The Auraria college and university campus in downtown Denver is becoming more beautiful as time goes on. Yet, it cannot escape the fact that it was constructed and came alive on the deathbed of a community that refuses to die.
That is the message of a new book-length publication offered by the Auraria Historical Advocacy Council (AHAC) which features members of displaced Auraria families that again bring prominence to the pain caused by the destruction of the oldest neighborhood in the city and a Latino legacy of survival and renewal. The volume tentatively titled, “Renewing Auraria: Community Collaboration and the Public History of Displacement” is structured into chapters that follow stops in a tour of the campus.
The tour has 11 stops reflected in the 11 parts of the book. The chapters deal with issues like the founding of AHAC as part of the legacy of Chicano activism, oral histories and storytelling about the community and its memories by those affected, research studies on the families and the site, the trauma of displacement, the tragedies of urban development, the process of healing by actions of effective community presence, commemoration activities and promises kept.
I came to Metropolitan State University a year and a half before the institution left rented buildings downtown and moved to the Auraria campus. Even then, I was made aware that Auraria was sacred ground that had been violated by progress.
I remember going by the construction site and the 1020 9th Street Park home where years ago I ate a meal at the Casa Maya restaurant with my Horace Mann Junior High School class. On my visit, I saw the cheapness of the red brick architecture, the absence of trees that did not do justice to an area that had been so important to the community.
Later I heard from a Chicano Studies group that was in contact with displaced Aurarians and was told about broken promises with regard to the use of the library, the swimming pool and a scholarship program that had not been put into place. Eventually, a displaced Aurarians scholarship initiative became a priority as was the drive to make the institution a study destination for the Chicano community.
I also thought of my time at New Mexico Highlands University where we had partnered with Denver’s La Luz magazine to bring together “The First National Symposium on Chicano Literature and Critical Analysis” that included a presentation by Texas poet Ricardo Sanchez who bemoaned the threatened erasure of El Segundo Barrio, El Paso’s second oldest neighborhood that was being affected by the construction of Interstate 10 and relocation of the Rio Grande River.
Prominent in the membership of AHAC are Virginia Castro, Sheila Perez-Kindle and Frances Torres. These well-known Latina leaders, among others, have been tireless in their quest to keep the remembrance of Auraria, the neighborhood displaced members and descendants of the residents that have looked to Auraria for a connection.
The book and the dynamics around it promises to become the next major step in the recovery of a reality that only written memory can achieve. The community leadership, the survivors and their descendants along with the institutional coalition made up of non-profits, the city, the state and the college group are making Latino Auraria history take on a greater life as a permanent presence on the campus.
The Auraria great floods of 1864 and 1965 were 2 very painful experiences. However, they could never compare to the removal of the neighborhood.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
