from the Los Angeles Natural History Museum |
That week I read everything I could find on the original pobladores - especially Luis Quintero. Quintero is the one that
we are directly related to and the first thing I discovered about him was that census information listed him as Negro! I had
never known it, but apparently Spain had brought African slaves in their conquest of Mexico. Another surprise was to learn
that Quintero was also a sastre (tailor) like Felix. Also, he was the second oldest, 55, to be recruited for the journey.
But the thing that became most clear about the pobladores is that they represented the common people. They were
not wealthy or of high esteem within society. They were in fact a racially mixed group and actual descendants themselves of
the racially mixed people that began to populate early Latin America as the mixing of races was common practice
for European Spaniards, in contrast to Anglo Americans who'd come to force the native peoples they encountered onto reservations.
It is also worthy of mentioning that the people of the early pueblo reflect the racial and culturally diverse qualities that
make Los Angeles what it is today.
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| Promo pic of tailor Felix |
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| Aerial view of the plaza today |
Please click here to see the official site of Las Angelitas del Pueblo
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