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Representational conquest: tourism, display, and public memory in “America’s finest city”

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Representational conquest: tourism, display, and public memory in “America’s finest city”

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Content REPRESENTATIONAL CONQUEST: TOURISM, DISPLAY, AND PUBLIC MEMORY IN “AMERICA’S FINEST CITY” by Margaret Nicole Salazar A Dissertation Submitted to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (AMERICAN STUDIES & ETHNICITY) August 2010 Copyright 2010 Margaret Nicole Salazar ii DEDICATION To Michael my partner, counselor, rock, and inspiration And to Nana and Papi Your love and support have made this impossible dream possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the assistance and support of a number of people. I wish to acknowledge these special people who have encouraged me and offered their support during this journey. My greatest debt is to the members of my committee, who provided encouragement and guidance and demonstrated extreme patience as I worked on this project. I have been truly lucky to have two amazing Co-Chairs, George Sanchez and Sarah Banet-Weiser. George guided me throughout my graduate career. While allowing me the freedom to pursue this project, he generously offered his advice and insight. His honest, careful readings enabled me to refine my ideas and my writing, for which I am most grateful. Sarah has been there from the very beginning: encouraging me to come to USC and nurturing this project from its early stages in research seminars and individual meetings. She inspired me to consider the numerous ways visual culture matters, particularly to women of color. Jane Naomi Iwamura and Josh Kun have been compassionate and passionate teachers. I thank them for their ongoing personal commitment to me and my project and their valuable critiques and editorial assistance. Karen Tongson offered her immense expertise and has been very generous with her time with respect to this and other academic endeavors I have undertaken. Special thanks to Roberto Lint Sagarena, for his support from the start. His top-notch intellect, unwavering integrity, and kindness saw me through the hardest times in graduate school. iv I am convinced I had the best intellectual community a graduate student could hope for. My graduate school colleagues at USC have been an enduring source of support and friendship. Laura Sachiko Fugikawa deserves special praise for her help throughout the years; her readings have improved the depth of content and general prose of this dissertation. Thanks also to Robert Eap, Glenda Marisol Flores, Celeste Menchaca, James McKeever, Lata Murti, Mark Tanachai Padoongpatt, Abigail Rosas, and Orlando Serrano for their intelligent and creative insights, as well as their sincere friendship. They kept me sane throughout this whole process and each one, in different ways, inspired me to see this project to the end. Jennifer Barager’s meticulous and thoughtful editing also helped me cross that finish line. In the end, I am also particularly indebted to Kitty Lai, Jujuana Preston and Sonia Rodriguez, who took care of me administratively and who always had a moment to chat. Several librarians and archivists assisted me with research. Were it not for the staff of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library who generously allowed me to plumb the materials, I would never have completed this project. They assisted me tremendously, and talked me through my many hours of newspaper, ephemeral, and archival research. Victor Walsh, Historian of the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park also helped me to navigate the park’s collection and spent much time explaining the detailed history of Old Town. I would especially like to thank the staffs of the following libraries for their assistance: the San Diego Historical Society; the Hawai’i State Archives, Honolulu; the Hawaiian and Pacific Collection at the Hamilton Library, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu; the Bancroft Library, University of v California, Berkeley; the National Museum of American History; the Regional History Center, University of Southern California; and the Los Angeles Public Library. Thanks to my brilliant husband, Michael Porzio, whose unconditional love, endless strength and encouragement, and incredible humor calms and renews my spirit daily. You are, and have always been, my rock throughout this tremendous journey. Thanks to my wonderful grandparents, Jim and Annie Salazar (Papi and Nana), who encouraged, fed, and housed me these past five years. I thank you for your love, wisdom, compromises, smiles, and laughter throughout my life. I would not be here without the perseverance of my mother, Donna Freitag, who raised me and made many sacrifices so that I may have the best life and education possible. Thank you for enriching my soul and my life. My sister, Brittany Freitag, also deserves hearty thanks for helping me to stay focused and for keeping me young. My grandpa Lewis Maria Ritchie’s love of history served as my earliest entrée into the past. Thank you for sharing interesting facts and incredible stories about your life experiences with me. To the memory of my sweet and bold grandmamma, Mary Dolores Ritchie: From an early age, you taught me the importance of determination and the power of believing in myself. Finally, my father, Michael Salazar, also provided a good number of laughs and meals. Thank you for keeping me healthy during these taxing years. Multiple family members have guided me and walked alongside me throughout my life and I thank you for always being there— you know who you are. This is for all of you! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgments iii List of Figures viii Abstract x Introduction 1 Cultural Work: Representing Empire and Conquest 8 Empire and Conquest 13 Essential Roles: Tourism and the Military 21 West and Far West: Geo-Political Location and Renewed Regionalism 32 A Note on Terminology 44 Chapter One The Battle of Old Town: Conquest, Tourism, and Everyday Empire 47 Conquest at the Edges of Empire 47 From War to Representation 59 Public Memory and Everyday Empire 70 Developers and Architects 76 Descendents of the Land 83 Tourists, Ramonamania, and Spanish Fantasies 89 Conquest Beyond the Edges of Empire 96 Chapter Two Shelter Island: Creating Place Across the Pacific 98 John D. Spreckels 100 A Pan-Pacific Tropical Imaginary and The Built Environment 106 Conquest of Land and Sea 112 A Long History of Pan-Pacific Architecture 124 Building Empire: Representational Conquest and the Annexation of Hawai’i 132 Conclusion: Re-Membering the Future 145 vii Chapter Three Return to the Spanish Fantasy: Old Town State Historic Park and the 1969 Bicentennial 152 Constructing “Official” Public Histories 154 Preserving the Nation: Women, Racialization, and Tourism 157 Old Town Becomes a State Historic Park 164 San Diego Turns 200! 167 1969: San Diego’s 200th Anniversary Failure 170 Continuing Conquest in Everyday Empire 184 Whose History Counts? Claiming a Stake in the Nation 186 Chapter Four Panda Politics: National Identity and U.S.-China Cultural Diplomacy 198 From Ping Pong to Pandas: Cultural Diplomacy between the U.S. and China 198 U.S.-China Rapprochement: Cultural Diplomacy and Negotiating Empire 206 Pandas Are the Answer! 217 Animals as Racial “Others” 227 Racialized Maternalism and Conquest Over Nature 236 Local Connections 242 The Legacy of the Giant Panda 250 Conclusion 253 Fleet Week Posters 253 Sports Teams and Mascots 255 Bibliography by Genre Comprehensive Bibliography 262 291 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Visit Ramona's Marriage Place: The Most Beautiful and Romantic Spot in California, Old Town - San Diego, Where California Began” Pamphlet c. 1920. California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 64 Figure 2: Hazel Wood Waterman and daughter Helen, [ca. 1895] 1890/1900. Courtesy of the San Diego Historical Society. 79 Figure 3: Veranda, 1910. ©SDHS, Hazel Wood Waterman Collection MSS 42, Box 1, Folder 13. 80 Figure 4: Rear courtyard and gardens of Casa de Estudillo, mid- 1920s. Postcard from the author’s collection. 91 Figure 5: San Diego mascot, El Hidalgo, in front of the San Diego de Alcalá mission. Still photograph taken during the filming of 1969 commercial. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 168 Figure 6: Opening ceremony 200-gun salute, January 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 170 Figure 7: Conquistador at 200th anniversary festivities with member of the 200th anniversary committee, 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 173 Figure 8: San Diego 200 th Committee. Image from 200th anniversary celebration. Box 21, Folder 13, January 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 173 Figure 9: Anglo Southern Californian dressed up as a señorita. Image from 200th anniversary celebration. Box 22, Folder 14, February 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 174 ix Figure 10: Anglo Southern Californian dressed up as a bandido. Image from 200th anniversary celebration. Box 22, Folder 14, February 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 174 Figure 11: Anglo Southern Californians dressed up as Californios. Image from 200th anniversary celebration. Box 22, Folder 14, February 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 174 Figure 12: Two young San Diegans of Mexican descent found performance work as Mexican peasants hired for the bicentennial celebration. Image from 200th anniversary celebration. Box 22, Folder 14, February 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 174 Figure 13: El Capitán pictured in San Diego Union, 1966. 191 Figure 14: Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan exchanging gifts. USC-China Institute, 1971. 207 Figure 15: Glenn Cowan entering China (April 10, 1971). Life Magazine, 1971. 209 Figure 16: “Explorer Pampers Rare Specimen she is Bringing Here” New York Times 20 December 1936. 238 x ABSTRACT Representational Conquest: Tourism, Display, and Public Memory in “America’s Finest City” examines the centrality of representation in the formation of Southern California during the twentieth century. Popularly defined, conquest refers to the defeat, mastery or subjugation of peoples and territory through war, violence, and military force. While multiple historians signal the end of U.S. conquest with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, I argue that conquest has not ended—it has merely changed shape. Twentieth-century tourism in San Diego features a new form of conquest that extends the legacy of military conquest. This dissertation develops an alternative way of understanding conquest that not only considers the terror of psychic and physical violence, but also charts how visual and material symbols and images in San Diego’s tourist economy operate as ongoing, continual processes of representational conquest. These discursive formations both continue and are mutually constitutive of earlier projects of domination and control—i.e., military invasion and the mission system. As the first contemporary investigation of representational conquest in Southern California, my project is driven by the following questions: What is the relationship between tourism and conquest in a particular region? How do processes of conquest change over time? How do these processes influence the racial and political landscape of Southern California and more particularly the global city in the twentieth century? I investigate these crucial inquiries by focusing on a geopolitical area where conquest is arguably most concentrated: the bordered space between nations. Specifically, I look to xi the San Diego, California border region as a case study. Self-proclaimed as “America’s Finest City,” San Diego has established global economic prominence through its large military complex, free-trade manufacturing, and international tourism industries. As a global city, San Diego provides compelling examples of military, territorial, racial, and discursive conflicts, which continually work to define U.S. national identity in a turbulent, bordered space. The abundant array of tourist representations mythologizing the Western U.S. borderland region have functioned as conquest. I have chosen four different examples that provide productive lenses through which to understand representational conquest— namely: “Ramonamania” in early twentieth-century Old Town State Historic Park, which established public memory and a patriotic Anglo version of San Diego’s past; post-War architecture in the city’s Shelter Island, where physical structures do the work of conquest; the city’s 200 th birthday flop, which became a financial disaster in 1969’s tense political and racial climate; and the installation of giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo following U.S.-China rapprochement, where East meets West by way of internationally sanctioned biopower in the 1980s and 1990s. 1 INTRODUCTION Every weekday at high noon at the foot of the sun-dried hills surrounding Old Town San Diego, “living history interpreters” dress in period attire to re-enact battles that aided in the Anglo conquest of the Southwest. The performance of these historical events—usually featuring Wild West battles in which Anglo cowboys dispossess early Californios of their land—illustrates the direct link between a centuries-old violent physical and ideological conquest of land, labor, representation, and public memory. This was the site of the first “permanent Spanish settlement” in California in 1769. It is where the first Native American uprising, at the Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1775, occurred in Alta California. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo defined this space as “American.” Nearby, the border patrol was established in 1924 as a means of keeping “undesirable” immigrants from crossing into the United States from Mexico. 1 San Diego also currently hosts the above-mentioned “living history demonstrations” that depict life and commerce in the region during the years 1821 to 1872. This brief history not only reveals a lineage of conflict, but also points to constant negotiations of conquest in the 1 The U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana is approximately 32 miles from Old Town San Diego and about 15 miles from where the city of San Diego becomes National City. Although the U.S.-Mexico border region has had a long history of militarism and violence, only in the last few decades has increasing integration of U.S. military armed personnel with civilian law enforcement been documented (see Palafox, “Militarizing the Border,” 1996), 14-19. Chicano historian David Montejano (1999), 256, fn. 43, argues that in "a historical sense, the U.S.-Mexico border, as a creation of war between these two countries, has always been militarized." See also Rodolfo Acuña (2000), 41-56. With the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper in October 1994, migrants found that the San Diego-Tijuana border became increasingly difficult, though not impossible, to cross. Also, in 1994, the impact of the NAFTA trade agreements on the contemporary world economy and international migration, and the Clinton Administration's border policy continued to intensify the border militarization of previous administrations. Recently, more policing, technological advances, and cruel laws prohibiting immigration have increased militarization on the border. 2 region. Today, alongside the daily historical performances, young people of color are hired to dress up in “Mexican” outfits to sell vivid crafts and tequila, while older, Spanish-speaking women make tortillas for passers-by, and white, mostly middle-class men, women, and children dress up for fun as colonial soldiers and Western settlers who sell the “official” history of San Diego along with quaint colonial crafts. The fact that the “living history” performances are used as an official means of teaching state history to school children and tourists alike demonstrates that many Americans believe the conquest of the region has ended and now the history can be told to the next generations of Americans. While conquest has been most popularly referred to as the acts of violence, domination, and control of peoples and lands through military force, I analyze how processes of conquest change once we shift the focus away from initial moments of war. Many historians signal the end of U.S. conquest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, but this dissertation demonstrates how conquest has continued into the twentieth century through the burgeoning tourism economy in Southern California. I look at representations in spaces constructed for tourism and boosterism to examine twentieth-century extensions of imperialism and the continuation of cultural conquest at the edges of U.S. empire. How is it possible that certain representations act as modes of conquest? What does it mean to claim that their impact can be as enduring as physical violence and war? Representational Conquest grapples with these and other crucial inquiries by focusing on a geopolitical area where conquest is arguably most concentrated: the borderlands. Since Turner’s Frontier Thesis, the “borderlands” concept has been described in various ways 3 by U.S. historians—as a “frontier,” “border,” “crossroads,” “margin,” a cultural encounter, a space in which American identity has been formed and articulated. 2 Historians might define the borderlands in multiple ways, but most agree it includes the territories and people around the geo-political border established in 1848—the region known currently as the American Southwest. In her essay, “The Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century,” Patricia Limerick outlines a variety of ways historians of the American West have understood and contested notions of the frontier. Limerick expands its site-specific definition. In particular, she suggests that the frontier can be seen “as an inter-group contact situation…an instance of dynamic interaction between human beings” that involves “such processes as acculturation, assimilation, miscegenation, race prejudice, conquest, imperialism, and colonialism.” 3 I use this definition of “borderlands” to describe the geographic region including the American West and Pacific Rim during the twentieth century. This geopolitical space includes the edges of U.S. empire at the U.S.-Mexico line and the Pacific Ocean. It is a political site 2 Each of these terms and definitions requires significant explanation, and have been exhaustively discussed in other works. For example, in the field of Western American History, scholars have conceived of the borderlands geographically and ideologically. While historian Herbert Eugene Bolton popularized the term “borderlands” in his book, Spanish Borderlands (1921), Frederick Jackson Turner’s legendary speech, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), squarely situated the “borderlands” in the American West and in the national imaginary almost thirty years earlier. Alternatively, Chicana/o studies has conceived of “borderlands” as both a political site of conquest and a subject position. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa remarks that the borderlands are defined by ongoing economic, political, and cultural conflicts; she further conceptualizes la frontera as a social and cultural reality impacted by a long history of conquest. 3 Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1988): 76. 4 of conquest, an ideological space for the negotiation of American identity, as well as an inter-group contact situation. I also draw on Chicana/o Studies scholarship to theorize this bordered space we call San Diego. Gloria Anzaldúa and other Chicana/o studies intellectuals have interrogated notions of the U.S.-centered border, calling scholars to reexamine the American West as a culture of imperialism and violent conquest. 4 Building upon this assertion I situate my study in the contact border zone of the Pacific Rim, which includes parts of the United States but necessitates a broader approach to understanding U.S. imperialism. In particular, I look at the ways in which the U.S. culture of imperialism and violent conquest has extended its reach to other spaces in the Pacific archipelago. Much scholarship in Chicana/o history focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border as a geo- political construct and a site of violence and conquest, but the border of the United States should also include the Pacific Ocean, which has played an equally important part in shaping the nation both literally and figuratively. This borderland is an important site of conquest that plays an integral role in shaping the nation. In fact, the peripheral edges of 4 This border in particular worked to divide a “first world” nation from a “third world” nation as well as people whose lives and families crossed the border region. For a more detailed account of the border’s geo- political influence from a Chicana/o history perspective see: David Montejano’s Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), and his essay, “On the Future of Anglo-Mexican Relations in the United States” in Chicano Politics and Society in the Late Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), in which he argues that in “a historical sense, the U.S.- Mexico border, as a creation of war between these two countries, has always been militarized” (1999: 256); also, Rudy Acuña’s Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000). More recent scholarship has also looked at the market and economic forces that were already at work even before the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. For example, Andrés Reséndez’s Changing National Identities at the Frontier argues that market forces, the conquest of territory, and (to a lesser extent) the change of national governments ruling over the region affected lives of local residents, but the border itself had no immediate impact. 5 the U.S. empire form the nation itself—or to roughly paraphrase Gary Okihiro—the shape of the nation is circumscribed by its borders and margins. 5 San Diego is a particularly appropriate space for examining how people have made sense of this violent conquest, navigated the borderland contact zones, and established the edges of U.S. empire. San Diego provides a unique space from which to look at the tourism and military industries as forces in the continual conquest and extension of empire beyond Southern California into the Pacific Rim. The city has gained global economic prominence through its military, free-trade manufacturing, and international tourism industries while simultaneously dispossessing people of color in the region. It is also close in proximity to the border—downtown San Diego lies just eighteen miles north of the international border line between Mexico and the United States. At this border, the terms and ideals of conquest are negotiated and actuated daily. And perhaps more importantly, tourism in San Diego has been and continues to be a formidable force in the development of the region. Using San Diego as a case study, I argue that contemporary conquest takes place in the very material and visual representations of race, ethnicity, and culture featured by many urban tourism sites throughout the country. Thus, I look to San Diego, California, as a critical hub from which to approach twentieth-century extensions of U.S. empire into the Pacific Rim. Three themes drive my investigation of these sites and representations: The first is that visual images and 5 Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (University of Washington Press, 1994). 6 material symbols do cultural work that is both a part and an extension of conquest and empire. While the war and mission system were overtly violent and oppressive means of conquering the region, and Manifest Destiny was the ideology that compelled and justified American conquest of northern Mexico, I argue that visual and material representations emerging before, during, and after the war became the means by which the new empire established and maintained a new racial order. Shawn Michelle Smith asserts that visual culture has been fundamental not only to “racist classification but also to racial reinscription and the reconstruction of racial knowledge” throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 6 My readings of visual images and material symbols in San Diego’s tourist economy show how visual culture has been a contested, mutable, and flexible site through which questions of race and empire have been posed and challenged. Representational Conquest models a critical methodology that sees race as fundamental to and defined by visual culture, particularly in these tourist spaces at the edges of empire. This study understands race and visual culture as mutually constitutive of empire and reads representations in the tourist economy as racialized sites invested in laying claim to—and providing certain kinds of Anglo-centric narratives in place of—contested cultural meanings. 7 The dissertation’s second theme is the essential role that tourism has played in conquest and its racializing project. In the twentieth century, tourism became an 6 Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. DuBois, Race, and Visual Culture. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004): 3. 7 Smith, 3-5. 7 incredibly potent modality for extending empire. In particular, a new and quite lucrative tourist economy based on representations of reconstructed public histories arose in San Diego. In the early 1900s city officials hotly debated whether the city should compete with Los Angeles’s smokestacks to the north, or whether they should support soft industry—tourism. Tourism prevailed, but only after San Diego won its bid for the military industrial complex, allowing the city to have the best of both worlds. 