In Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park, a girl named Elena is walking with her mom to their local tiendita for some masa and corn husks. On the way, they bump into a neighbor who has sketched the Coronado Bridge stretching over the bay from Barrio Logan – one of San Diego’s older Mexican American communities. A diesel truck passing by leaves behind clouds of dust.
Later, as they pass by a junkyard and get barked at by dogs, Elena’s mother stops and says, “Be brave, Elena – sé valiente.”
It’s this bravery that Elena and her community must later channel when they discover that the park they had been promised by the city would instead become a California Highway Patrol station. Barrio Rising is a historical fiction picture book about one community’s twelve-day land occupation and resistance in April 1970 that led to the creation of a colorful park below criss-crossing freeway overpasses. Written by debut author María Dolores Águila and illustrated by Magdalena Mora, the duo beautifully captures the fight and tremendous heart of an often-ignored community. Barrio Rising will be released on June 18 from Dial Books for Young Readers. Its Spanish version – El barrio se levanta: La protesta que construyó el Parque Chicano – was translated by David Bowles and will be released simultaneously.
Águila, a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, grew up a few miles from Chicano Park – which features Chicano murals, sculptures, picnic tables and playgrounds. “And I always passed by the murals (in the park), but I never connected how and why they got there,” she told Latinx in Publishing. “It just never occurred to me.”
Then one day, a mural caught Águila’s eye. What followed was a years-long obsession to learn everything she could about Chicano Park. The fruits of that research and curiosity would eventually form Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park.
Ahead of the book’s release, Latinx in Publishing spoke with Águila about the inspiration behind Barrio Rising, what it was like to portray an ignored community on the page, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Barrio Rising. What inspired you to write this story?
María Dolores Águila (MDÁ): That’s one of the questions that I get the most and I think it’s one of the hardest to answer, because I can’t tell you a singular reason of why I wrote the story. The short answer would be that I live less than five miles away from Chicano Park and I’ve lived here for the majority of my life. I’ve driven by Chicano Park thousands of times. My father worked in the tuna canneries when they were there in Barrio Logan. I used to go to the community health center there. And I always passed by the murals, but I never connected how and why they got there. It just never occurred to me.
My mother-in-law lives in Barrio Logan and one day we were driving by (the park). And for some reason, the mural of Laura Rodriguez caught my eye. I don’t know why. It sparked something. I looked up her story, which was incredible by the way. Her entire story is like a real-life Cinderella, mariposa del barrio story. After that, it became like an obsession. For close to half a decade, I chased down every scrap of information that I could find about Chicano Park by visiting the park, going to the events, listening to speakers, watching movies. When I finally had a full understanding, it was like, Oh, my God. I have to write about this. People should know what happened here.
In a lot of ways, I wrote it for myself, because I’m a Chicana kid that grew up next to Chicano Park that didn’t know how to get there. After I figured out what had transpired, I was like, No. This has to be a story. People have to know. The world has to know what happened. Because I feel so often, as Latinas in the United States, we’re made to seem like we don’t have a history – that we’re very recent arrivals. But that’s not true. We have a very long history, and there have been a lot of things in our community that people have fought for but they’ve been buried.
AC: In your book we meet two Barrio Logan residents -- a mother and daughter -- walking near the Coronado Bridge. Almost immediately, readers can detect that this area is neglected. What was it like to portray an ignored community on the page for young readers?
MDÁ: For me, it was just portraying my own lived experience. I live in National City, which is directly south of Barrio Logan, and we have many of the same issues. We have the same issues of air pollution and heavy industry mixed in with residential areas. And even though I live in a bayfront community and Barrio Logan is a bayfront community – we’re literally on the bay – we really don’t have beach access. So this is something that I’ve lived. It wasn’t something that I had to really dig deep to find.
“Our stories are still meaningful, still beautiful, and still worthy, even if the institutions around us have not been supporting us the way that they should have. ”
When I see other people that haven’t lived that kind of experience, they tend to portray those communities as just simply downtrodden – like there’s no glimmer of hope. The one thing that I did want to portray is that these communities have grown roses in concrete. Our stories are still meaningful, still beautiful, and still worthy, even if the institutions around us have not been supporting us the way that they should have. There’s still a lot of joy and beauty. Even though the area and the schools might not be great, there’s still a lot of really great things about where I live and about Barrio Logan. I think Magdalena did a lot of the heavy lifting with the illustrations in that aspect.
AC: You beautifully capture a close-knit Mexican American community throughout the book with your text with Spanish sprinkled in, and illustrator Magdalena Mora, like you just mentioned, with her gentle illustrations featuring parts of the culture like food. What was it like working with Magdalena? Were there specific suggestions you had for her to portray this time in the community’s history accurately?
MDÁ: I was actually really hands off because I wanted Magdalena to bring her own vision without me influencing it, as much as possible. I was beyond honored that Magdalena agreed to collaborate on Barrio Rising with me because her body of work is really incredible. I think the amazing thing about picture books is how two artistic mediums come together – the words and the art – to tell a singular story. My editor, Rosie Ahmed from Dial, did ask me if there were any particular images that I liked. And I did send her some. There was one of a girl holding a pickaxe. She was a young girl. And I don’t know why that image stuck with me. I sent it to Rosie, who sent it to Magdalena.
I just stayed hands off as much as possible because I wanted her to do her thing, and bring what she has to bring to the story. I pretty much wrote the story without outside influence, and I wanted Magdalena to have that freedom without me hovering around. When I finally saw the art, I knew that I had made the right decision because she brought in things that I hadn’t even thought of – things that would have never occurred to me because my brain doesn’t work that way. I was just so happy when I saw the illustrations.
AC: Even though this is a fictionalized account of the story behind San Diego's Chicano Park, you feature real residents and even a local councilman who played key roles in its creation. What was your research like while working on this book?
MDÁ: I love to do research, so for me it’s always like the most enjoyable part of the process. I did the usual things: I hunted down newspaper articles, I read academic articles, I read books. I read the applications that they filled out to make Chicano Park a cultural heritage site. And Chicano Park themselves have a website, so I read all that.
In my research, I had come across this thesis entitled “Singing the Great Depression: Mexican and Mexican American Perspectives Through Corridos” by Michelle Salinas, where she describes how Mexican and Mexican American communities have traditionally expressed information and history through alternative mediums like songs and art. So I did all the usual things, but I also listened to songs. There’s a song called “Chicano Park Samba” by Los Alacranes Mojados and they sing about the history of Chicano Park. There’s also two murals at the park called La Tierra Mia and Chicano Park Takeover, and that has the history in images. So I studied those as well.
AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Barrio Rising?
MDÁ: More than anything, I want young readers to find power within themselves and their communities. I want them to know that Latine communities have a long history of resistance and resilience, and that together we can accomplish our wildest dreams. I want them to see themselves in Elena and I want them to be inspired to make the changes that we need in our communities.
María Dolores Águila is a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, California. Deeply inspired by Chicane history and art, she seeks to write empowering and inclusive stories about everything she learns. She also loves drinking coffee, browsing the bookshelves at her local library, and spending time with her family.
Magdalena Mora is an illustrator, designer, and art educator based in Minneapolis and Chicago. Her work has been recognized by The New York Times, The American Library Association, and The Chicago Public Library, among others.
Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.
