Chávez Ravine, 1949

by Don Normark

"In 1949, photographer Don Normark walked up into the hills of Los Angeles looking for a good view. Instead, he found Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Mexican-American neighborhood tucked away in Elysian Park like a "poor man's Shangri-la." Enchanted, he stayed for a year among the wild roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats of this uniquely intact rural community. Accepted by the residents, Normark was able to photograph a life that, though bowed down by poverty, was lived fully, openly, and joyfully. That ended when, in 1950, the residents of Chavez Ravine received letters from the government informing them that they had to leave. Some sold, some were dragged out of their houses kicking and screaming. The emptied houses were razed to make way for the new Dodger Stadium. The past fifty years have not erased the memories of Los Desterrados, the uprooted descendants of Chavez Ravine. After extensive research, Don Normark has tracked them down in order to share his old photographs and to recor