8 The third theme is that the geo-political location of Southern California proved central to the larger processes of conquest and empire that restructured the American racial order and extended beyond the edges of empire to other places in the Pacific Rim. Tourism attracted Anglo Americans from the East Coast and then presented them with representations that not only redefined whiteness while simultaneously racializing Latina/os and Asians in the region, but also provided legitimacy to Anglo claims to the land and the region’s history. Whiteness was defined in Southern California as the very nexus between the American flag and military, a European-Spanish heritage, and the Wild West. My methodological approach combines archival research, discourse analysis, and participant observation to reveal how these tourist sites and sights produce national and regional identities based on narratives of conquest as well as representations of whiteness cast in contrast to ethno-racial exoticism of Latinos and Asians in the region. My theoretical method moves beyond the black-white binary that has long framed racial 8 Tourism would be the soft, aesthetic industry, making San Diego into a resort town for the elite, while the military would provide an industrial economy producing new scientific technologies and war machines. 8 discourse in the United States. This dissertation follows the examples of scholars such as Tomás Almaguer (1994), Mae Ngai (2005), Natalia Molina (2006), Nicholas De Genova (2006), and others to examine how the experiences of Latinos and Asians intersect in the formation of U.S. empire and national identity. 9 I analyze representations in tourist spaces to understand the political, cultural, and social processes that have racialized Latinos and Asians as part of the extension of U.S. empire and highlight the productive ways these communities have challenged and transformed representations and tourist spaces. Cultural Work: Representing Empire and Conquest This study analyzes visual images and material symbols of a Spanish fantasy past on one hand and a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary on the other using San Diego as a launching pad from which to examine U.S. imperial expansion in the Pacific Rim during the twentieth century, and to understand the relationship between representation, racialization, and empire. Turn-of-the-twentieth-century “Ramona-mania,” the proliferation of mid-twentieth-century architecture across the Pacific in San Diego and Hawai’i, the 1969 bicentennial celebrations, and the figure of the giant panda in post– 9 Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Nicholas De Genova, Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). 9 Cold War U.S.-China diplomatic relations—reflect a larger history of U.S. empire and its connections to racialization and representation. My project synthesizes the theories of Stuart Hall, Susan Sontag, and Michel Foucault into a unified theory about the role of representation in conquest. Stuart Hall’s work provides a particularly useful model for deciphering the cultural work that tourist representations in San Diego perform. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Hall explicates how representations depict, symbolize, stereotype, and have political functions. 10 He defines systems of visual representation in two ways: first, representation is a way of organizing and categorizing people, images, and concepts; second, representation is a process and a practice that occurs through the active relationship between the visual image and the viewer. 11 In this relationship, meaning is constantly defined and refined based on various contexts. Hall asserts that 10 To represent also means to symbolize, stand for, be a specimen of, or a substitute for someone or something; as in the sentence, “In the United States, the flag represents liberty and justice for all.” Representations are powerful precisely because they can stand in place of, and at the same time, stand for complex concepts and even national histories. Yet, their ability to stand for the real is ambiguous: on one hand, Hall explains that representations do not simply mirror reality; they reconstruct and reflect the ideologies and practices of those who produce the images. On the other hand, representations create and attribute meanings without guarantees that they will work in the ways intended. Thus, representation plays an active and creative role in the ways people think about the world around them and their place within it. To represent something as an image, series of images, in displays of bodies or even in tourist brochures, is to reconstruct rather than reflect reality, and in the end images can have many different meanings depending on their historical context. For an in-depth discussion, see Stuart Hall’s Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997, 2003). 11 A more extensive definition explains that representations are words, images, sounds, narratives, etc., that “stand for” or “in place of” particular ideas, emotions, facts, and even ideological systems. They are the concrete form—the signifier—of abstract concepts, and therefore rely on existing and culturally understood signs and images, language and textual systems. As Stuart Hall has duly noted, what we know about the world is how we see it represented. In other words, representations—especially visual ones—help us to classify, explain, and evaluate reality. The act of imaging, or representing, is therefore the production of meaning: to represent something is to describe or depict it, to conjure an image or idea in one’s mind by description, portrayal, or imagination. 10 representations are extremely important because they are the way in which we understand the world around us. To Hall, reality is never really experienced directly, but always through limited symbolic categories (representations) made available by the society in which we live. In this way, representations are inherently political and powerful. They are the concrete form—the signifier—of abstract concepts, and therefore rely on existing and culturally understood signs and images, language and textual systems. As Hall has duly noted, what we know about the world is how we see it represented. In other words, representations help us to classify, explain, and evaluate reality. The act of imaging, or representing, is therefore the production of meaning; but meaning is not only made, it is constantly defined and refined based on various contexts—time, space, reception, and so forth. “Representation” is a broad term that can include everything from images to movies, narratives, sounds, billboards, and other media. I focus on both visual images and material symbols in tourist economies for this study. These consumer cultures have used representations to fix and categorize racial and ethnic Others throughout history—as a method that conquers people culturally and visually. 12 To this end, visual images and material symbols do a particular “cultural work” that I call “representational conquest.” Significantly, this conquest is perhaps inseparable from representations’ affective abilities. In On Photography, Susan Sontag examines the power of photographs to evoke 12 Despite new writings that indicate all representations are inherently ideological because people produce them (Hall), Susan Sontag and others agree that the notion of visual images as proof and documentation of actual experiences, events, and “truths,” is still popular, maintaining images’ power through their assumed ability to access the “real.” Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Picador, 1977): 3. 11 emotion or to enact a kind of violence. 13 She warns that the camera and photography are perhaps inherently linked to colonialism and exploitation because “there is aggression implicit in every use of the camera” and even the language around “capturing” a moment, “taking” a picture, or “shooting” a subject, reflect the aggressive principles of photography and imaging more generally. 14 Likewise, Representational Conquest demonstrates that visual images and material symbols certainly provide conditions for control, but this project is equally concerned with the way representations have also created possibilities for shifting and changing cultural meanings, and individual lives. In this way, representations are particularly powerful tools with sometimes dangerous consequences. This dissertation is also concerned with the relationship between touristic practices of exhibition and display and their relationship to imperial power and the gaze. Multiple scholars have established that representations must be contextualized within notions of power. In his writings on panopticism, Michel Foucault traces how social control is exerted through notions of visibility and visual representations. 15 He offers two basic notions of power; the first is dominance, “which is exerted over things;” the second 13 Sontag counterpoises the act of looking at photos on one side with taking photos on the other. She contends that both are aggressive aspects of the photographic gaze, which has “the capacity to turn every experience, every event, every reality into a commodity or an object or image” Sontag, 60. 14 Sontag, 7. 15 In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault examines the ways in which the visual became a location and modality for power and knowledge. In his writings on “Panopticism,” for example, Foucault argues that while the panopticon appears to be “merely the solution of a technical problem…through it, a whole type of society emerges” (1977): 69. It reflects a new paradigm of control which is based on constant surveillance and meticulous documentation through visual data. 12 is control, which “certain persons exercise…over others” through the “gaze.” 16 While the gaze can sometimes be loving or compassionate, it is often invasive and surveilling. According to Foucault, the gaze is a means of controlling, objectifying, defining, and mirroring identities. 17 If the gaze controls by placing subjects into a particular view, then visual and material representations of people and cultures are one way for “certain persons [to] exercise power over others.” 18 If, as Foucault suggests, power is located in visual knowledge, then these visual and material representations are particularly influential in the project of U.S. imperialism. To this end, the gaze works—through representations—to reinforce and reflect unequal relations of power in society. The act of representing in tourist spaces is therefore a powerful mode in the service of imperialist projects and cultural conquest. 16 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Penguin, 1977). 17 Feminist discussions of the gaze have since expanded on Foucault’s writings. For example, Laura Mulvey drew upon Foucault’s “gaze” and Freud’s notions of voyeurism to make the case that images of women in classic Hollywood cinema were constructed only for the pleasure of the male spectator. For more, see Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which discusses female objectification through the Hollywood framing of female characters. In Ways of Seeing (1972), John Berger presents a similar assertion. He states: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.” (47). Thus, the gaze is embedded in larger patriarchal power relations which frame what and who is looked at, how they are viewed, and the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Discussions about the gaze have not only prompted questions about gender, but also age, ethnicity, and race. For more, see Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 18 Foucault is certainly useful in thinking about the links between visibility and power, but his model is totalizing. He produces a vision of exhibition and visibility that is primarily based on a belief in social control. If social control is absolute, then how do social, historical, and intellectual paradigms shift? 13 Empire and Conquest In their introductions to the collection Cultures of United States Imperialism (1993), Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease asserted the importance of reinserting cultural frameworks into analyses of U.S. empire and imperial frameworks into cultural analysis. 19 Following Kaplan and Pease’s proposal, my study examines San Diego tourist spaces of entertainment and American empire jointly, bringing U.S. imperialism and leisure culture into the same frame. This project reveals the extent to which tourism has performed the political and cultural work of integrating peripheral spaces into the core of U.S. empire by presenting new, Anglocentric histories and experiences to San Diego residents and visitors from all over the nation and beyond. Representational Conquest is not only concerned with the ways in which people and places are represented over time, but also how these practices contribute to racial formation and the extension of empire. I argue that racialization is a central component of U.S. imperial expansion, including the conquest of the American Southwest. Further, private developers and boosters, and public entities such as the U.S. military have powerfully promoted processes of racialization through representations in the tourism economy of San Diego. These processes were achieved in part through what John Urry 19 Amy Kaplan, “‘Left Alone with America’: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture,” 3- 21; and Donald E. Pease, “New Perspectives on U.S. Culture and Imperialism,” 22-40, in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). 14 calls the “tourist gaze” at expositions, and through the performance of public memory and visual and material symbols in tourist spaces. This project is influenced by the abundant scholarship on the imperialist gaze and racialized bodies at national and local exhibitions. Phoebe Kropp’s examination of San Diego’s 1915 Panama-California Exposition illustrates these theories. The exposition presented visions of the past and the future based on racist notions of primitive versus civilized peoples. The former were found in the zoo-like exhibition of southwestern Indians; the latter were seen in the displays of new commodities and modern technologies, housed in City Park—later named Balboa Park after the Spanish explorer— in elaborate Spanish colonial style buildings that showed how the romance of yesteryears could be blended with the prosperity of tomorrow. 20 I extend this analysis to include the representations of what I term a “Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary.” This kind of development of the built environment shaped the United States’ relationship to places in the Pacific Rim, including Hawai’i in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Later in the twentieth century, the Pacific Rim was again brought “home” to the U.S. mainland through the giant panda program, with the panda serving as a symbol of cultural diplomacy and U.S. rapprochement with China. I link the displays at San Diego’s early twentieth-century expositions to contemporary displays of “natural” animal habitats 20 Phoebe Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 15 at the San Diego Zoo. 21 Susan Davis has also written about this legacy of representational practices in her book on marine life at Sea World in San Diego, Spectacular Nature (1997). Davis explains that Sea World started out in line with Balboa Park’s cultural pavilions of the 1915 and 1935 international expositions; “Just as the Spanish Renaissance-styled expositions had featured displays of the natives of other cultures, so Sea World’s world was fashioned of fanciful Japanese and Polynesian villages…” with people performing a kind of anti-modern exoticism. Davis notes, however, “while the expositions [of the past] had used so-called primitive peoples as counter-weights in a nationalistic argument for the progress of humankind through racial evolution and imperial conquest, at Sea World culture was framed in nature to make an exotic environment seemingly outside of history, industry, or politics.” 22 This dissertation also charts the change over time in practices of exhibition to show connections between the imperial goals of exhibiting exotic Others and the more contemporary exhibition of pandas at the San Diego Zoo, which is supposedly devoid of racial and political ideologies. Jane Desmond interrogates further the notion that displaying animals is “natural” rather than political in her book Staging Tourism. 23 She compares the exhibition of human and “nonhuman touristic performances,” both of which she traces from their 21 Susan G. Davis, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 22 Davis, Spectacular Nature, 51. 23 Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 16 colonial roots. Desmond argues that bodily essentialism is the core of Western ideologies of race, gender, and empire, which come together in the mostly visual practices of tourism. She looks at culture and nature tourism—from hula to Shamu—to examine power relationships. Desmond contends that bodily difference, whether human or animal, become markers of the Other that is exotic, thrilling, and fully controlled. This reaffirms identity for a predominantly white, middle- to upper-class audience and occupants of the city. Anglo boosters in San Diego significantly influenced the way “exotic Others” were (and are) displayed—a trend that in the twentieth century is exhibited in tourist representations at Old Town, the San Diego Zoo, and Shelter Island in San Diego. My project fundamentally disagrees with Desmond’s assertion that cultural or human display and nature or animal display are two different kinds of tourism connected by a history of colonialism. I argue instead that animal tourism is a part of cultural tourism because animals are always represented by people based on people’s ideas about animals, what they mean and what they represent to us. And cultural tourism—whether featuring humans or animals—is a part of colonialism and conquest. There are multiple iterations of empire; in particular I invoke the word “conquest” to gesture to the fact that representations, particularly those constructed for tourism, are not benign. They do a particular cultural work that is sometimes violent and can be even more insidious and dangerous than overt acts of oppression. Popularly defined, conquest refers to the defeat, mastery, or subjugation of peoples and territory through war, 17 violence, and military force. 24 My intervention adds to these kinds of subjugation the critical role of material symbols and visual images. Under the rubric of representational conquest I identify a range of tourist representations through which conquest is enacted daily in the city of San Diego—and each of my chapters tackles one or more of these kinds of representations: visual images, exhibitions, performances of public memory, architecture. The work of historians has been particularly useful in understanding processes of conquest. In her historical monograph, The Legacy of Conquest, Patricia Limerick argues that “Conquest forms the historical bedrock of the whole nation...and the American West is a preeminent case study in conquest and its consequences.” 25 This project takes Limerick’s assertion seriously and focuses on San Diego as a quintessential place in the American West in which processes of conquest can be readily seen and examined. There have been multiple scholarly threads about the notion of conquest in the context of Southern California in particular. Although Rodolfo Acuña’s Occupied America (1972) is credited as the first major study of the conquest of the American Southwest, other historians like Alberto Camarillo and Lisbeth Haas have also charted the violence of dispossession in California as a result of conquest. 26 In Chicanos in a 24 “conquest,” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 7 May 2006 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conquest> 25 Limerick, 27-28. 26 Acuña argues that American conquest, starting with the Mexican American War (1846–48), systematically relegated Mexican Americans to subordinate positions in each of the newly acquired U.S. territories. Acuña’s text was the beginning of a long line of borderlands historians who have concentrated on the literal conquest of the Southwestern region of the United States, including Southern California; See also Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in 18 Changing Society Camarillo looks at occupational segregation, intergenerational and economic stratification, and barrioization—arguing that all are colonial legacies of conquest and American Manifest Destiny. Haas further investigates the painful experiences of dislocation, violence, and loss in her history about Californios and indigenous peoples who were evicted from their land in California (Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936). Multiple Chicana/o and Latina/o historians demonstrate how the dispossession of land and personal belongings became a major strategy for conquering the peoples of the American Southwest, especially in California. They plot the histories of conquest and its aftermath; however, directly related to this dissertation is the way these authors portray conquest as an economically motivated process. These texts show that violence has been enacted through dispossession and racial segregation. They illustrate how violence can be psychic and economic as well as physical. Other historical works continue to extend an analysis of Western notions of violence and conquest to the realms of culture. Specifically, Patricia Limerick has looked at this cultural legacy of conquest in her book of the same name. The author explains that the conquest of the American Southwest consisted of two major aspects: first, a competition for natural resources, which has generally promoted Anglo wealth with possession of almost all the property and access to almost all the profit in the region; and second, a competition for cultural dominance, which has made the white way of life and Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Harvard University Press, 1996); and Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936. (University of California Press, 1995). 19 perspective the only legitimate one. It is with this quest for cultural dominance that my project begins. Limerick’s version of conquest is complicated and insists that both conqueror and conquered have been deeply affected by its processes. My study supports this assertion and argues that the positions of conqueror and conquered in Southern California—though complicated by years of social, economic, and political changes— have remained relatively stable because boosterism and cultural representations in tourist sites continue to reify the cultural dominance of only certain perspectives. In this way, conquest is not simply a thing of the past handed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom. Rather, conquest is ongoing and constantly reconceptualized in these spaces, providing new identities and cultural formations, while maintaining power relationships and racial and ethnic inequalities. In her book, California Vieja (2006), Phoebe Kropp demonstrates that cultural tourism of the missions in California, promoted through the revival of the El Camino Real (or California Mission Highway), served as a metaphor for conquest. She argues that “Missions and bells were not simply reminders of a romantic past but physical markers of American conquest. A tour on El Camino Real became a metaphorical reconquest of California” and the ruins of the missions were physical confirmation of American conquest. 27 Kropp’s analysis of El Camino Real as a venue through which tourists enacted a symbolic conquest of Southern California demonstrates that conquest is something that exists beyond the violence of dispossession and war—and beyond even 27 Kropp, California Vieja, 89-90. 20 Limerick’s economic competition/cultural dominance framework. I build on these debates to contend that representations in tourism venues are not only symbolic, but also tangible examples of a conquest that continues to take place. I argue that boosters and city officials in Southern California have shifted the physical violence of conquest to a kind of material, cultural violence that is underscored by the continual conflict at the U.S.- Mexico border. Further, my dissertation demonstrates that conquest and its legacy have flourished because it has yet to be grappled with. In The Legacy of Conquest Limerick similarly contends that the Western region of the United States has not yet come to terms with the tremendous moral dilemma of conquest. Limerick states that the South is set apart from the rest of the United States in the popular American national imagination because of its monumental failure of democratic ideals in the enslavement of peoples of African ancestry, and the resultant Civil War. In contrast, the history of the West has been seen primarily as proof of America’s national success – in terms of conquest and the supposed installation of democratic ideals. However, Limerick argues that the West has failed morally just as the South has its lingering injustice, dispossession, segregation, and discrimination towards people of color—particularly significant populations of Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians in the region. My dissertation is a challenge for people to not only grapple with conquest of the past, but also to come to grips with it in the present and in American nationalist notions of the future. In order to do this I demonstrate that conquest has not ended at all—it has merely changed shape. I argue for the redefinition of conquest itself. Redefinition of such a large term requires sober national 21 reflection on the violence of war, dispossession, and cultural domination that has marked conquest in the American Southwest. This project moves beyond simple reflection and relates the material practices of tourism and military occupation to this history. 28 Essential Roles: Tourism and the Military Tourism and U.S. military expansion are two sides of the same (neo)colonial coin and my dissertation demonstrates how both grew together and have been integral to the expansion of empire and conquest in and beyond San Diego for well over a century. Tourism is currently San Diego County’s third largest generator of income, after manufacturing and the military. 29 San Diego has a long history of boosterism and promotion of tourism to San Diego residents and the rest of the world. In 1970, Bill Brotherton, then the executive director of the San Diego Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, explained, “[T]he local tourism industry didn't just grow. It has been pushed, cajoled, bullied, bled for, and wet-nursed” since the 1800s. 30 For well over a century, San Diego has developed tourism by inventing resorts, attractions, and representing ethnic images for visitors and residents. In the 1880s, San Diego papers carried reports of numerous excursionists traveling south from San Francisco and Los Angeles to experience the city of “bay and climate,” and editorials commonly urged locals to make 28 Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest. 29 The figure in 1989 was $3.5 billion. Union-Tribune Annual Review of Business (San Diego: Union- Tribune, 1990), 45. 30 Bill Brotherton, quoted in the San Diego Union, December 27, 1970, B-1 (cited in Joy E. Hayes, "Tourism in San Diego," unpublished paper in the author's possession, 1990, 1). 22 the city hospitable. San Diego became popular virtually overnight and as early as 1887, the city experienced a severe shortage of hotel rooms, caused by the record number of tourists—10,000 per month by one account—arriving during the winter season. In 1888, the completion of the Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego Bay provided rooms for more than a thousand guests. The Del Coronado no doubt helped turn San Diego into a major resort destination. 31 From the beginning, the beaches provided a staple resource for tourism and real estate development. In 1914, a real estate syndicate began restructuring the peninsula between Mission Beach and Mission Bay by zoning for commercial, residential, and resort neighborhoods, turning the area into a West Coast version of Coney Island. At the same time, San Diego’s city fathers took another major step toward consolidating the city’s tourism economy by organizing the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition. The temporary Spanish-Colonial city at the current Balboa Park contained the animal collection that would become the city's celebrated zoo (a topic explored in the fourth chapter of this dissertation) and the Spanish colonial architecture that later became the stereotypical structures of San Diego’s culture and heritage. This architectural “heritage” in Southern California has been explored at length elsewhere, and Chapter 2 looks at other forms of ethnic architectural tourism. Although tourism slowed during the Great Depression and almost came to a halt during World War II, the work of the San Diego– 31 Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West, 26-27; further information on early tourism promotion in San Diego is from Hayes, "Tourism in San Diego", San Diego Union, September 2, 1882; and “Tourism in Southern California”, San Diego Union, July 10, 1884. 23 California Club in promoting the city and coordinating local governmental support for tourism development assured the industry’s firm place in the economy. At the same time tourism was growing, so was the military in the region. In fact, the mushrooming military industrial complex in the region helped to establish a profitable tourism economy. No single event had greater impact on solidifying San Diego’s relationship with the U.S. Navy than the visit of the Great White Fleet in April 1908. 32 This three-day event captured the attention and imagination of the city’s populace and galvanized the disorganized efforts of city leaders around a single objective: attracting the Navy. The white ships manned by young white men in neatly pressed uniforms signaled the strength and prosperity of the U.S. military. 33 Newspaper photographs of the event show scores of San Diegans gathered to watch the imperial fleet anchored off Coronado and sailors marching through town. 34 Currently, the Maritime Museum of San Diego commemorates the event in religious and racial terms: the fleet was the “great white savior” of San Diego. 35 Only a few years later, the Marines were dispatched to San Diego, this time to protect U.S. interests in Mexico. Civil unrest had been reported in Mexico and the Marines were called in to “save the day” twice, once in 1911 under President Taft and 32 Richard F. Pourade, Gold in the Sun, vol. 5 in The History of San Diego series. 33 Ibid., 56. 34 Ibid., 72. 35 Broeck N. Oder, “San Diego’s Naval Disaster: The Explosion of the Bennington,” The Journal of San Diego History 22.3 (1976). 24 again in 1914 under President Wilson—when the U.S. military intervened in the Mexican Revolution at Veracruz. 36 Then-president Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines to San Diego in an attempt to insure U.S. investments in Mexico, but the “turbulent” Mexican government was unwilling to cooperate. Disappointed, Wilson ordered the military to stay in San Diego for strategic, geographic, military, and economic reasons. Meanwhile, people from all over the nation were enjoying beaches and fairs all over San Diego. All of these visitors witnessed the spectacle of the military deployment and this became one of the notable features of San Diego. Between World War I and World War II, the Marines established themselves in San Diego. They opened a Marine Barracks at Balboa Park—the largest area for recreation in the city—under the command of Colonel Joseph Henry Pendleton. Early in his command, Pendleton recognized the strategic importance of San Diego relative to the Panama Canal, the Hawaiian Islands, and East Asia—including Japan. It wasn’t long before he lobbied for a permanent Marine Corps base in the San Diego area. Based on the “Japanese threat” in the Pacific during the 1930s, and in anticipation of Japanese aggression because of U.S. sanctions and shaky international relations, the Marine Corps initiated a search for additional military sites in Southern California. In April 1942, the Navy announced the purchase of 132,000 acres of land at Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores. 37 In July of the same year, the Marines commandeered over 36 Ibid. 37 By some accounts, this is not the purchase, but the appropriation of Californio land for military use. 25 121,000 acres at what is now Camp Pendleton and paid the city of San Diego and heirs of the estate a little over $4 million—only a fraction of the land’s overall and cumulative worth. 38 On September 25, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived proudly in time for the official base dedication, a day he had looked forward to for nearly 30 years, since he had served as assistant secretary of the Navy under President Wilson and visited San Diego as a tourist during the Panama-California Exposition. 39 During World War II and the postwar period, the U.S. government pushed for outward colonialism and conquest of Hawai’i and the Pacific. And during this time on the mainland, San Diego became a powerful military outpost. Throughout the 1980s, a boom in military and scientific research lead to the region’s reputation as a military town with the most advanced arsenal of weapons in the United States. Currently, nuclear- powered carriers sit in its harbor, jets flash deafeningly across the sky daily, SEALs train on its beaches, and warships appear in nearly every photograph of the San Diego Bay. As one historian explained, “The [military] is more alive in San Diego than in any other city in the nation.” 40 It is important to note that tourism has also been a major force throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for defining, maintaining, and actually conquering the 38 Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare (University of Illinois Press, 2002). 39 Pourade, History of San Diego; Lotchin, Fortress California. 40 Pourade, Gold in the Sun. 26 nation. 41 Generally, the ubiquity of the automobile in the twentieth century, combined with the vigorous promotion of tourism by local boosters and tourism industries, and the American public’s desire to “discover” their “roots” (even if based on a Spanish fantasy past), reveal the importance of tourism to American national identity. John Jakle’s The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America (1985) offers a descriptive account of automobile travel while John Sears traces the roots (and routes) of earlier, railroad- sponsored tourism in Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (1989). Dona Brown questions the authenticity of some early tourist sites in Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century (1995) and Marguerite Shaffer offers a more interpretive account in See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (2001). All of these works look at the relationship between tourism, transportation, and national identity. Until recently, however, only a handful of scholars have spotlighted tourism as an element of empire. An innovative early work on cultural tourism, international relations, and U.S. imperialism is Cynthia Enloe’s Bananas, Bases, and Beaches (1989). Enloe’s work broadened the field of international relations beyond its masculine focus of the time. This feminist analysis of international politics reveals the crucial role of women in carrying out governmental foreign policies. Other works on the history of U.S. foreign policies that have also examined the tourist economy include Frank Costigliola’s 41 Hal Rothman critiques the promise of prosperity from tourist dollars in his lively Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West (1998), focusing on the environmental damage caused by over-development of parks and recreation areas. The exploitation of local people by tourists is the focus of Jane Desmond’s Staging Tourism (1999). 27 Awkward Dominion (1988), Christopher Endy’s Cold War Holidays (2003), Christina Klein’s Cold War Orientalism (2003), Kristin Hoganson’s Consumers’ Imperium (2007), and the recent groundbreaking work by Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise (2009). While most of these works depict empire building as the imposition of political hegemony by elite policymakers, Merrill’s work is much more nuanced. He examines empire as a “textured and fluid structure” and highlights the ways in which “visitors and hosts negotiated” everything from wages to locations of tourist attractions to the “cultural meanings infused into those sites.” 42 In Negotiating Paradise Merrill focuses on the U.S. relationship to Latin America through tourism, but he neglects the importance of the Pacific Rim to this history. Those scholars who have discussed tourism in the Pacific Rim have criticized Western media for representing Third World destinations and communities as untouched, unspoiled, and stagnant paradises. Several scholars have argued that these dominant Western representations are embedded within a colonial discourse. In Beverley Ann Simmons’ chapter, “Saying the Same Old Things: A Contemporary Travel Discourse and the Popular Magazine Text” she argues that the remains of imperialism still linger in Western imaginations through the contemporary travel discourse in tourist brochures and travel magazines. 43 Mary Louise Pratt in her seminal work Imperial Eyes (1993) argues 42 Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 43 Beverley Ann Simmons, “Saying the Same Old Things: A Contemporary Travel Discourse and the Popular Magazine Text.” In Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities and Representations, Michael C. Hall and Hazel Tucker, eds. (Routlegde, 2004). 28 that travel writing is inherently associated with the practices of colonization, and the “texts are often assumed to express a shared European mentality, the sentiments of a unified, conquering elite.” According to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), the West’s portrayals of non-Western people and places as exotic, tribal, indigenous, and timeless are part of a colonial ideology. Ann Laura Stoler laments that colonialism has always, equally importantly and deeply, been a cultural process (Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt); its “discoveries” and crimes are imagined and promoted through signs, metaphors and narratives. 44 While these scholars have documented multiple aspects and nuances of conquest and colonialism in “third world” destinations, few have studied how unequal power relations—particularly in First World economies like the United States—use tourism as a colonizer through fantasies created by dominant tourism narratives and what Renato Rosaldo has called “imperialist nostalgia.” 45 Yet, for all there is to say about tourism and its relationship to colonialism, this subject remains relatively undertheorized. Among those theorists who have produced qualitative research on the topic, none have concentrated on tourism’s direct role in the conquest of Southern California. The fields of cultural studies, American studies, 44 Ann Laura Stoler, Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870-1979, (University of Michigan Press, 1995); Other important texts by Stoler on race, sexuality, gender, and colonialism are: Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, (Duke University Press, 2006) and Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 45 Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Beacon Press, 1993). See also MacCannell’s breakthrough book, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976). MacCannell melds Marxist analysis with semiotics, and offers interesting, but simplified concepts about the staging of “constructed authenticity” and the notion of noncommodifiability as a “true” marker of the authentic, xix. Jane Desmond’s Staging Tourism is in conversation with MacCannell, and expands on his model of “staged authenticity.” 29 postcolonial studies, and literature have produced ideological analyses of tourist spaces, but few have connected visual images and material symbols in tourist spaces to the extension of empire. This study takes on such a task in order to understand racialization, representation, and empire together. Jane Desmond’s Staging Tourism takes a different approach to understanding tourist economies. Desmond’s work moves beyond simple notions of “hosts” and “guests” to propose an “embodied conceptualization of tourism and tourists.” Further, she underlines the need for greater “specificity in situating acts of tourist consumption within a wider frame of the historical relations between specific groups of consumers and the places and populations they visit.” 46 I build upon Desmond’s argument, but take it one step further: we need to understand tourism as an “embodied” strategy of conquest and empire—it is concurrently material and representational. In this way my project begins to tease out the relationship between tourism and conquest in Southern California and the Pacific Rim and how these processes influence communities of color, and national and regional identities in public and privatized spaces. Representational Conquest intersects with debates in tourism concentrating on material representations of race, ethnicity, culture, and the creation of social meanings. As Jane Desmond quotes, “tourism is not just an aggregate of merely commercial activities; it is also an ideological framing of history, nature, and tradition; a framing that 46 Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism, xix. 30 has the power to reshape culture and nature to its own needs.” 47 In the work that follows, I argue along similar lines that tourism in Southern California is not a benign activity. Contemporary cultural frameworks combine recreation, advertising, marketing, and mass consumption as misleadingly “neutral” forms of entertainment, thereby reinforcing the status quo. In fact, touristic experiences, practices, and processes make up “the most colonial of colonial economies.” 48 While Desmond’s Staging Tourism concentrates on the centrality of bodies and performance, I look to a wide range of sites and sights of tourism that have institutionalized cultural memory, and which foster a continuing celebration of racial and national conquest. In so doing, they not only inform cultural and political agendas in the region, but they actually serve as a modality of conquest in Southern California. Looking at tourism in San Diego also offers a perspective on the multifaceted examination of nationalism in multiple ways. First, the idea of the nation as an “imagined community,” in Benedict Anderson’s term, allows for a wide-ranging analysis of the cultural attachments generated between citizens, regions, and states. Anderson argues convincingly that nations are neither fixed nor natural entities. Because nations are “conceived in language, not in blood,” nationalism exists as an ongoing process of rhetorical imagination. 49 Similarly, Homi Bhabha observes that, though nations do clearly 47 Dean MacCannell quoted in Jane Desmond’s Staging Tourism, xvii. 48 Rothman, Devil’s Bargains, 11. 49 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983; London: Verso, 1991): 6, 145, and chapter 9. I partly disagree with this assertion. 31 emerge, for all their apparent solidarity, they remain ambiguous. They need constant reimagination. 50 Tourism plays a key role; it offers physical evidence in the form of cultural symbols, architecture, displays, images, exhibitions, and public-memory performances that allow for the continual re-affirmation of national identity. As Phoebe Kropp explains, imagining the past (in, for example, “living history” performances, patriotic parades, and cultural exhibitions) is particularly important in imaging the nation. While Kropp seems to equate nationalism with imperialism and conquest, I argue that touristic experiences offer more than reimagined national identities and a kind of metaphorical conquest. 51 Combined with military activities in the Pacific Rim, tourism becomes a real, physical way of brokering capitalism and American empire, of conquering the land and the lives of the people living in this region. West and Far West: Geo-Political Location and Renewed Regionalism U.S. imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries included the territorial annexation of northern Mexico in the 1840s, the turn-of-the-twentieth-century acquisition of Puerto Rico as a colony, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the suppression of Nations are indeed molded out of blood relations as well as the blood of war and military conquest; but I also believe that after the physical fighting has ended, nations must maintain their physical and material boundaries through language and representations. 50 Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990): 1. 51 Kropp, California Vieja. The term, “tourist gaze” comes from John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. (London: Sage, 1990). 32 Filipino national aspirations, the development of a colonial economy in Alaska, and the coercion of Cuba into becoming a protectorate, followed by the severing of the Panama Canal Zone from Colombia (and subsequent celebrations of the canal’s completion as an American feat), as well as Theodore Roosevelt’s declaration of U.S. “police power” in the Caribbean. Of the many U.S. imperial projects during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only the northern territories of Mexico, the islands of Hawai’i, and Alaska and its natural resources were subsumed into the nation. The fact that the United States pushed so aggressively for statehood in the cases of both Hawai’i and Alaska shows the fundamental importance of the Pacific to U.S. colonial and military projects. Examining military occupation, the growth of tourism industries, and agricultural, economic, and cultural ties fractures traditional historical periodization and territorialization. Widespread U.S. imperial projects for military and tourism expansion provide a new intellectual coherence across wars and economic depressions and connect the histories of the West and far West United States. 52 These spaces are connected by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, dispossession and oppression of people of color through racialization, and the assumptions of elite, mostly Anglo, developers that ethnic cultural histories and traditions in these places were “up for grabs” and could be easily consumed, replicated, or erased when necessary in tourist spaces. 52 Here I use the term “far West” to indicate the proximity of these places—usually considered the “East”— to the Western edges of the United States. I also use the term to re-territorialize the way the history of the U.S. is configured in relation to the “Far East” in times past. I argue that the Pacific Rim and the area we currently understand as Asia has had far deeper economic, colonial, and cultural connections to the Western United States than the Eastern U.S. 33 This study interrogates many of the assumptions that underlie American Western history and I signal the need for a research agenda that expands the purview of the field to include the Pacific Rim as an important part of the history of the American West. Much has been written on the conquest of the Southwest United States (Acuña, 1972; Resendez, 2004; Mitchell, 2005; Limerick, 1987) and California in particular (Haas, 1996; Camarillo, 1972; Chavez-Garcia, 2006); but most histories of the West do not include the Pacific Rim in the story of U.S. expansionism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 53 Representational Conquest intervenes in this trend by comparing local practices and examining institutions that exist across the Pacific in order to examine U.S. empire. I argue that the history of the U.S. West and far West is ultimately linked by parallel histories and economic trends that include the development of military and tourism industries simultaneously. When examined together, these complex local histories reveal the full outcomes of a regional engagement with U.S. empire and representational conquest. This dissertation demonstrates the need for a renewal of regionalist thinking, not in any isolated sense, but rather in relation to U.S. empire and conquest. 53 Rudy Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000); Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Pablo Mitchell, Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Patricia Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest; Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769- 1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Camarillo’s Chicanos in a Changing Society; Chavez-Garcia, Miroslava. Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s-1880s. Phoenix: University of Arizona Press, 2004. 34 The ideological and military constructs of conquest and the visual and material practices of tourism reciprocally shaped U.S. empire throughout Southern California and the Pacific Rim in the twentieth century. While the history of the Pacific Northwest, including Northern California, connects more to Alaska in terms of the Gold Rush Era, the history of Southern California is very closely linked to Hawai’i and other spaces in the Pacific Rim through tourism economies, businessmen and women who traveled and invested between places, and the military industrial complex. Thus, I have chosen not to attempt a comprehensive history of U.S. empire and the statehood processes for both Hawai’i and Alaska. Such an undertaking deserves attention that would easily require a multivolume work, and important theories on connections between representations, racialization, and empire could easily get lost or muted in such an expansive narrative. I have instead chosen local case studies in San Diego which show some of the ways U.S. empire has worked through representation and racialization in tourist economies across the Pacific. The next chapters tell the story of how San Diego became a critical nexus for U.S. imperialism at the edges of empire. By shifting the focus between local, regional, and international examples, one can see the ways in which empire is negotiated every day. 54 In this study, examining regional tourist spaces, particularly those that promoted an Anglocentric kind of public memory, is crucial to demonstrating how the tourism 54 James Holston, ed. Cities and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). 35 industry affected a sense of collective memory that inevitably excluded many people of color of the region and established U.S. empire in the Pacific Rim. This history of representation and racialization at the edges of empire is the study of a place undergoing conquest. The American West, including Hawai’i and other places in the Pacific Rim, underwent Anglo-American conquest at a time when the United States was a “fully formed” nation—from sea to shining sea. This is a region particularly prone to demonstrate the unsettled aspects of conquest, to show throughout the twentieth century more than its share of evidence that the conquest of North America came to no clear, smooth end. Thus, the formation of the edges of the nation in the twentieth century provides a more focused and revealing case study of how the United States as a nation has conducted conquest, and especially how the federal government and the American tourist economy adopted complementary roles. In San Diego tourist spaces, Anglo-Americans have rewritten and reenacted history and public memory to claim identity and legitimacy, because, as Pablo Mitchell has stated, at the edges of empire “whiteness” is particularly unstable. The West has been for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the meeting ground of a larger number of ethnic and racial minorities than in any other part of the nation. 55 At the same time this is the “region most associated with optimism and opportunity,” attracting Anglos from the East and Midwest as well as immigrants from around the world all 55 Patricia Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 27, 260. 36 wishing to create new lives for themselves. 56 The drama of life on the edges where people and places meet makes this space seem more unstable particularly because of rapidly shifting demographics and notions of race relations that have been hard to pin down for over 150 years. After the Mexican American War and the American Civil War, the Southern Pacific Railroad extended its line from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1875. Additional connections to railroad lines during the 1880s in Los Angeles and the 1906 founding of the San Diego and Arizona Railway by sugar magnate John D. Spreckels made Southern California the terminus of cross-continental railroads and connected the West Coast to the East and Midwest. Each new transportation link precipitated another spike in the population of the region. 57 Additionally, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, Americans from all over the country struggled to adapt to modernity and the changes accompanying industrialization. People moved from rural to urban areas for jobs and opportunities and various causes of international strife attracted different immigrant populations. According to Rudolfo Acuña and Tomás Almaguer, the differential racialization of new and existing populations of peoples in the American Southwest and far West is a colonial project. 58 New notions of whiteness and the 56 Ibid., 152. 57 Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 19. 58 Tomas Almaguer’s seminal work Racial Faultlines explains how differential racialization works in California to establish whiteness. Rudy Acuña’s foundational work Occupied America focuses on how the U.S. wrongfully took over northern Mexico and subsequently racialized and oppressed the existing Mexican and Californio populations. 37 racialization of Latinas/os and Asians had to be differentially configured through various means—laws, public health, policing, court cases, and of course representations—for many self-identified Anglos to establish their prominence at the top of the social, political and racial hierarchy both locally and nationally. 59 In the early twentieth century, as Carey McWilliams (1946), Phoebe Kropp (2008), and others have shown, Anglo Southern Californians developed and promoted a myth of the Spanish fantasy past as a means of racializing ethnic Mexican populations and as a form of “imperialist nostalgia” to commemorate the tourist-attracting Spanish- Californio-Mexican culture. 60 Later, in the 1930s through the 1960s, Anglo Southern Californians again developed fantasy spaces for elite pleasure and leisure through what I call a “Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary,” which was also premised on notions of “imperialist nostalgia” and the further development of tourism and military occupation in the Pacific Rim. In both of these fantasies, Anglos constructed spaces for leisure and pleasure that were based on the absence of and fascination with certain populations of Latinas/os and Asians. These fantasies had everything to do with notions of whiteness in contrast to the exoticization of peoples of color and their perceived cultural traditions. It was also about the affective abilities of these cultural formations and representations that attracted Anglos from all over the nation to celebrate local manifestations of national fantasies for imperial expansion and exploitation. 59 For more on differential racialization, see Almaguer’s Racial Faultlines. 60 See Carey McWilliams’ Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946, 1973); and Phoebe Kropp’s California Vieja (2008); For the concept of “imperialist nostalgia,” refer to Renato Rosaldo’s Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (1993). 38 Examining San Diego also highlights the relationship between local and national imaginaries. Located at the very edge of the continent, it is 2,689 miles from the symbolic center of U.S. power in Washington D.C. It is an outpost—a border city at the nexus of the U.S.-Mexico line and the Pacific Ocean—rich with military bases and opportunities for recreation. San Diego is the seventh largest city in the U.S., second largest in California, and in 2003 was ranked the 18 th “most fun city” in the nation. So, why does it call itself “America’s Finest City?” when it has never ranked first on any national list I know of? Boosters dubbed it the finest city in America as an advertising strategy because San Diegans have always struggled to be recognized as essential members of the nation, while the city is usually just perceived as an outpost for snow birds at the nation's periphery. With the slogan “America’s Finest City” boosters have attempted to re-define national identity while claiming a connection to the rest of the country manifested in local attractions. City boosters in San Diego carefully constructed images and re-created new histories in order to gain a prominent place in the nation—or at least the national imaginary—through these tourist spaces. And tourism here at the edges of empire can only be understood through processes of what I call “representational conquest.” Representational Conquest tells the story of how conquest and the spreading of empire changed throughout the twentieth century. I chart this history through shifts in racial knowledge and representational practices—aspects of conquest and empire—that changed just as America’s role in the world did. The first chapter begins at the turn of the twentieth century in Old Town San Diego—the only place still around that existed prior 39 to the growth of the tourist industry. The development of San Diego and its “Old Town” have been significantly influenced by a continuing conquest that works through representation and the re-writing of history. Over the years, people with a stake in the region’s development have fashioned and re-fashioned their own narratives and created new meanings. In other words, the place and the history have not always lined up. This process is central to Old Town at the turn of the century because it shows how those who were faced with the necessary task of rebuilding society after the Mexican American War actually negotiated and helped to establish U.S. empire at the very edge of the continent. In this chapter, I chronicle Doña Josefa Felipa Osuna de Marron’s everyday experiences of conquest and the important transition from real histories to a fantasy past, which is aptly reflected in the built environment of Old Town. The presence of U.S. empire transitioned in Southern California from military clashes to colonialism, occupation, and eventually incorporation. Processes of conquest shifted as well, at first including overt violence, oppression, and propaganda, and followed by a kind of representational cruelty—the erasure of certain histories and the re-creation of social meanings as new populations claimed dominance in the region. Felipa’s story exemplifies the everyday experiences of violent conquest of Southern California. The later adoption of the Ramona myth as an integral feature of Southern California’s history demonstrates the beginning of the representational conquest of the region. I examine Felipa’s oral history, the development of Old Town, the growth of the Ramona tourist phenomenon, and reactions of residents and visitors to these orientations to demonstrate 40 how, after the Mexican American War, conquest took place in new forms via tourism industries and the re-creation of local histories. Chapter 2 looks at the shift in representational practices from the “Spanish fantasy past” to a concentration on a “tropical future”—one of investment and exploitation possibilities found in the extension of U.S. empire to Hawai’i. This chapter discusses the curious exchange of a romanticized past and what I call a “Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary” through the built environment, tourism, and the military—representational conquest across the Pacific in both Honolulu and San Diego. Looking at architectural developments in these cities demonstrates the intense involvement of tourism and the military—and the active role these forces took in commissioning architects and promoting certain images of their cities through regionalism. Both cities worked hard to create a distinct regional character through their built environments. Throughout the early twentieth century, the architecture in both places reflected larger interests of the U.S. military, elite private developers, and architects working throughout the Pacific Rim to create an architectural language based on the “Spanish fantasy past” on one hand and notions of a “Pacific tropical imaginary” on the other. I argue that the architectural language developed in Hawai’i during the early twentieth century was central to the Southern California region; at the same time, the California style was integral to the development of a “Hawaiian style.” The third chapter focuses on 1969, a year in which the crises of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements reverberated across the nation and were felt intensely in San Diego. Boosters in San Diego responded to these perceived crises with a bicentennial 41 celebration meant to stabilize identities and race relations, and while these kinds of commemorations had worked in the past, they failed this time. This chapter provides a critical turning point in my dissertation and in the larger history of representational conquest. As the chapter demonstrates, representations from the 1969 bicentennial celebration—which celebrated 200 years of Spanish and American imperialism in the Southwest United States—continued the long tradition of invoking a romantic Spanish colonial past to reflect the history of the region. However, for the first time in San Diego’s history, these conquest-oriented festivities were tremendously unsuccessful. (They resulted in a net loss of over $1.5 million.) This moment of failure for San Diego boosters marks a watershed in American history that was the result of a shift in national sentiment. While San Diego officials, developers, and boosters desired an integral role in the United States, the representations they produced ironically ostracized the city from a nation that was changing significantly; public sentiment in the late 1960s and early 1970s shifted away from the postwar and Cold War celebrations of U.S. empire and instead reflected a concern with domestic civil rights struggles and international activism against war and imperialism. This failure of representation in San Diego highlights a moment in which iterations of U.S. empire at its edges failed to reflect struggles happening at the nation’s core. By 1969, representations of people of color were complicated on a national scale by civil rights struggles and battles over identity politics. In other words, the kinds of representations San Diego city officials and boosters promoted could no longer go unchallenged. 42 After the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, offensive and stereotypical representations of racial “Others” were no longer acceptable to many Americans. Yet, that does not mean that processes of representational conquest have ended. Indeed, as the next chapter shows, they have continued in other more insidious ways. Chapter 4 continues the story with ping-pong diplomacy and subsequent State Department conversations, shedding light on the ways in which nations navigate the precarious edges of their empires. Imperialism is negotiated by individuals on the ground as well as by national leaders on behalf of entire nations. But engagement between American and Chinese individuals was quickly stifled and instead, panda gifts and loans became a modality of cultural diplomacy. The docile and loveable panda fit perfectly into U.S. notions of Orientalism and American nation-building projects. The large bears also came to represent a new era of diplomacy that allowed both the U.S. and China to fully control cultural interactions between the two nations. The chapter then turns to representations at the San Diego Zoo. Under the rubric of “panda politics” I identify a range of political and theoretical concerns including racialized maternalism, the fetishization of the “Child,” state biopower, and moral panic over family values. Each of these social and political concerns is embedded in public discourse about giant pandas. I argue these representations of the bears function as a kind of biopolitics and are representative of national concerns over larger social and political issues on sexuality and reproduction in the United States. The dissertation concludes with an epilogue that brings us twenty years into the future and firmly to the present. I move from a focus on the cultural symbol of the giant 43 panda to the cultural symbols of San Diego’s sports teams—the Padres, the Aztecs, and the Chargers—to show how representation, racialization, and empire continue to be linked in our own popular visual images and material symbols and in order to understand American local and national identities today. I also consider the continuation of representational conquest and include a look at the contemporary geographical, violent conquest at the border just eighteen miles south of downtown San Diego. I put representational conquest in the context of current events—i.e., immigration policies, NAFTA, border fences, border patrol, cruel violations of human rights, and the haunting number of migrant deaths each year. Although focused on tourist representations in a specific city, Representational Conquest is more than a narrow local study. This dissertation examines the intersection of representation and empire in the formation of the edges of U.S. empire during the twentieth century, using the city of San Diego, California, as a critical point of connection and departure. By tracing the continuing and interconnected histories of conquest and racial representation in San Diego and other sites on the Pacific Rim, my dissertation demonstrates how visual culture is constantly recreated and reinterpreted, and how it plays an extremely powerful role regionally and nationally. Visual representations not only continue to influence our contemporary and historical understanding of the Southern California region, but also they are examples of ongoing cultural conquest at the edges of empire. 44 Combining scholarship on visual culture, empire, racialization, and histories and theories of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, this work situates representation at the center of colonial and post-colonial relations in Southern California. I argue that local representations in San Diego tourist destinations have been and continue to be central to race relations on a global scale. By concentrating on sights and sites of desire, fantasy, and leisure at the edges of U.S. empire—tourist spaces that are commonly considered “outside” of conquest—I reveal how these “unlikely” places are actually dense loci in which conquest continues to take place. This poignant reexamination of conquest interrogates the political dimension of tourist economies while maintaining a focus on critical race theory and representation of communities of color—making connections to many other national and international spaces in which these same processes of conquest take place. A Note on Terminology Selecting terminology to define racial and ethnic groups is extremely difficult. The terms Californio, Anglo, Mexican, Chicana/o, Latina/o, Native American, and Indian are obviously inadequate labels that lump considerable heterogeneity within large generic categories. My use of these terms is not meant to imply in any way that they are homogeneous categories. My analysis of particular groups and people within these categories hopefully should make that heterogeneity clear. For clarity and simplicity, however, I employ these terms in the following ways. Despite key social, cultural, economic and political differences between Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and 45 recent immigrants from Mexico, I use the terms Mexicans, or Mexican immigrants to refer to David Gutiérrez’s definition: “the total Mexican-origin population.” (Although there are also times in which I refer to Mexican-origin people or people of Mexican descent under the same rubric.) Spanish is a term that refers less to a people than to an era in California’s history, i.e., the Spanish past. However, there are people in California who have identified themselves as Spanish in opposition to Mexicanas/os or other Latinas/os. As multiple studies have shown, this term has been appropriated to claim a white, European ancestry, and acquired consequential meaning and selective use during the early twentieth century. It has been used to distinguish a person or a history itself from an association with Mexican, a term that implied not the romantic past, but an “undesirable” immigrant present. I also use the term Californio to refer to those individuals who have roots in the Spanish and Mexican periods of the region and to those who have identified themselves as such. This is a regional identity that is mostly employed to distinguish class differences (Californios usually considered themselves of a higher social status apart from Mexican) as well as a long lineage in the Southern California area. For the purposes of this project, Anglo refers broadly to those Southern Californians who were identified as “white,” generally American citizens, and often migrants from the Midwest or East in previous generations. Though not all were of English origin, and some whites would fit imperfectly under this social category, this was a salient identification in the period of study. Anglos employed it as a way to differentiate themselves, primarily from Mexicans. Native Americans or Indians, similarly, are terms that obscure significant 46 internal differences. In this project, whenever possible, I will refer directly to the tribal identification of a person or people, such as Kumeyaay in San Diego. When a more general ascription is required, I will use Native Americans to describe the larger population of indigenous peoples. I hardly use the term Chicana/o, mostly because it refers mainly to a particular political moment and the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and beyond. The Chicana/o movement features prominently in the third chapter of this dissertation. It is particularly important to note that, in analyzing Anglo terminology, i.e., the labels they attached to people in public history and tourist spaces, the mechanism of lumping people together and racializing them based on phenotype performed a key function. They used labels like Mexican and Indian, often as a way to avoid consideration of heterogeneity and as a means of denigration. 61 My project, therefore, includes an analysis of the ways in which Anglos employed these terms and racialized individuals, but in no way intends to reproduce them. 62 61 See William Deverell’s discussion of the term “the Mexican” in “Privileging the Mission over the Mexican: The Rise of Regional Identity in Southern California.” In Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity. eds. David Wrobel and Michael Steiner, 235-258. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997): 8-14. 62 David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigration, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 218 n. 3. 47 CHAPTER ONE The Battle of Old Town: Conquest, Tourism, and Everyday Empire Conquest at the Edges of Empire During her lifetime in nineteenth century San Diego, Doña Josefa Felipa Osuna de Marron experienced the transitions between three different national regimes—from Spanish to Mexican to American. Embroiled in the battles for power that took place all around her, Felipa had difficulty identifying who were the heroes and villains of the day and to which empire she was to declare loyalty. Doña Felipa was a proud and determined Californio woman. She was the daughter of a soldier stationed at the presidio in San Diego during the Spanish occupation in the region. At the age of twenty, later than most women in those days, she married a Californio rancher, Juan María de Marron. Juan later became the administrator of mission San Luis Rey following secularization of the missions in the Mexican period. Her oral history, recorded in 1878, is one of the most detailed Californio accounts of American conquest at the edges of empire. Despite its historical significance, her story has been largely forgotten or ignored in the construction of San Diego’s public memory. 63 In particular, Old Town, the first European and American settlement in the region and Felipa’s home, became a space for military battles as well as struggles over real and fantasy pasts—and a decidedly American future. What hampered the development of this newly nostalgic Old Town, however, were public 63 “Recuerdos de Doña Felipa Osuna de Marron: Natural de San Diego donde vive actualmente con various papels oriniales…” 1878 Bancroft Library, MSS C D 120. 48 debates over what should constitute the past. Anglo developers argued that the Spanish fantasy past could easily align with a new American future, while descendents of the Californios argued that their equally problematic historical representations should take precedence. These divergent histories centered on the question, would the space reflect the past of its older, Californio inhabitants or the fantasy past of its newer, Anglo inhabitants? This question lay at the heart of struggles over issues of commercialism, development, and public memory. Developing Old Town to reflect the real past of its Californio inhabitants would not cohere with a decidedly American future for the region. In fact, this history might inevitably remind Anglos that they were new, that they had no stakes in the land or the history, and that the Mexican American war was an unjust war of conquest. On the other hand, the Spanish fantasy past could easily align with a new American future. 64 Conquest from the Spanish past would signify growth; California could be celebrated as a participant in the expansion of the United States, and Anglos were conquering heroes who propelled the region into the modern era. Those who worked to construct a cohesive historical narrative in Old Town quickly realized that the meaning of the place and its history were ripe for interpretation and development. Boosters and developers sought to rewrite much of the history, making it meaningful for mostly Anglo regional development and consumption. This included distinct efforts to smooth out conquest into an easily understood narrative with clearly defined sides in the conflict, American versus Californio. Oral histories of people like 64 Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja; Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country. 49 Felipa who adapted to and negotiated the processes of empire and conquest in order to survive, were not part of this new narrative. As this chapter will illustrate, the development of Old Town was significantly influenced by a continuing conquest that worked through representation and the re- writing of history. The place and the history did not always line up accurately; instead people with a stake in the region’s development fashioned their own narratives and created new meanings for the past. This process is particularly important for understanding Old Town at the turn of the century. It shows how those who were faced with the necessary task of rebuilding society after the Mexican American War actually helped to establish U.S. empire at the very edge of the continent. While multiple scholars have examined how people develop sentimental ties to particular geographies, this emphasis on Old Town underscores the ways in which certain tourist places and spaces have set the physical and symbolic context for enacting national identity, memory and empire. The Estudillo adobe is one of many architectural structures that became a material representation of San Diego’s identity as a city dedicated to the preservation of the “Spanish past.” 65 Social historians have posited that residents and boosters established romantic visions of Southern California’s “Spanish fantasy past” as a 65 The mythical “Spanish fantasy past” refers to the pastoral imagery of Southern California as consisting of pious missionaries, quaint natives, and genteel Californios—reconfiguring history into a fantasy of what some people might desire, a whitewashing of the more violent histories of conquest and colonialism. Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country (1973). 50 response to the alienating affects of modernity. 66 In recent years, historians such as Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr, William Deverell, Phoebe Kropp and Matthew Bokovoy have explored the racism, economic exploitation, and deep class divisions that were rendered virtually invisible by this romantic Spanish myth that evolved throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They reveal the Spanish fantasy past as far more complicated than a simple escapism from modernity, and inherently linked to empire through national identity. In this chapter, Doña Felipa’s story provides an example of the Californio experience of American conquest. More importantly, however, is the development of new historical narratives as Californio voices became eclipsed by a Spanish fantasy, which is aptly reflected in the built environment of Old Town. At different historical moments, certain groups have imagined themselves as the true descendants or the rightful conquerors of Southern California and they have changed the built environment to fit their conquering fantasies of the past. Representational conquest occurs with this re- writing of history and redevelopment of the built environment. The expansion of U.S. empire transitioned in Southern California from military clashes to colonialism, occupation, and eventually incorporation. Processes of conquest 66 Social historians have thoroughly examined tourism in relation to boosterism and modernity. Scholars William Deverell and Kevin Starr, for instance, write about how boosters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were urban promoters of many professions. Typically, boosters were real-estate speculators, investors in other growth-oriented businesses, tourist entrepreneurs, and press agents, whose tendency to exaggerate earned them the reputation of untrustworthy cheats. But Deverell and Starr also show that boosters were respectable folk too who joined together in coalitions for growth. In California and other parts of the West, they were not only perennially optimistic about the region’s future, but they became leaders in society, culture, the economy, and the state. 51 shifted as well, at first including overt violence, oppression and propaganda, and followed by a kind of representational cruelty—the erasure of certain histories and the re- creation of social meanings as new populations claimed dominance in the region. Felipa’s story exemplifies the everyday experiences of violent conquest of Southern California. The later adoption of the Ramona myth marks the beginning of the representational conquest of the Southern California region. I examine Felipa’s oral history, the development of Old Town, the growth of the Ramona tourist phenomenon, and reactions of residents and visitors to these orientations, to demonstrate how, after the Mexican American War, conquest took place in new forms via tourism industries and the re- creation of local histories. In Legacy of Conquest, Patricia Limerick asserts that “conquest was the domain of mass entertainment” (19). Americans, she argues, have understood conquest vis-à-vis “lighthearted escapism” consisting of happy “cowboys and Indians” or, in the case of turn-of-the-century Californians, the vibrant Spanish characters in Ramona. 67 This perspective became popularized in the national imagination during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Immediately following the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, these representations celebrated conquest in the realm of popular culture. This gave rise to two mutually exclusive trends in American popular culture. The first is the notion that conquest was simply a logical step in a widely accepted doctrine of Manifest Destiny and national expansionism; the terror of U.S. conquest is largely ignored in these 67 Patricia Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 19. 52 popular representations. The second is that the representations that have featured conquest actually celebrate and romanticize the violent processes in seemingly benign cultural forms. This chapter further examines the colonial shift from war to representation in Southern California. Felipa’s stories from the Mexican American War offer a firsthand account of conquest in Southern California. Her day-to-day struggles not only play a part in conquest but show how individuals come into contact with empire. The tension between Felipa’s story and the highly prolific Ramona legend reveals how complicated the process of conquest was, and also how it continued after the war. In the sweltering summer of 1846, at the start of the Mexican American War, Felipa lived at the Mission San Luis Rey. That summer General Frémont and the American troops stormed into the mission in search of leaders of the Californio resistance. 68 The Americans questioned Felipa about her husband, Juan María de Marron and wanted to know who else was at the mission. Although Felipa was afraid of the Americans and described them as undisciplined soldiers without common codes of decency, she stood her ground and lied when she stated that no one of importance was at the mission. At the time, Don María Matias Moreno, the secretary to the California government, was staying with the Marron family. He was a loyal friend and she didn’t want him captured by American scoundrels. She explained, “porque yo les tenía mucho miedo a los Americanos, que no era tropas disciplinados” she was scared because the 68 Please see my introduction for an explanation of racial and ethnic identity terms. 53 American troops were not disciplined. 69 When she heard the Americans arrive she directed Moreno to change into his bed clothes and climb into a bed. The Americans saw Moreno reclining and Felipa explained that he was an ill cousin who was very contagious. Familiar with the tales of disease in the area and afraid of getting sick, the Americans steered clear of Felipa’s “contagious cousin” and left without the Californio leader. While some Califonios supported the U.S. occupation, others like Felipa who put herself at risk to hide Moreno from the soldiers, were opposed to the American military presence. As the Americans departed, Moreno recognized that his good friend Don Santiago Arguello was riding with them. Moreno quickly changed his mind about his Californio allegiance. He sent a messenger to catch up with Arguello to request they return in order that Moreno could join them. Felipa was furious, not only because Moreno was siding with the Americans, but also because his sudden switch of allegiance put her in jeopardy; she knew she would be punished for her role in deceiving the Americans. Felipa ordered Moreno to leave the mission immediately. This is only one of the many episodes that reveal Doña Felipa’s courage and the intricate schisms that emerged among Californios with regards to the expansion of the American empire. However, as was the case with the impulsive Don Matias Moreno, switching sides could be prompted more by friendship and family alliances than national ideologies. Indeed, with time, Felipa and 69 “Recuerdos de Doña Felipa Osuna de Marron,” 16. 54 her husband also were compelled to change sides and ended up aligning themselves with the Americans. 70 Soon after this incident at the mission, American and Mexican forces battled daily throughout the region. At first, Felipa accompanied her husband to their rancho, but after frequent raids by American soldiers, Felipa decided the safest choice for her would be to travel to San Diego by herself and leave her husband to protect the property. Soon after Felipa arrived in San Diego, the U.S. forces invaded. They met little resistance when they attacked the city. However, ten days after capturing San Diego, the majority of American troops went north to “take” Los Angeles and left behind a mere forty men to occupy San Diego. This number of soldiers proved inadequate to resist a strong Mexican offensive that arrived in San Diego in September of 1846. The Mexican forces retook San Diego without firing a shot. They drove some of the defeated American soldiers off land and onto the Stonington, a whaling ship. Three weeks later the American military returned, launched another offensive, and defeated the Mexican army at San Diego a second time. But Mexican resistance was unrelenting, and although the Americans controlled San Diego harbor, it wasn’t long before the Americans were under siege at Old Town along with Doña Felipa and other Californio women who had attempted to take cover within the city limits as the Mexican loyalists and American soldiers waged war all around them. 71 70 Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest, 19. 71 Richard F. Pourade, Gold in the Sun. Volume 5 in The History of San Diego series. 55 The lines of loyalty were not easily drawn for Felipa and many of the other Californios. Felipa recounted how, although some of their Californio friends including Miguel Pedrorena, Santiago E. Arguello, and Pedro C. Carrillo immediately allied themselves with the Americans, many other Californios in San Diego were not so easily swayed. Some were neutral, while others actively resisted the American intruders and fought together under leaders of the resistance Leonardo Cota and José María Alipaz. Cota and Alipaz asked Felipa’s husband to join them in their cause and Juan did so without hesitation. 72 Their resistance group used guerilla tactics; they hid in the hills near the pueblo, and “…daban gritos y echaban amenazas y desverguenzas,” or shouted “challenges, threats and insults” at the Americans soldiers. 73 Sometimes they entered San Diego at night to wreak havoc or steal back their horses. While Juan was instigating the Americans from the outside, Felipa remained in Old Town as occasional shots fired in and around the pueblo pierced the night. Before long, Felipa wanted to leave Old Town San Diego because it was too dangerous. She had heard that her rancho was now safer than before and under Californio control so she requested that her husband send someone to escort her back to her land. In her oral history, Felipa recounted what happened: We women, all of us left our houses and met in the Estudillo adobe. 74 The Californios against the Americans (los del pais) approached the pueblo above the 72 “Recuerdos de Doña Felipa Osuna de Marron,” 14. 73 Ibid., 20. 74 The Old Town adobe belonged to the old Californio family, the Estudillos, and was a place for Californios to meet, collaborate, and celebrate over the years. 56 fort that the Americans had built on the hill. I wanted to leave to join my husband and I had sent a message to Alipaz and Cota to come and get me. So they sent my husband under a white flag thinking that since he was such good friends with Pedrorena, Arguello and Carrillo, they would let him pass. So he approached under a white flag and Pedrorena and a party of Americans rode to meet him— they took his horse and arms and put him in jail. Since he was detained several days without returning to the countryside with me, los del pais suspected that he had gone over to the Americans and they became very angry with him. [Nosotras las mujeres, todas dejamos nuestras casas, y nos reuníamos en la de los Estudillos Venian los del pais arriba del fortin que habían lavantado en la loma yo quería ir a unirme con mi marido, y hubo de consegir el con Alipaz y Cota licencia para venir a sacarme para eso pusieron alla una bandera blanca Alipaz y Cota dijeron a Marron que el no sería agarrado por los Americanos porque llevaba mucha amistad con Pedrorena, Arguello y Carrillo Los de aqui le dejaron entrar, porque los Californios me venían con una bandera blanca. Luego que entro me puso, porque salieron Pedrorena y un partido de Americanos a recibirlo le quitaron su caballo y armas y lo llevaron al cuartel. Como se tardo aqui varrios dias sin volverse a campo de los Californios conmigo, sospecharon aquellos que el se había pasado a los Americanos, y se pusieron muy enojados con el.] 75 After a few days of cruelty at the hands of the Americans, Felipa and Juan were forced to swear that they would not continue hostilities against the Americans and were eventually released. They were given a safe conduct pass to present to American soldiers in case they were detained by another troop. They fled the battlefield of San Diego only to be greeted at their rancho by furious Californios who threatened to shoot Juan because they believed he was working as a spy for the Americans. His former friends, Alipaz and Cota, had taken all the Marron’s horses and imprisoned the family at another rancho, Agua Herivida, located near present-day Carlsbad. The Californio resistance left Felipa at Agua Herivida, but they took Juan and Indian servants back to his rancho. When Juan Marron became ill the Californios left him, and Felipa was again allowed to return to the rancho 75 “Recuerdos de Doña Felipa Osuna de Marron,” 15. 57 to care for her husband. Every day the “fuerzas del pais” descended on the Marron rancho to take what they needed, so that finally “most of what we had was taken from us including the cattle that had been given to me by Fr. Zalvidia.” 76 When the war ended the Marrons barely had enough to eat. They endured constant harsh treatment as the Californios—their former compadres—continued to accuse Felipa and her husband of being pro-American. The biggest insult, Felipa recalls, was that both the Americans and the Californios took advantage of the Marrons on their own land. These abuses finally forced the Marrons to ask for protection from the American commander of San Diego. After indications that they would be welcomed and not mistreated, Juan and Felipa departed their rancho in search of safety in Old Town. But this time the Marron party included several Californio soldiers, including Felipa’s brother Leandro, who had killed an American soldier in the conflict at San Pasqual, the definitive battle in San Diego. On the outskirts of the town her husband raised a white flag and they entered the pueblo leaving their few remaining livestock outside. She reported that although some Americans in San Diego were angered by the return of those regarded as former enemies, the rest of the Americans did nothing. 77 The narration of Doña Felipa de Marron Osuna is most interesting for its complex account of loyalty and divisions in the transition from Mexican to American California. Circumstances forced the Marrons to rely on the American soldiers and government for 76 Ibid., 16. 77 “Recuerdos de Doña Felipa Osuna de Marron.” 58 protection from their own countrymen. Her account is a critical intervention into histories that simplify the issues of loyalty and sides during the contentious battles over what is now Southern California. The Mexican American War in San Diego County was a period that divided Californio society, mainly into groups loyal to the Americans and those who joined in the resistance against American occupation. But there were also many Californios, including the Estudillo family, who attempted to remain neutral in the conflict. Meanwhile, others, including many Native peoples, used these divisions to their advantage to gain independence from indentured servitude. These complicated divisions and quickly shifting alliances continued into the subsequent decades, which made it difficult for Mexicans to politically organize against the many injustices they experienced during and in the aftermath of the American takeover. While the U.S.-Mexican War in San Diego was only a small but recurring battle in a much larger imperial conflict, it illustrates the resistance of the Mexican population to American conquest. Doña Felipa’s account is one example of the ways in which people experienced conquest and empire on the ground level in their everyday lives. Empire and the experience of conquest involves difficult decisions by individuals, families, and neighbors who are both surrounded by and entrenched within the battlefield of alliance-making and military clashes. The American theater of war in the U.S. Southwest was not simply about domination by the most powerful artillery, but instead about the everyday negotiations made by a seemingly irrelevant rancho family on the contentious edges of the Mexican and American empires. Undoubtedly, Doña Felipa de Marron Osuna’s struggles, heroism, and change of heart have made her an important figure in the stories and histories of American 59 conquest. These are just a few of the anecdotes she remembered in her 1878 interview with historian Hubert Howe Bancroft's assistant, Thomas Savage. She was still a strong figure at sixty-nine years old and had been a widow for twenty-five years. Her day-to- day experiences and life stories exemplify the different strategies people have used in order to survive in the midst of conquest. Why, then, is the most famous female character in the early days of U.S. conquest not Doña Felipa, a real-life survivor of the U.S.-Mexico battle over San Diego, but rather a fictitious woman named Ramona? From War to Representation Doña Felipa’s life stories may reflect and represent different aspects of the Mexican-American War, American conquest, and U.S. development at the Western edge of the United States, but the most famous woman at the turn of the century was none other than a fictional character named Ramona. Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 popular novel Ramona inspired an entire industry of Ramona-related tourist attractions that presented a romanticized, and historically inaccurate, representation of Southern California history. This discursive transition—from Felipa’s accounts of violent fights, the oppression of Mexican populations, and the complexities of establishing a new empire far from the center of U.S. national power, to Jackson’s Ramona, a fictional, exoticized narrative of love, loss, and a “disappearing” Californio society—was an important part of the representational conquest of Southern California and necessary to the creation of a tourist-friendly built environment. Stories of the Californio experience were not uncommon during this time, but it did not matter because the Californio 60 population was being racialized as Mexican and inferior by the quickly growing Anglo population. During the first three decades after the war, Americans cultivated an understanding of the Southwest that cohered into a powerful historical mythology that connected an idealized past to the American present. It ironically adopted Spanish colonizers as American forbears, and simultaneously justified the Mexican American War and conquest of Mexico as part of modernization. I invoke the word “conquest” to remind us of the genealogy of these spaces at the edges of U.S. empire and to gesture to the fact that these representations are not benign. They do a particular cultural work that is sometimes violent and even more insidious and dangerous than overt acts of oppression. Images and stories of Ramona were more popular than those of Doña Felipa because they exoticized and romanticized the lives of Californio aristocracy in Spanish California. As a result, readers became more enchanted and concerned with a “vanishing” Califomio culture than with the social commentary about racial inequalities commentary Jackson attempted to communicate through her novel. One might wonder why boosters and developers strove to create this elaborate social mythology. The promotion of new narratives and the subsequent building of them into the landscape can only be understood through the complicated processes of representational conquest. The Mexican American War—like all wars of conquest—was a catalyst for social change. It created the urgent need to re-define personal and geographic identities and boundaries, as both vanquished and conquerors were faced with the task of rebuilding a society and inventing traditions that re-created order from disrupted conventions of 61 authority and identity. Because new social orders are built on historical narratives that establish continuity with a sustaining past, it matters which historical “characters” are included as forebears, heroes, and villains, as well as who is left out of the story altogether. 78 For Mexican-origin peoples, post-war resentments against American aggression, the loss of private lands, and the cession of nearly half of the nation’s territory fostered the growth and intensification of Mexican nationalism and Californio regionalism. Americans, as the “conquerors,” also faced the difficult problem of reconstructing and reordering a history that could explain their presence in territories acquired through war, without calling into question the legitimacy of American rule. Americans were well aware that in order to gain symbolic and representational possession over newly acquired land, they needed to control that place’s historical and cultural narratives. Therefore, in order to construct new American narratives to overshadow the existing Mexican histories, a different kind of conquest arose—one that focused on shifting perceptions and representations rather than mobilizing military might. California’s “Ramonamania” was therefore not simply about creating a false past, but rather establishing a new social memory and historical significance for the region, one that was felt and practiced by tourists and locals who visited the many Ramona- 78 I rely on Eric Hobsbawm’s definition of “invented tradition”: “Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.” From “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983). 62 related landmarks. In particular, I explore the re-configuration of Old Town’s Casa de Estudillo into “Ramona’s Marriage Place”—the same meeting site frequented by Californios during the 1800s and that served as a hiding place for Doña Felipa and other women seeking refuge during the American conquest. In Old Town, tourism and boosterism came together to function as representational conquest through the creation of an attraction that was profitable, and that inevitably overshadowed the voices of a Californio population. Dennis Merrill has noted that traditional histories of empire often amplify “the most dramatic political events—revolutions, coups, natural disasters, riots, U.S. military interventions—but [leave] routine behaviors, carried out by ordinary people, largely unexamined.” 79 The traditional concentration on so-called nationally important interests as well as state policies and global financial institutions not only marginalizes the lives of ordinary people and what empire means in their daily lives, but also it marginalizes the role ordinary people play in carrying out the goals of empire, or contesting them. The result is that empire becomes defined almost exclusively by what is seen and done at the symbolic center of U.S. power in Washington D.C., and by extension through Washington’s military might. In this traditional narrative, empire is only briefly disrupted now and then by instances of rarely successful resistance. 79 Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth century Latin America. (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 19-25. 63 William Appleman Williams, however, argues that empire might also be understood as a way of life. 80 If we examine San Diego with this in mind, how have San Diegans—and the tourists who have flocked there—made sense of empire in their daily lives? In San Diego’s tourist spaces, representations reveal how people at the edges of U.S. empire have re-imagined their place within the nation and America’s place in the world. In these spaces, developers, travel writers, visitors, artists, intellectuals, entertainers, entrepreneurs, labor organizers, students, parents, Californio families, advertisers, city officials, boosters, and hosts of others have advanced their particular interests. Many times they have operated outside of state power while simultaneously advancing empire and continuing conquest. 81 San Diego, bordered on two sides by Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, has struggled as a city at the very rim of the United States. Through tourism and its representations, San Diegans have tried tirelessly to redefine empire from the periphery. Twentieth-century tourism in the city’s Old Town demonstrates how the built environment and historic representations constructed and altered social, cultural, and political life in San Diego, in ways that reverberated throughout the nation as tourists came to visit and brought the cultural significance of the place back home. In particular, developers, residents, and tourists significantly shaped the city of San Diego in the early twentieth century. A focus on these historical actors underscores practices of representational conquest and the importance of ordinary people 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 64 Figure 1: Official Pamphlet for Ramona's Marriage Place, c. 1920. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. in configuring national identity and empire at its edges. These representations give the twentieth century another kind of intellectual coherence. Rather than a century defined only by fragmented national and global political and economic events, the century is an age of everyday empire and conquest articulated through tourism and national identities, rather than an era defined by. 82 Examining the history of Old Town’s built environment and the development of tourism in the area demonstrates a continuum of everyday expressions of U.S. empire that have flourished in the latter half of the century. Together, these moments reveal how tourist representations have influenced and been influenced by race relations, ethnicity, colonialism, and national identity across time and space. Focusing on the important players in the redevelopment of the Estudillo adobe—the architect, the Estudillo family, and tourists themselves—demonstrates how fact and fiction blurred to become mutually constitutive. A new, Ramona-inspired social memory eclipsed the memories of Californios like Doña Felipa, and inscribed new, politically simplified and 82 Ibid. 65 significantly more romantic, narratives onto the landscape (Figure 1). San Diego city boosters carefully crafted these representations in order to establish their town as a prominent place in the national imaginary and the nation’s history. Jackson’s novel was quite timely in this development of Southern California’s landscape. Ramona’s unprecedented success came right when the region could be reached by two competing railroads, massive real estate speculation boomed, and scores of new towns and homes were built for the influx of tourists and emigrants. In a region rapidly becoming majority Anglo and undergoing immense change and the trials of modernity, Jackson’s romantic imagery of aristocratic rancho life became not only popular but extremely desirable to visitors and boosters alike. These stories consequently resonated throughout the nation as tourists brought them back home from the edges of empire. Ramona captured the imagination of Anglos all over the United States who desired a glimpse into the nostalgic Spanish fantasy past. The novel opens in the years just after the American conquest of California with lavish descriptions of Southern California’s landscape and a life of repose led by the remaining Californio elite. Only much later does Jackson introduce issues of Native American mistreatment. The plot centers on the beautiful half-Scottish, half-Indian heroine Ramona, who, ignorant of her own heritage, is adopted into the wealthy Hispanic Moreno family and raised on their expansive rancho. Ramona falls in love with Alessandro, the son of a Native American chief. When her adopted mother forbids her to marry him, she elopes. Ramona’s life changes as she learns of her own Indian background and eagerly embraces her new identity, but she also takes on the life of 66 hardship endured by her husband and his people as successive groups of white settlers evict them from village after village, pillaging farm after farm. One such white settler murders Alessandro before Ramona’s eyes, and she nearly dies from grief and strain, but not before her stepbrother, Felipe Moreno (Ramona’s most passionate admirer), rescues her and brings her home to the rancho. Even the Moreno lands, however, have now been invaded by white settlers and the life the Morenos once led is no longer possible. Ramona and Felipe escape to Mexico to marry and to live a new life, a life of luxury like the one they led in California in the past. Significantly, at the close of the novel, Ramona severs her connections to her Indian identity. She returns to her aristocratic Californio upbringing at the rancho and chooses to continue her landowner class lifestyle with Felipe in Mexico. For Ramona and Felipe, there is a future; they escape to a new location, Mexico City, in order to recreate a new version of their past as the landowning elite. This is in sharp relief to the Indians in the story who are left behind to die in the conquered lands of Southern California. And since Alessandro’s death is by this point distant in the novel’s narrative, the issue of Native American genocide and premature death is easily ignored. Jackson’s message about the poor treatment of Indians in the U.S. is undermined in her romantic plotline of Southern California rancho life and the last days of Californio culture as well as the conclusion, which portrays Indians and their culture as vanishing. 83 The happy 83 Jackson’s message was not entirely lost in the exoticism of Californio life. After her death, others took up her cause. See the writings of Valerie Sherer Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and her Indian reform legacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); and Mathes, “Afterword” in Ramona: A Story by Helen Hunt Jackson, 363-73 (New York: Signet Classics, Penguin Books 2002). 67 romantic ending, which is only possible in Mexico because the Southwest has now been overrun with “civilization” in the form of Anglo Americans, captured Jackson’s audience’s imagination. At the same time, this ending with Ramona as a grand Dame in Mexico City buries possibilities for redemption or reparation for the native people who have suffered as part of conquest and colonization, and suggests that people of Mexican heritage belong in “old Mexico” instead of the new American nation. Jackson’s representation, along with turn-of-the-century Ramona advertisements geared toward Anglo-American visitors, extend the legacy of racial violence and representational conquest in San Diego that began with the Mexican American War. Of course, Jackson attempted through her novel to lament and simultaneously smooth over the history of oppression she became acquainted with during her travels to Southern California. In her representation, Indian and Mexican-origin peoples and their heritage belong in a quaint version of the past, or far away in Mexico City—a city that symbolizes the romantic past of Spanish conquest. The future can only exist in the spaces of U.S. conquest and Anglo American endeavors. While Jackson wrote about idyllic landscapes and readers across the country eagerly consumed the romantic Southern California lifestyles, the region was actually on the brink of immense change. The picturesque places featured in Ramona were in reality spaces in the midst of transformation brought about by Anglo American intervention and occupation. Good weather combined with intense boosterism attracted thousands of white Americans from the East and Midwest. Anglos came to the region to experience Jackson’s exoticized descriptions of picturesque people and places that were so different 68 from the East Coast and Midwestern cities and farms. Ironically, these descriptions were based on an imagined past, not contemporary San Diego. While wildly popular Spanish memories became critical slogans used to entice tourists and potential emigrants to the area, the region was beginning to look very different from Ramona’s San Diego in terms of demographics and development. As more newcomers arrived, they came with expectations of finding Spanish romance and the good life in Southern California. Wherever they could not see the vision, they built and recreated it with ever-greater determination. Anglos enacted conquest by gradually stamping their versions of the Spanish past onto the local Southern California landscape. Imagining themselves to be contemporary versions of heroic conquistadors, they captured the region’s history and territory. They ignored the histories of Californio families and worked to create a landscape that more precisely paralleled the fictional landscape of Jackson’s novel. Metaphors of conquest from the Spanish past became synonymous with growth and were shorthand for the belief in racial and national succession in the region. Anglo Americans distinguished themselves as bearers of a new, prosperous American empire through the redevelopment of the built environment and simultaneous re-creation of the region’s history. Proponents of historic preservation, residents of San Diego, and commercial developers shaped Old Town San Diego’s built environment and the histories told about its conquest. The histories they promoted and the cultural memories they created reflected a longing to be incorporated within national history, particularly because many 69 dominant U.S. myths of the time were based on East Coast narratives. To this end, they developed and encouraged a regional identity based on a disconnection from Mexico and a connection to a Spanish fantasy past. 84 This mythic connection to Europe gave Anglo Southern Californians legitimacy and aided them in constructing whiteness as a dominant and privileged identity on the West Coast. Old Town is just one example of how shaping the built environment required re-imagining the past and re-creating national identity. This practice is a form of representational conquest, which can be located in everyday lived experiences of empire. The development of Ramona’s Marriage Place in Old Town San Diego became a highly contested cultural terrain. It sparked a booming tourist industry as well as angry residents who disagreed with representations of the fictional past in the neighborhoods in which they lived. The descendents of Californio families protested what they understood as the “erasure of their history.” Family members acted alone and collectively to resist the development plans of wealthy, politically powerful private developers. Their resistance reflects a tradition of mobilization and protestation in the San Diego community when it comes to the way the city and its built environment are represented. As early as the turn of the twentieth century, residents of San Diego with deep roots and an investment in its Californio history engaged in activist campaigns to resist attempts by 84 The mythical “Spanish fantasy past” refers to the pastoral imagery of Southern California as consisting of pious missionaries, quaint natives, and genteel Californios—reconfiguring history into a fantasy of what some people might desire, a whitewashing of the more violent histories of conquest and colonialism. In recent years, historians such as Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr, William Deverell, Phoebe S. Kropp and Matthew Bokovoy have explored the racism, economic exploitation, and deep class divisions that were rendered virtually invisible by the romantic Spanish fantasy past that evolved throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 70 outside investors to change the built environment. They first wrote letters and formed community organizations. Then, as I demonstrate in Chapter Three, in the latter half of the century they used forums such as the media and the courts to make their voices heard. While developers transformed the Casa de Estudillo, an adobe structure at the center of Old Town, into the celebrated “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” Californio descendents fought hard to prevent this myth from erasing the historically significant Estudillo family. But Ramona’s marriage place became and remained an important tourist destination who sincerely believed in the myth and revered the “sacred” ground Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel, Ramona, supposedly made famous. Public Memory and Everyday Empire In a few words, public memory—also referred to as collective, social, or cultural memory—involves interpreting or remembering the past in ways relevant to the present. 85 Public memory is not necessarily reliant strictly on oral histories, recorded events, or individual accounts. Instead, it relies most on the social and cultural contexts of the present. Thus, it is always emergent because of the changing present, and the very nature 85 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper and Row,[1950] 1980); David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989); George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1990); David Middleton and Derek Edwards, Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990); James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Iwona Irwin-Zarecjka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (London: Transaction Publishers, 1994); Barbie Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1995. 12:204-39; Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Phoebe Kropp, California Vieja (2006). 71 of public memory often alters the way the past is remembered, making it seem that the past itself changes. From the perspective of public memory, then, the point is not to argue whether a particular past event is fact or fiction, because the social meaning of memory is little affected by this distinction. As Marita Sturken argues, “We need to ask not whether a memory [or a story about the past] is true, but rather what its telling reveals about how the past affects the present”—or how a particular telling of the past animates the way we make sense of the present. 86 The concept of public memory illuminates the complicated ways in which notions of the past operate as conquest through material representations in tourist spaces. This study considers the ways in which public or cultural memory operates as a “framework of meaning,” and I expand these notions. I use the term “public memory” to indicate the semi-official nature that some of these cultural memories come to assume, and I also draw from Phoebe Kropp’s notion of “cultural memory.” While Kropp argues that cultural memory refers to “certain commercial spaces that claim historical accuracy particularly because the term connects memories with cultural products and practices,” I argue that it is in the public consensus of official public memory that people have claimed historical accuracy to connect memories, practices, and material culture. Public memory highlights the fact that memory is a cultural and social construction that must be agreed upon by elites as well as people on the ground level who help to promote these memories whether “real” or not—and particularly in tourist sites such as those 86 Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, 2. 72 commemorating the fictitious life of Ramona. It is therefore important to examine the materiality of remembrance in memorials, the built environment, museums, archives, and spaces such as Ramona’s Marriage Place. In these ways, memory is a significant part of meaning-making in our society. 87 Kropp describes how Anglo “memory promoters” from the 1880s to the 1930s used public commemorations and built environments to revise the past, redesign the present, and reshape the future landscape of Southern California. The Old Town restoration of the Casa de Estudillo confirms that, before the 1930s, idealized visions of old “Spanish California” prompted a range of public commemorations and performances, dominated Southern California architecture, configured the tourist economy, and even defined the region’s identity. Kropp demonstrates that while Southern Californians embraced the “Spanish colonial,” Anglo boosters largely erased the presence of Native Americans and Mexicans from public celebrations of the past, as well as from visibility in the present. In this way, public memory and tourist spaces helped “whitewash” the region’s past and similarly configured its future. In Whitewashed Adobe, however, Bill Deverell explains the process of “whitewashing” in slightly different terms. Anglos in Los Angeles were not attempting to make Mexicans disappear by relegating them to the past; instead “borders created from discriminatory wages, from the public memory, and 87 “Cultural memory” also conveys the materiality of remembrance while signifying its political nature, but does not reduce it to “an indice of power.” Rather, it suggests that memory is a significant part of meaning- making. For more, please see Phoebe Kropp, California Vieja. 73 from political exclusion all had to do with rendering Mexicans expressly visible, lest they disappear into the polity, into the neighborhoods, into the city of the future.” 88 The re-enactments of Ramona were actually doing something else. While Jackson intended her love story to provide a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans, Alessandro’s death reinforced the notion that Native Americans were destined to extinction and the common presumption that miscegenation would end tragically and miserably. Tourists and residents flocked to see the Ramona re-enactments for a connection to the Spanish past and simply to enjoy the spectacle. Thus, Deverell’s notions of visibility and invisibility consistently work through public memory and tourism to retell history but also to re-imagine a future without a Native American presence. Long characterized as a boosterist manipulation of a fantasy past for a group of naive and uncritical Ramona-seeking tourists the Ramona legend particularly appealed to Anglo-American newcomers to California, many of whom yearned for the pastoral values and craft traditions that they imagined had existed in a simpler, agrarian time before modernity. 89 They had arrived at a time when Southern California was undergoing a startling transformation, becoming more urbanized, industrialized, and populated. Largely middle class, they had both the leisure and means to patronize Spanish-styled 88 William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Making of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 10. 89 Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990); J. Frank Dobie, "Introduction" In Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson, vii-xv (Los Angeles: Limited Editions Club and Plantain Press, 1959); Carey McWilliams, Southern California; Franklin Walker, A Literary History of Southern Califoria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950); Kevin Starr, Inventing the dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Errol Wayne Stevens, “Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona: Social Problem Novel as Tourist Guide,” California History (fall 1998): 158-67, 196-97. 74 tourist sites and resorts. For many, “Ramona’s Marriage Place” came to embody the simplicity, grace, and romance they imagined had existed in the “Days of the Dons.” The developers, writers, artists, architects, and other promoters of the Ramona legend were consciously aware that theirs was the handiwork of fiction but they did not seem to mind. Under Mexican rule in the 1820s, a little grid of streets grew around the old Spanish presidio building in Old Town, including the Estudillo family house, completed circa 1830. It was the grandest in the small town and survived through the decades as a family home, even as the new downtown to the south prospered and overshadowed the earlier settlement. Along with the “Ramonamania” that swept Southern California in the late nineteenth century came the notion that the Casa de Estudillo matched Helen Hunt Jackson’s long, low Old Town building where Ramona and Alessandro were married. As early as 1887, the San Diego Union declared the Casa de Estudillo as “The Marriage Place of Ramona.” In a front-page article, a large picture showed the crumbling adobe with the name painted in large stylized letters. 90 By 1890, a “caretaker” was selling bits of the building to tourists and a gift shop with Ramona curios opened just down the street. People visited the abandoned building to take and buy things, and to leave their own marks. A New Era article in 1898 reported, “All over the walls of the various rooms of the old ruin can be found the names carved or written of people from all over the 90 San Diego Union, 28 August 1887, 1. 75 United States.” 91 In 1906, John D. Spreckels, local booster and owner of the San Diego Electric Railway Company, recognized the house’s popularity and strategic location at the end of his streetcar line. He convinced the Estudillo family to let him buy the place and assigned an architect to make it look more like the building described in Jackson’s novel. A new sign went up at the location and remained for years: “Ramona’s Marriage Place.” 92 The myth of Ramona held a particular salience in the turn-of-the-century period. It not only satisfied the city boosters who advocated for a Spanish fantasy past, but it also touched ordinary people on a personal level. Wealthy developers amassed their fortunes and erased the past in Old Town because it was lucrative. At the same time, the development of the Casa de Estudillo provided an outlet for middle-class Anglo women’s professional aspirations, such as up-and-coming architect Hazel Wood Waterman. Other players simply needed to make ends meet for their families, while still others wished to experience the popular cultural significance of particular place. Representational conquest of this space did not happen all at once, but took several years and involved different ideas about what the landscape should look like. Examining the roles of Waterman and tourists demonstrates how this kind of conquest is 91 Polly Larkin, New Era, 1898, column 1; This pattern—of the importance of souvenirs and Ramona- related commercialization as well as tourists leaving their own marks behind—continued well into the twentieth century. 92 Multiple scholars have written about California “Ramonaland.” For an excellent synopsis of the story and the Old Town connection, see Keith A. Sculle’s article “The Power of Myth in Ramona and Ramona’s Marriage Place”, found in The Mid-Atlantic Almanack 12 (2003): 95-108. Another side of the story is Old Town historian Victor Walsh’s “Una Casa del Pueblo – A Town House of Old San Diego” in The Journal of San Diego History vol 50, no 1 and 2, (Winter/Spring 2004). 76 part of the quotidian experience of empire. The tensions over the restoration of the Estudillo adobe and the structure itself are examples of the ways in which U.S. empire and conquest are expressed day to day between developers, inhabitants, and even tourists. Developers and Architects Spreckels’ vice president and managing director, William Clayton, hired a 43- year-old widow, recently turned designer, to research and restore the historic ruin. Hazel Wood Waterman, the daughter-in-law of former California Governor Robert Whitney Waterman and then employee of noted San Diego architect Irving Gill, capitalized on the craze for a Spanish fantasy past, as many of her contemporary Anglo American women also did. At the time of her entrance into the field, Waterman’s financial situation was precarious due to the death of her husband. Her education and training in art constituted the only means of support she had for herself and her three young children. Situated within a strong Arts and Crafts community in San Diego, she studied with noted architects, developed her own architectural styles, and relied heavily on the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement alongside the strength of the old California Spanish myth. Thus, her designs incorporated local, indigenous, and historical motifs, including that of “Spanish California.” 93 Waterman’s restoration of the Estudillo adobe contributed to the complicated representational conquest of the region. 93 Catherine W. Zipf, Professional Pursuits: Women and the American Arts and Crafts Movement, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007): 43. 77 When Waterman and her family moved to San Diego in 1891, the city’s Arts and Crafts movement and notion of a Spanish fantasy past were both reaching new heights of popularity. Movements of wealthy East Coast Anglos interested in the healthy “Mediterranean” climate of San Diego in the 1870s had established a small artists’ community and a desire for a romantic pastoral existence as a reaction to industrialization and based on ideals of social reform. 94 By 1890, one year before Waterman’s arrival, San Diego had become home to a thriving Arts and Crafts community of potters, writers, painters, architects, actors, and musicians who all celebrated the rustic elements of ethnic art. They used the “majestic landscape” of the desert infused with indigenous history, notions of the undiscovered frontier, and a Spanish fantasy to inspire what they believed was a forward-looking perspective and a future untroubled by modernity. Waterman believed, like many other artists and architects from the Arts and Crafts movement, that art and architecture should reflect San Diego’s “unique history” as a space in which the Spanish and Native American cultures are present. Waterman even noted that good design could enhance the healthy lifestyle that was by this time central to the region’s “Mediterranean” identity. 95 In addition to participating in the arts movement, both Waterman and her husband forged new friendships by joining the College Graduate Club in San Diego. The club “sought to bring together persons with academic degrees to discuss at regular monthly 94 For a concise summary of the Arts and Crafts movement in the U.S. and the U.K., refer to Elizabeth Cumming and Wendy Kaplan, Arts & Crafts Movement (London: Thames & Hudson 1991); Zipf, Professional Pursuits. 95 Zipf, Professional Pursuits, 26. 78 meetings current topics of the day.” 96 The Watermans, both educated at the University of California at Berkeley and related to important civic leaders, were welcomed into this exclusive social circle in Northern California. This club helped the two achieve a certain amount of cultural clout and upward mobility. Judging from the titles of the papers such as “Charity and Progress,” “Selfishness and Evolution,” and “The Increase of Lawlessness in the U.S.,” members of this group, in line with the Arts and Crafts movement, clearly had social reform on their minds and were interested in the future of the nation. 97 While the club meetings furthered the causes of the city’s community of artists, they also served as a space where Waterman and other women could network and create relationships across gender and social boundaries. It was at these meetings that Waterman first met master architect Irving Gill and other associates who became friends and hired her for restoration and architectural work after her husband passed away years later. 98 After her husband’s death in 1903, Waterman was left with a relatively modest income from railroad and insurance assets. By this time, the young widow had made a life and a reputation for herself in San Diego and, according to Gill, had a natural talent for architecture. 99 Considering her options, Waterman decided that she had only her artistic background on which to rely. The job market for women was slim at the time 96 Ibid., 33. 97 Cumming and Kaplan, Arts & Crafts Movement. 98 Zipf, 35. 99 Ibid., 37. 79 Figure 2: Hazel Wood Waterman and daughter Helen, [ca. 1895] 1890/1900. Courtesy of the San Diego Historical Society. with limited opportunities for employment as anything other than a secretary, teacher, or nurse; Waterman neither had secretarial skills, teaching experience, nor training as a nurse. 100 Moreover, she wanted to stay home with her young children. 101 At this point, she represented the target audience of Arts and Crafts philanthropy: she was a middle- class woman of limited means, no longer able to rely on her husband but ill-equipped to work in anything other than the arts. Rather than move back to her family in Tuskegee, Alabama, Hazel Wood Waterman decided to try her luck at architecture. She used her experiences with art and design, her vision for California’s future grounded in a Spanish fantasy past, as well as her social network within the Arts and Crafts movement to work as an apprentice and to later start her own business. Waterman used her role as a historic preservation architect to fashion a public life for herself as an independent widow and a doting stay- at-home mother (Figure 2). 102 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., 32-33 102 Ibid. 80 Figure 3: Veranda, 1910. ©SDHS, Hazel Wood Waterman Collection MSS 42, Box 1, Folder 13. As a widowed mother of three without an architect’s license, Waterman was an unlikely candidate to restore the Estudillo home. She designed for Irving Gill—drafting projects for him at home during the days—but the Estudillo adobe was only her second major assignment. After her husband’s death, she had taken design and architectural drawing classes at a local school and was also an accomplished painter, having published works on adobe structures. 103 Further, she worked as an apprentice to one of San Diego’s master architects, who commented that she had an “instinctual” understanding of design and decor. Waterman also had a distinctive vision about southern California’s early “Spanish-Mexican” heritage, albeit a romanticized one based on the Arts and Crafts movement and the revival of Spanish colonial architecture. Of course, it also seemed fitting to Spreckels, the developer behind the Estudillo adobe, that a woman—associated with sentimentality and romance– should design a romantic “marriage place.” And it certainly helped that her story somewhat echoed Ramona’s in that Waterman’s husband, like Ramona’s Alessandro, had died. In her plans for the project, Waterman specifically represented an 103 Victor Walsh, “Una Casa del Pueblo.” 81 old “Spanish Californio” aristocratic house (Figure 3). Based on her experience in the Arts and Crafts movement and her research on adobe structures, she ordered all new materials to be aged and often irregularly installed in order to maintain the building’s picturesque, handcrafted, and decayed appearance. Further, in addition to her research on the Estudillo house itself and on California adobes in general, she paid specific attention to details mentioned in Ramona, seeking to incorporate features from Jackson’s Rancho Moreno (Ramona’s home in the novel). Waterman explained, “The arrangement of the outer court is planned in order to use features, such as the grape arbor, well, oven, artichoke patch, bells, and chapel suggested by ‘Ramona.’” 104 Waterman saw Ramona’s Spanish past as a representation of possibilities for a “peaceful,” less complicated, and “more beautiful future in Southern California.” 105 Her letters even advocated for the importance of “Old Spanish California’s unique character…to the future of the nation.” 106 However, her architecture erased the historical presence of the Estudillo family. This kind of representational conquest literally paved over the Mexican historical presence in Old Town in order to re-create a new version of a Spanish past. Waterman was involved in conquest as she re-created a past in Old Town’s built environment and re-imagined the future of the region and the nation. 104 Waterman, “Specifications for Restoration of Typical Spanish California Dwelling Popularly Known as ‘Marriage Place of Ramona,’ Old Town, San Diego,” 7. 105 Waterman, “Old Spanish California is Important to the Nation,” 3. 106 Ibid. 82 Like many other early twentieth-century preservationists, Waterman was deeply influenced and captivated by Spanish Colonial revival architecture, which exemplified “Old Spanish California’s unique character” and already had deep roots in Southern California. 107 While the Estudillos and other Californio families argued that she was erasing their past, Waterman believed she was showcasing it. As she wrote in her journal: “It seemed to me that the Estudillo house should be restored as a typical aristocratic dwelling of Spanish and Mexican California, representing those days ‘when it had served no mean purpose,’ a relic of that unique California civilization nowhere else to be found and almost forgotten.” 108 Waterman took creative license in her restoration and representation of this civilization “almost forgotten.” For instance, lintels, sills and frames were stained with blue dyes, and the shutters with a pepper-tree green dye. All interior woodwork was oil-stained, and crossbeams, rafters, and posts were built from red cedar instead of pine timber. These rusticated features reflected Waterman’s deep involvement with the Arts and Crafts movement in California, and the revival of Spanish architecture and decorative arts. 109 Waterman was one of many architects of the time who believed she was preserving history rather than re-writing it completely. Her architecture, however, erased the histories and lives of very real inhabitants in the area. 107 Ibid. 108 Waterman, “Specifications for Restoration of Typical Spanish California Dwelling Popularly Known as 'Marriage Place of Ramona,’ Old Town, San Diego,” 8. 109 Ibid. 83 Descendents of the Land Historians have typically focused on elite Anglo actors and their intentions in creating and shaping Southern California’s regional identity. Most works have simultaneously failed to examine and incorporate the responses and resistance of people of color. From William Deverell’s Whitewashed Adobe to Hal Rothman’s Devil’s Bargains, from Carey McWilliams’ Southern California Country to Phoebe Kropp's California Vieja, many authors have largely focused on Anglo perceptions. California Vieja is perhaps the most successful attempt at recovering “alternative memories” of Mexicans and Indians whose past was appropriated and whose present-day existence was belittled in the region. But these memories are much harder to locate in archives overwhelmingly populated with the perspectives of boosters. Kropp recognizes the importance of non-white counter-narratives to the boosters’ dominant perspective that Mexicans’ and Indians’ cultures constituted the backward ways of vanished or vanishing peoples. However, although she addresses the place of Native Americans and Mexican- Americans within this fantasy landscape, she only includes a few of their responses to tourism and the built environment. Kropp mainly describes Anglo perceptions and the ways in which Anglo boosters consistently excluded Mexicans from enjoying the fruits of their labor—Mexicans typically performed the manual labor involved in the building of a Spanish environment. Yet, she fails to adequately address alternative perspectives. In Old Town, San Diego residents of Mexican descent responded to similar discrimination and racialized representations in various ways. 84 The Estudillo family and other Californio descendents were notably disturbed by the Estudillo adobe’s direction. For instance, once the restored house was advertised as “Ramona’s Marriage Place” instead of the “Casa de Estudillo,” descendants of some of the old Californio families who had promised to loan family heirlooms for interior decoration withdrew their offers. In 1910, they protested by boycotting the newly developed Ramona’s Marriage Place and others put up a plaque in protest. A small sign went up briefly in front of the house to indicate that the original inhabitants were the Estudillo family. Clayton had the sign removed within a day and personally threatened the Estudillos, even though he had no proof of who had placed the sign at the corner in front of the house. Although there was no record of what exactly Clayton threatened to do to family members who visibly resisted the tourist attraction, all protests on record following this incident were limited to correspondences through letters. 110 When José Guadalupe Estudillo complained in 1913 that the building was misnamed, William Clayton responded that the building was only appealing because of its “connection with the book written by Helen Hunt Jackson…It would have no value whatever if it were advertised as the Estudillo house.” 111 Descendents of the Estudillo family continued to write letters to Clayton protesting the misrepresentation of their 110 “Marriage Place of Ramona at Old Town is Mecca for Tourists,” San Diego Union, January 2, 1911, 2- 3; “Romance Lives in Old Home of Estudillo,” San Diego Union, Exposition Edition, January 1, 1915; Thomas Powell Getz, The Story of Ramona’s Marriage Place, 8-10; Sculle, “The Power of Myth in Ramona and Ramona’s Marriage Place,” 103; Charles A. Lamb, “The Restoration of the Casa de Estudillo” (unpublished work, SDHS, 1970), 5-6. 111 William Clayton to José Estudillo, San Diego, December 12, 1913, as quoted in Lamb, “The Restoration of the Casa de Estudillo,” 7. 85 history and heritage. In another letter, José Guadalupe Estudillo claimed that he and the other descendents of old Californio families were actually descendents of the land itself and therefore had a stronger connection to the built environment: We came here first and we were the first to build our houses outside of the Mission and Presidio. We are not only Spanish Californios, but we are descendents of the land of San Diego. We cultivated it, we plowed it, we raised cattle, we worked to improve the land and we protected it. Our history is the history of San Diego. 112 This letter was more a plea than a protest. It called for the developers of the Estudillo adobe to acknowledge the family’s history and heritage and it invoked a relationship to the land as its main argument. The family strategically excised Native Americans from the argument and the history. They did so in order to claim a history they honestly felt was theirs alone. Their Spanish forebears were also part of the conquest of Native Americans and their land centuries before. They distinguished themselves as Californios rather than as Mexican, Native American, or Spanish, claiming a regional identity that had its roots in Spanish colonialism and aristocracy. By identifying as Californios, they asserted both an upper-class heritage and a native relationship to the land that simultaneously rejected the Native American presence. Clayton’s next letter in response to the Estudillos’s continued protests was less than cordial. Clayton refused to acknowledge the important role the Estudillo family played in San Diego’s history and landscape. Instead, he argued with the Estudillo 112 While claiming a stake in the land as Californios, José María Estudillo also meant to marginalize the Native Americans who also had claim to this land. José María Estudillo to William Clayton, San Diego, January 26, 1914, José María Estudillo Papers, Document File, SDHS. 86 descendents, inferring that they could not take care of their own property let alone develop it successfully since the adobe was “a Pompeii of ruins” before he came along. At the same time, Clayton acknowledged that “People go see it, [Ramona’s Marriage Place], and become charmed with it merely for what it is, irrespective of . . . [whether] Ramona was married there or not, or whether there was ever any Ramona.” 113 As historian Kevin Starr points out, this mythological Spanish past “had behind it the force of history, in that California began as part of the Spanish Empire.” 114 By portraying California’s past in such romantic, idyllic terms, its Anglo-American promoters, developers, and architects gave the region a new source of tradition and continuity—a new identity connected to Europe and based in a reconfiguration of history. But descendents of Californio families continued to battle boosters and began their own tradition of resistance to private development and the erasure of their history. The grassroots rebellion waged by the Estudillo descendents unfortunately achieved little success because the money to be made on hordes of tourists who visited Ramona’s Marriage Place with pockets full of greenbacks spoke louder than the Estudillo protests. Tourist money encouraged developers to maintain a specific image of San Diego and ignore protests against it. In their resistance to later development, Californio descendents actually forced developers to back down and delayed further building in Old Town. Their success, however, was short-lived. During the twentieth century, 113 William Clayton to José Estudillo, San Diego, March 6, 1914, José María Estudillo Papers, Document File, SDHS. 114 Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1981), 390, 396-97. 87 community activists achieved no lasting institutional change that would protect their history permanently. Nonetheless, these acts of resistance shaped a strong movement for protecting “the people’s history” in San Diego. Ironically, while the actual descendents of Californio families living in Old Town San Diego protested the redevelopment of their neighborhood in the 1910s and 1920s, Mexican immigrants and expatriates living in Southern California typically became ardent fans of Ramona. Most Mexican immigrants intended to return home to the south as soon as they were able. Thus, Ramona’s triumphal move to Mexico City as a rich woman resonated with their own longings and hopes. Additionally, the novel’s condemnation of American injustice towards those with “mixed Indian blood” also resonated with their experience as mestizos facing white racism in Southern California. Even the novel’s nostalgic treatment of the passing of California’s missions spoke to Mexican immigrants. Many of them had witnessed first-hand the lynching of priests and the sacking of churches in the late 1920s. Thus, the novel’s lamentations about secularized Catholic churches and absent priests proved to be powerful imagery for the large population of Catholic Mexicans in Southern California. 115 While the Ramona story and construction of her “Marriage Place” obscured the “real” history of the Estudillo family, the novel and its material symbols were also 115 Dydia DeLyser, Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California (University of Minnesota Press, 2005). The Revolution and the Cristero Rebellion are just two significant examples of anti-clerical violence in the 1920s. The Cristeros Rebellion began in July of 1926 with a protest strike by the Mexican Catholic clergy against President Calles’ strict enforcement of all of the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican constitution. The strike lasted for three years with clergy refusing to perform baptisms, weddings, and burials, and it became violent as both clergy and liberal educators were killed – the former by anti-clerical activists, the latter by supporters of the clergy. 88 understood to be a truly American story about race relations and the triumph of the underdog. Scores of Hollywood films depicted this story and featured the Estudillo adobe as a setting. Those who could not read the book by Helen Hunt Jackson, or simply preferred the power of cinema, could view a cinematic rendition of Ramona directed by D.W. Griffith in 1910 and starring Mary Pickford. Griffith was best known as a groundbreaking filmmaker and for his racist caricatures of people of color in Birth of a Nation. He directed Ramona as a romantic, idyllic story of racial order. While the first cinematic Ramona was not shot on location at the historic adobe, other Hollywood films used the Casa de Estudillo as a set because directors found it provided an exotic setting in Southern California that could stand-in for far-off lands. The myth of Ramona and the Estudillo adobe certainly spoke to Anglo movie-goers as celebratory spaces for benign exoticism and Anglo American superiority. Hollywood continued to promote this lucrative Ramona myth on the silent screen. In 1912, cameraman William Paley of the Nestor Company shot his first documentary, Estudillo House California, which played upon the Ramona connection. The following year the Edison Company shot scenes from The Old Monk’s Tale, featuring Harold Lloyd, one of the great silent film comedians, in his first role. In 1916, a few scenes from The Americano, written by San Diegan Anita Loos and starring Douglas Fairbanks as a young dare-devil American mining engineer in Central America, were shot at the adobe. A year later, the house appeared in Ashes of Hate, a story of male rivalry for a woman’s love directed by George Melford and produced by Jesse Lasky, who founded the first feature film company in Hollywood with his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn. Through 89 its many leading roles on the silver screen, the Casa de Estudillo, or “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” came to embody California history. It was linked to a Spanish fantasy past featuring dons, Indians, señoritas, and monks. Douglas Fairbanks, the epitome of American manhood in his heyday, filmed at the house too. Furthermore, its lush gardens were featured as part of a “Mediterranean paradise” and agriculture industry that came to define Southern California. In 1927, a more popular version of Ramona was released starring Dolores Del Rio, a Mexican actress who had only just emigrated to Hollywood two years earlier. Adoring Mexican audiences enthusiastically packed movie houses to see their favorite new actress as the heroic Ramona. 116 Clearly, the Estudillo adobe/“Ramona’s Marriage Place” was meaningful to Old Town’s Latina/o inhabitants and the many tourists who visited it, but for very different reasons. Tourists, Ramonamania, and Spanish Fantasies Architectural representations of old Spanish adobes and mission structures were quite common, especially in Southern California, but the real commercialization of Old Town’s Estudillo adobe started when the attraction was leased to Thomas “Tommy” Getz, a vaudeville and minstrel actor from the Midwest who would sell the place and the fictional novel, Ramona, as historical fact. He opened the restored landmark as a museum on May 1, 1910, to glowing reviews. While most tourists seemed to enjoy the fantasy of Ramona’s Marriage Place, one agitated woman wrote in the Overland Monthly 116 “Movie Ramona Even More Popular,” San Diego Union, June 2, 1927, 2-3 90 that “Romance and materialism rub sides together severely at San Diego, to-day, since the [new] trolley car now carries us from the heart of the city to the very door of ‘Ramona’s [Marriage Place]’ in ‘Old Town.’” While this writer was certainly disturbed at the intense commodification of the place, she still fantasized about the hero and heroine as she exclaimed a few pages later: “Ramona and Alessandro! In your footsteps we have trod for a few hours, and we feel that we have learned to know you better than ever before.” 117 The New York Times announced, “Old Town is waking!…At the very door of one of the oldest adobe houses in the hamlet, which has been entirely restored, as nearly as possible along the old lines.” 118 This article, appearing only a month after the house officially opened, was already confusing the myth of Ramona as a historic fact, of which the material artifact of the Estudillo adobe was evidence. Multiple articles of the time celebrated the fine job Waterman had done in “restoring Ramona’s Marriage Place to its full splendor.” They lauded the historical accuracy of her work and praised the house as a living memory. Backed by Spreckels and Clayton—not to mention the increasing revenues from visitors to the house—Getz continued to advertise the building as “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” not the “Casa de Estudillo.” To celebrate its opening, Getz staged the play “Ramona” in the courtyard during the autumn when it would be most romantic: “the stars above, and the big mellow moon, will peer down upon the players and their 117 A . K. Glover, “In Ramona’s footsteps.” Overland Monthly, 1910, 406-10 118 Allen Henry Wright, “Awakening of Old Town,” New York Times, 21 June 1910. 91 audiences.” 119 Sightseers traveled by streetcars labeled “Ramona’s Home”—this inaccuracy infuriated Waterman; after all, the building was not Ramona’s Home, but her Marriage Place. 120 In his souvenir shop, Getz sold Native American beadwork and baskets, mission statuary, deluxe editions of the novel Ramona, and a large number of postcards, all of them stamped with “Ramona’s Marriage Place” on the reverse side. The grounds were decorated with Native American handicrafts, wagon wheels, and Spanish-era curios. Each year, dozens of newlyweds were married in the musty, candle-lit chapel, which featured a centuries-old, hand-carved Black Madonna. Getz gave daily lectures on local history, much of it sentimental and folkloric. As he put it in his self-published pamphlet, The Story of Ramona’s Marriage Place, “his daily lecture on the history of the old house, with its memories of Ramona, is a constant treat to all who enter its restored and beautiful walls.” Getz’s postcards, sent all over the country, enticed thousands of visitors with fanciful images of the courtyard fountain, mission bells, and garden of flowering shrubs and fruit 119 “May Stage Ramona at Old Town,” San Diego Sun, 16 August 1910: 1. 120 Waterman, “Specifications for Restoration of Typical Spanish California Dwelling Popularly Known as ‘Marriage Place of Ramona,’ Old Town, San Diego,” 3. Figure 4: Rear courtyard and gardens of Casa de Estudillo, mid- 1920s. Postcard from the author’s collection. 92 trees (Figures 3 and 4). They advertised the notoriety of San Diego to the world and represented a history that embodied the Spanish fantasy past Carey McWilliams, Phoebe Kropp and others have since duly noted. Carey McWilliams saw the combination of embracing the “Spanish past” and erasing the presence of people of color—particularly Mexicans and Native Americans— as evidence of Southern California’s xenophobia. Phoebe Kropp’s California Vieja follows in the footsteps of Carey McWilliams; she concedes the power of both xenophobia and a general public fear of modernity, but rejects the notion that these anxieties explain the entirety of Southern California’s Spanish fantasy past. 121 “Blaming modern angst is an attractive option,” she notes, “but to suggest that worry about the present leads directly to the pursuit of relief in the past makes memory merely an instinctive, almost reflexive reaction to change, requiring little thought or action.” Kropp insists—and the restoration of the Estudillo adobe demonstrates—that cultural memory was (and is) more complicated than a simple “defensive psychological compensation for groups feeling fragility.” In fact, what motivated Waterman’s and other boosters’ Spanish fantasies was not anxiety about the present, but confidence in and hope for the region’s future. To those promoters—such as Tommy Getz and John D. Spreckels—who profited most from selling this California dream, “the Spanish past spelled growth, not retreat.” 122 121 Homi Bhabha, “The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse” in Visual Culture: The Reader, Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, eds. (London: Sage Publications, 2005) 370. 122 Kropp, 4. 93 The Spanish past reflected and reinforced notions of national memory, public space, and a perceived future for Southern California. As the structure of the Estudillo Adobe demonstrates, the fictional and the factual are intertwined. This should come as no surprise, since as Dydia DeLyser has stated in Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California (2005), “myth and fantasy play an unusually large role in the social construction of all travel and tourist sights.” 123 And, “it should not be assumed that either the fictional or the factual have priority in framing...[a given] sight.” 124 The flexibility of structures’ meanings and significances and the ways they change in value and form over time figure prominently in Old Town San Diego as well as other “historic” sites. This is particularly evident in the meanings given to the Casa de Estudillo by Spreckels, Waterman, Getz, and visitors. Indeed, visitors at these tourist sites actively created meaning, and linked the space to their public and private lives and histories. Of course, it is not the house, the garden, the sign reading “Ramona’s Marriage Place” or the souvenirs in the store that inherently have meaning; rather, we give meaning to these objects and places. This is precisely what visitors to the Case de Estudillo did. People weaved these histories—fictional stories—into the Casa de Estudillo and other places to construct identities and meanings as individuals and as a nation wishing to be disconnected from Mexico and connected instead to a Spanish fantasy past. 123 DeLyser, 17 (emphasis in original). 124 This changes, however, when Old Town and the Estudillo adobe, by default, are designated a state historic park. This designation makes it seem that everything in the park should be historically accurate. 94 Entrepreneurs like Tommy Getz actually believed in the story of Ramona and so he was happy to promote the place. 125 Spreckels was interested in making money, and Ramona was a surefire attraction. Ramona fans who visited the site were sometimes just curious, but others were like religious zealots on a pilgrimage. The latter group wove the story of Ramona into their own lives in different ways. Some used the literary text and a Ramona-related landscape to create newly meaningful places and experiences on their tourist agenda. Others, like those who were married at the Casa de Estudillo, enfolded the place into a very meaningful personal event. Multiple visitors took “relics” with them, such as cut flowers, bought souvenirs, photographs on their newly portable Brownie cameras. Still others carved their names and left business cards or handwritten messages to Ramona and the padres. 126 Perhaps they sought to leave a piece of themselves behind at this important national monument. These practices demonstrate that visitors felt connected to Ramona and to the built environment. This house was once a proud survivor of conquest owned by an old Californio family, the Estudillos, but it also held significance to a multitude of strangers. Its importance, however, was not in its Mexican origin or its walls as witnesses of U.S. conquest, but in a fantasy past that associated California with Spain rather than Mexico. Spreckels, Waterman, and Getz created in the 125 Victor Walsh’s “Una Casa del Pueblo.” 126 This practice, of course, is not confined to Ramona-related sites. Leaving objects at holy places and carving one's name at sites of significance have been important tourist practices for centuries, and they continue today at such varied places as the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington DC, and Elvis Presley's home at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee; See Sturken 1997; and Hass forthcoming 2009. 95 Casa de Estudillo a “sense of place” that was extremely meaningful to multiple people— dispite its historical “inaccuracy.” It is clear that people made meanings out of the place, but what precisely those meanings were and how they were linked to the more public narratives of tourist sites is notoriously difficult to pin down. Audience reception—whether to visual or material culture, landscapes, or tourist attractions—is one of many great challenges facing scholars. Still, it is evident that individual tourists, so often disregarded in the scholarship and derided in works about the Ramona myth, shaped the landscapes they visited and contoured our social memories and histories. In doing so, they experienced and expressed empire in their daily lives. It was tourists who, by visiting the decrepit Estudillo adobe in large numbers, assured developers that it could be a profitable tourist attraction. And it was, at least in part, the practices they established there—of quiet, reverent reflection, buying (or taking) souvenirs, and leaving something of themselves behind—that allowed for Ramona’s Marriage Place to flourish as the most commercial and most commodified of all Ramona attractions. To say this is not to romanticize the practices of tourists, or to attribute too much agency to what could be argued to be insignificant actions, but rather to draw attention to actual tourist practices, in an attempt to understand how formative and transformative they can be, particularly at the edges of empire. 96 Conquest Beyond the Edges of Empire By the time Parks and Recreation took over in the late 1960s, Old Town had grown into a tourism dynamo. It was so strong that when the state took down the “marriage place” sign, the visiting hordes scarcely noticed. Thousands of tourists still materialize every week to browse the historic buildings, watch the fountain burble, listen to mariachis, sip margaritas, and eat enchiladas in a festive courtyard setting. Today, according to park guides, most of them have never even heard of Ramona. (But those who have can still buy Kate Phillips’s 2003 biography of Helen Hunt Jackson in the gift shop.) One cannot say whether the Casa de Estudillo would have survived without those decades under Ramona’s “protection.” But one thing is certain: people make meanings out of places, especially places they can connect with, whether through literature, fantasy, or an imagined past. The tourism industry—including city boosters, entrepreneurs, and individual tourists—has worked and continues to work to re-create San Diego as a place with a specific romantic history. The transformation of the Casa de Estudillo into Ramona’s Marriage Place illustrates that “historic” Spanish preservation is not necessarily a movement composed entirely of Anglo elites wielding the heavy hand of empire. Preservation has been fueled by daily interpretation and memory entrepreneurship based on a belief in the future of the region, which was drawn along racial lines. This has been a creative business class’s endeavor to design, build, and reform the future city and the nation, even as they celebrate nostalgic desires. In particular, Max Page’s study of Manhattan explains the processes involved in the 97 development of space in urban places throughout the United States. Whether in New York or Southern California, Page demonstrates a solid link between the pursuit of profit, especially through development of space, and a search for the past—the creation (rather than an attempt at excavation) of cultural memories in the developed landscape. This active re-creation of cultural memories is part of representational conquest and the lived experiences of empire. Tourism at Ramona’s Marriage Place in Old Town San Diego creates a cultural landscape of empire expressed through a racial hierarchy and an archive of buildings and souvenirs. People have negotiated their roles in this landscape in multiple ways; national identity and notions of empire become part of daily life in these complicated representations. In the 1930s Old Town became a replica of a sleepy Spanish town. Residents and tourists visited the place for a look at the region’s supposed romantic past. The Ramona craze lasted into the late 1930s when the threat of totalitarianism and wartime upheaval in Europe and Asia redirected the attention of the nation. While Old Town symbolized exactly what its name conveys: an Old Town of the past, others wanted to look ahead to the future—a future involving a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary, beyond the edges of U.S. empire. Just a few miles away from Old Town, the development of tropical-themed Shelter Island in the San Diego Bay proved a lucrative investment on multiple levels. In Chapter Two, I examine the turn to tropical architecture, which helped broker the expansionist needs of the United States as Hawai’i was transformed from a minor Pacific colony to an American tourist and military stronghold. 98 CHAPTER TWO Shelter Island: Creating Place Across the Pacific San Diego played a critical role in the expansion of U.S. empire to Hawai’i. Once conceptualized as a place where tourists could experience the romantic Spanish past, San Diego was developed in the 1930s to serve as the gateway to a new Pan-Pacific-island fantasy world of leisure, including San Diego’s Shelter Island and the Hawaiian Islands. I argue that ideologies behind Shelter Island’s development were integral to the conquest of Hawai’i that culminated in statehood in 1959. From the 1930s to the 1960s, a tropical craze swept the Western United States and all things Hawaiian became essential publicity props for developers and the tourist industry in both San Diego and Hawai’i. Newly constructed island architecture in San Diego reinforced the colonial relationship between the U.S. mainland and Hawai’i while making the territory desirable and familiar to the American public—a necessary step in the statehood process. 127 Americans who built and consumed these cultural expressions on Shelter Island indulged in a fantasy of conquest featuring Hawai’i as a different (also read: exotic) and welcoming place, willing to submit to the advances of U.S. empire—in the forms of tourism and military occupation. This chapter examines the conquest of land and sea after the Second World War as San Diego developers transitioned from building a Spanish fantasy past in the region to 127 Hawai’i was established as the fiftieth state in the United States in 1959. 99 creating a new “island” culture that reflected the extension of U.S. empire into new “tropical paradises” in the Pacific Rim. Throughout the chapter I use biographies of important figures in both San Diego and Honolulu to show the connected histories of both cities. These figures and material examples of a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary in the built environment of San Diego and Honolulu show how conquest and the extension of U.S. empire in the twentieth century was communicated through architecture and the built environment. Adria Imada’s “Aloha America” documents how tourism and the “imperial hula circuits of the 1930s and 1940s produced...an ‘imagined intimacy’” and “a fantasy of reciprocal attachment” between Hawai'i and the United States. This “‘imagined intimacy’ made it impossible, indeed unimaginable, for Americans to part from their colony.” 128 I build on this argument to demonstrate that this “fantasy of reciprocal attachment” has been traversing the Pacific for well over a century. Long before hula became a favorite spectacle for Americans, haole (foreign, and usually Anglo) Hawaiian elite conquered the land and created their own versions of island landscape and architecture. This tropical built environment helped to establish a regional identity, connected the Islands to the mainland, and was subsequently exported across the Pacific by developers and tourists— particularly those traveling between the West Coast of the United States and the Islands. At the turn of the twentieth century, a specific architectural style passed back and forth across the Pacific, a transfer of culture which had everything to do with the extension of 128 See Adria Imada’s dissertation, “Aloha America: Hawaiian Entertainment and Cultural Politics in the U.S. Empire,” submitted to New York University, May 2003, 241. 100 U.S. empire to Hawai’i. The development of Shelter Island in San Diego demonstrates these connections across the Pacific between conquest, the military, tourism, and the built environment. A group of prominent men, supported by military activities in both areas, set out to conquer the land and the sea through architectural styles and the shaping of public spaces and landscapes in Honolulu and San Diego. The built environments in these places became physical and cultural manifestations of the continuing extension of U.S. empire into the Pacific. These developers produced both successful tourist economies and grievous health hazards while erasing the histories of both places. Collaborations between wealthy private contractors and regional military investment operated as conquest on multiple levels: the conquest of the environment and natural resources as developers of Shelter Island and Waik īkī destroyed wetlands and local industries; the conquest of public space as elite investors pushed working-class populations out of the areas to create a yachting destination in San Diego and ramp up the tourism industry in Honolulu; and finally, the conquest of Hawai’i as Americans pushed to make the territory into the 50 th state and “crowning jewel” of U.S. empire. 129 John D. Spreckels Long before Hawai’i became U.S. tourists’ most popular tropical destination, widely associated with “hula girls,” and “military boys,” U.S. businessmen, military 129 It is important to note that both San Diego and Hawai’i are spaces in which the native peoples were originally displaced from their lands. 101 personnel, and city officials in San Diego imagined the Pacific paradise as the perfect place to “grow” U.S. imperialism and capital. One San Diego politician announced in 1905, “Honolulu’s soil is eager for the rich seeds of investment…[;] watered by the great expanse of ocean between, American dollars will grow the most in this paradise of the Pacific.” 130 Another article in the San Diego Union, owned and promoted by John D. Spreckels, stated that San Diego’s harbors welcomed the “white sails [of boats] arriving from Honolulu” because as “siblings across the Pacific Ocean, we are [cities] connected by the lifeblood of the Pacific… [;] we will grow together.” 131 As the twentieth century progressed, connections between San Diego and Honolulu became stronger through tourism, military maritime routes, and architectural developments. Businessmen, military personnel, and city officials all worked for their own ends to solidify and maintain these ties through the built environment. The life of John D. Spreckels highlight some of the ways in which the histories of the American Southwest and the Pacific Rim have become intertwined through individuals, economies, and empire. Spaces across the Pacific were linked by multiple threads and Spreckels’ life highlights some of the ways a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary came to be communicated by and promoted through structures in San Diego and Honolulu. John Diedrich Spreckels was an entrepreneur who owned and invested in everything from sugar to transportation. His story exemplifies some of the ways in which 130 San Diego City Counsel member Phillip Hinkney quoted in the San Diego Union, 25 April 1905. 131 Bob Barber, “San Diego Bay Receives Honolulu Yachts,” San Diego Union 4 February 1908. 102 Anglo elite investors worked to shape cities and economies across the Pacific, spreading U.S. empire and capitalism. In the first two decades of the 1900s, debates over how San Diego should develop—as an industrial, metropolitan rival of Los Angeles and San Francisco to the north, or as a resort enclave for leisure and aesthetic environmentalism—surfaced as arguments for either “smokestacks” or “geraniums.” 132 By attracting the Navy early on, San Diego could have both. One of the most influential individuals in turn-of-the- twentieth century San Diego—and a man who recognized the import and benefits of the Navy to his own commercial enterprises—was John D. Spreckels. After the severe depression of the 1890s, Spreckels’ “deep pockets enabled [him] to acquire” a commanding position at a time of economic crisis. 133 The son of Claus Spreckels, a “German-born, San Francisco-based Hawaii sugar king,” John Spreckels seemed to inherit his father’s capitalist expertise. After working in Hawai’i for four years, John, a young man in his twenties, started the Oceanic Steamship Company, which operated between Hawai’i, the Pacific Coast of the U.S. mainland, New Zealand, and Australia. An avid yachting enthusiast, he first “discovered” San Diego in 1887 while cruising along the Pacific coast on his yacht, the Lurline. 134 Impressed by the opportunities for expansion of his businesses in San Diego, he became determined to “create there what his 132 Starr, x. 133 Starr, 102. 134 Starr, 101. For more on John D. Spreckels, see “John D. Spreckels (1853–1926)” in San Diego Historical Society, “San Diego Biographies,” <https://www.sandiegohistory.org/bio/spreckels/ spreckels.htm>; see also H. Austin Adams, The Man: John D. Spreckels (1924). 103 father had created in Hawaii: a diversified fiefdom, which eventually included a water company, a waterfront warehouse, choice parcels of downtown real estate,” virtually the whole island of Coronado and its most lucrative tourist destination, the Hotel del Coronado, the San Diego Union newspaper, as well as his own streetcar line, which led directly to his other acquisition, the Casa de Estudillo, also known as “Ramona’s Marriage Place.” 135 As Ramona’s Marriage Place was becoming an important local and national attraction, Spreckels and members of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce realized the importance of developing the city’s national reputation. As Kevin Starr explains in The Dream Endures (1997), city officials proposed that San Diego should use an international exposition to develop its tourist economy and to propel the city into the national imagination. This exposition would celebrate the “forthcoming completion of the San Diego and Arizona Railway, connecting San Diego to the East, and the also-scheduled completion of the Panama Canal, which would, at long last, stimulate San Diego properly to develop its harbor,” since San Diego would become the first major U.S. port of call north of the isthmus. 136 Spreckels and his supporters desired an exposition to rival the greatest of international expositions, a big, flashy fair that would attract tourists from across the nation as well as locals, all of whom would inevitably need to use Spreckels’ streetcars to get to the festivities. He recruited the big-name, East Coast architect, 135 Starr, 102. 136 City officials who believed San Diego should become a large, global city argued that up to this point, San Diego had not been able or willing to develop its harbor to accommodate increasing commerce and Navy presence; Starr, 103–104. 104 Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, who very much wanted the job. 137 Goodhue was chosen over Irving Gill, and under Goodhue’s influence San Diego abandoned its Progressive, minimalistic aesthetic ideal in favor of an ornate, commercially successful architectural future. 138 Goodhue and the profit-motivated architectural designs attracted tourists and developers from across the nation. 139 By the end of the Panama-California Fairs, San Diego had begun to distinguish itself from gritty, industrialized Los Angeles. To prevent its “Los Angelesization,” and to ensure its industrial growth while remaining a “privileged urban enclave,” San Diego concentrated on its relationship with the Navy. The bond between San Diego and the U.S. Navy was first sealed a decade before the Exposition through a tragic event that also solidified the naval connection between Honolulu and San Diego. On July 21, 1905, the Boiler of the USS Bennington exploded, killing sixty-four enlisted men and one officer. The gunboat had just arrived in San Diego harbor from Honolulu and became known as the “most terrible explosion aboard an American vessel.” 140 San Diego held a mass burial service at Point Loma, scalded and maimed sailors were treated in city hospitals, and San Diegans kept vigil as rescue parties in the bay pulled bodies from the wreckage. The tragedy, in the words of 137 Starr, 107. 138 Irving Gill taught Hazel Wood Waterman, the architect of Ramona's Marriage Place. He was also the original developer of the architectural aesthetic that would pervade much of Southern California throughout the twentieth century, the traditional mission-style adobe red-brick-roofed houses. 139 Starr, 107. One of the reasons San Diegans embraced Goodhue was because he was a famous architect who always attracted money-spending crowds. The traditional architecture up to this time was more understated and less commercially sellable to an American public interested in grand Spanish colonial architecture. 140 Ibid., 109. 105 Starr, “bonded San Diego to the Navy in a powerful and enduring way.” Subsequently, the naval routes between Honolulu and San Diego became even more important as the strategic position of both cities was evident by the late 1920s and early 1930s. 141 Spreckels attended the memorial services for the fallen soldiers and developed relationships with top Navy officials. It was not long before he also provided large sums of money for the development of Navy maritime routes between Hawai’i and Southern California as a means of investing in the future of both places. 142 As a result of his investment, Spreckels’ steamship company received unofficial protection from the Navy. He also purchased land from the Navy in the San Diego Bay for yachting—beginning Shelter Island’s yachting culture in the early 1900s. 143 Spreckels assisted the Navy and, in turn, the Navy assisted Spreckels, establishing trade and military routes from Honolulu to San Diego. Spreckels understood this commercial union with the Navy as an “organic” and quite lucrative situation. In a letter Speckels wrote from Honolulu to his wife in San Diego, he stated: The native population [of Hawai’i] is giving way to the foreign. The destiny of the islands resides with our trade routes to California…The fruit is ripe for picking; we scarcely have to shake the tree in order to bring the luscious fruit into our lap. The Navy will help us in this cause. 144 141 Ibid., 110. 142 “Spreckels Supports Our Navy Boys,” San Diego Union 17 August 1905. 143 Starr, 110; The proximity of San Diego to Hawai’i was important to the navy and yachting enthusiasts. Depending on the size of the yacht or ship and the conditions on the ocean, it could take anywhere between two weeks and a month to sail between Southern California and the Hawaiian Islands. 144 John D. Spreckels, Letter to his wife, Lillie Siebein, 1909. San Diego Historical Society. 106 Spreckels understood the importance of his own commercial trade routes between the Hawaiian Islands and the California Coast. At this time, in 1909, he was living in San Diego and his local Navy connections helped to establish and maintain his trans-Pacific trade routes. It is clear from multiple letters that Spreckels knew he was in the right place at the right time in terms of his own investments across the Pacific. Spreckels influenced San Diego’s history in multiple ways. He bought enormous plots of land, he invested in the industrialization of the area and he brought a strong yachting culture to the San Diego Harbor that still exists today in Shelter Island. Further, he established routes and major economic connections between Honolulu and San Diego, which ultimately aided the push for Hawaiian statehood half a century later. A Pan-Pacific Tropical Imaginary and The Built Environment In the years prior to World War II, with Spreckels’ help, the Pacific colony and Pacific fleet grew and became more important to national security. The Hawaiian Islands became the most likely place from which the United States could assert itself against Japan. While Spreckels was finding new ways to protect and expand his Pacific investments, Navy recruits stationed in San Diego or Honolulu traveled Spreckels’ trade routes for military purposes. By the 1930s, naval officers became quite familiar with both cities equally as they traveled the well-established Pacific maritime paths between San Diego and Honolulu. This meant that Americans needed to define Hawai’i and Hawaiians for their own interests. Concomitant with Spreckels’ investments in the 107 region, new modes of tourism to the Pacific and American military operations in Hawai’i mounted. Yet, this was still an era before jet planes easily delivered Americans to the Islands. The majority of Americans came to experience Hawai’i through a perceived tropical culture that was expressed in the built environment. Shelter Island in San Diego Bay is one such place where a tropical atmosphere became popular. Based on the yachting culture established by Spreckels and built with popular notions of a Pan-Pacific Tropical Imaginary, the mudbank-turned-island became a tourist destination for Southern California elite and defined what “tropical,” “Polynesian,” and “Hawai’i” meant to Americans. In the United States, and particularly in Southern California, spaces like Shelter Island symbolize how a place’s built environment is a product and process of history. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, what was to become Shelter Island was only a “shoal or mudbank” that surfaced in low tide. It was first charted as an insignificant mud heap by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1859—just over a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Despite its precarious position as an unconnected land mass only visible at low tide, the inlet had been a popular spot for sailors to moor their boats; wooden piers jutted from the sandbar and from the mainland even before the 1850s. The small banana-shaped inlet slowly shifted over many years, growing and shrinking as soil and sand were carried down by the San Diego River and deposited layer after layer with the ebb and flow of the tide. Around 1869, Chinese immigrants established a fishing camp and boatyard in the area, and in the early 1900s, the whole region was a prominent fishing village mostly occupied by 108 immigrant fishermen and women who worked for the local tuna canneries on Cannery Row until 1934. From the 1890s through the 1930s it was also home to a vibrant Portuguese colony where multiple generations of tuna-packing families worked long hours for little pay. Then, from 1934 through the end of World War II, the navy deepened the San Diego Bay and dumped all of its excess materials along with ammunition from the war on the sandbar. Working-class fishing families sometimes lived on their boats moored to the island, while others lived in nearby Point Loma and took the bus to work. This multiethnic working-class history, however, is nowhere to be seen in the contemporary marketing for this tourist friendly tropical fantasy. Part of the reason this history of hard labor provided by immigrants was flattened into a Pacific-themed fantasy for men and the military was in the aforementioned history of San Diego as it decided to become a resort town for the elite rather than an industrial city like Los Angeles. When San Diego decided its fate as an aesthetically pleasing tourist destination, the space we now call Shelter Island was only visible in low tide and was used to moor fishing boats. After commercial yachting and naval maritime industries established a relationship between Honolulu and San Diego, entrepreneurs and investors endorsed their own vision of San Diego as a Polynesian paradise. Since Shelter Island was built by men and mostly for male desires, elite leisure activities, and commercial gain, it is quite important to look at the importance of class and capitalism to architecture. Traditionally, architecture has been seen as the design and production of buildings by professional architects. These structures are then discussed as 109 completed, self-contained objects in terms of style and aesthetics. Authors such as Anthony D. King (1980) and Thomas A. Markus (1993) have extended this discussion by examining buildings as the products of the processes of capitalism and architecture as an articulation of the political, social, and cultural values of mostly dominant classes and elite social groups. 145 Certainly, the stories of John Spreckels, and later John Bate, director of the San Diego Port, and C. Arnholt Smith, a wealthy local developer, reflect this analysis in their development of San Diego spaces. However, the work of King and Markus takes gender for granted. Beatriz Colomina’s edited volume Sexuality and Space (1992), alongside the anthology Gender Space Architecture (2000 and 2007), edited by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, provide an interdisciplinary context for a gendered critique of architecture and the built environment. 146 This examination of architecture, class, and capitalism also requires an analysis of the relationship between desire, space, and masculinity. Foundational works on this relationship by Joel Sanders (Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, 1996), Francesca Hughes (The Architect: Reconstructing Her Practice, 1996), and Diane Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman (eds. of The Sex of Architecture, 1997) examine different aspects of gendered space, but none of them confront conquest and empire as 145 Anthony D. King, ed., Buildings and Society (London: Routledge, 1980); Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power (London: Routledge, 1993). 146 Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992); Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, eds., Gender Space Architecture (2000 and 2007). 110 essential driving forces in the development of the built environment. 147 As Susan Torre suggests in her essay, “Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,” these spaces provide a setting for the playing out of gender relations, particularly in terms of male patriarchy—which is one of the ideological foundations of U.S. empire in the twentieth century. 148 These authors also demonstrate architectural space as a form of gendered representation. And Leslie Kanes Weisman suggests that we must consider architecture as a process influenced by social, political, cultural, and historical contexts and understand it as something that is given meaning beyond its completed structure and design. In doing so, architectural practice becomes “thought of as buildings, images and written scripts, as well as designs, theories and histories and their various intersections.” 149 I agree with Weisman and argue that we must consider architecture as always (in part) a representation. As well as existing as a material, three-dimensional object created out of our own ideals, architecture also exists in the form of architects’ sketches, drawings, plans, sections, elevations, publicity brochures, and even newspaper 147 Joel Sanders, ed., Stud: Architectures of Masculinity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Francesca Hughes, ed., The Architect: Reconstructing Her Practice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996); Diane Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman, eds., The Sex of Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams Publisher, 1997); also see Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson, eds., Architecture and Feminism (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); and Duncan McCorquodale, Katerina Rüedi and Sarah Wigglesworth, eds., Desiring Practices (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 1996). 148 Susan Torre, “Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Matyo,” The Sex of Architecture, Diane Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman, eds. (New York: Harry N. Abrams Publisher, 1997). 149 Leslie Kanes Weisman, “Women’s Environmental Rights: A Manifesto” in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, eds. Gender Space Architecture (2000 and 2007). 111 articles (written descriptions of places, spaces, and structures as well as photographs). Architectural structures also contain ideologies of gender, race, class, and empire in their aesthetic details, designs, and intended uses. As representations, architectural structures must be examined within the social and historical context in which they were built as well as the circumstances in which they exist and are used today. Since many discussions about the gendering of space as “public” versus “private” emerged in relation to the term “built environment” rather than “architecture” as it is traditionally defined—as the work of well-known, mostly male architects like Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue—this chapter also focuses on structures and spaces not traditionally considered to be “architecture.” The environment of Shelter Island—both its development from a lowly mudbank into a bustling island and the styles and purposes of the physical structures that were built up on that island—must be examined in relation to the ideologies that drove their production. These buildings, alongside the leisure spaces they offer to those wealthy enough to patronize them, also function as a form of cultural representation that is part of the mass consumption, appropriation, and conquest of the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific. In other words, Shelter Island is a space created out of the excesses or waste products—artillery shells, sludge from the dredging of the bay, and old bunker materials—of the U.S. military industry for men; it houses expensive male- dominated yacht clubs and is dominated by a Pacific architectural style that has once again reconstructed a space that was already conquered by Euro-American men. The story of the island’s development reveals intimate connections across the Pacific between 112 conquest, the military, tourism, and the influences these three “industries” have had on the built environment of the region. Conquest of Land and Sea One of the key figures in developing Shelter Island was John Bate, the port director of San Diego during the 1950s. Since his death in 1983, he has been remembered as the “John Wayne of the harbor,” an almost mythical character who single-handedly decided the fate of San Diego’s bay, and who was behind the development of Shelter Island. In one article, an old friend of Bate stated with fondness that “John sort of shaped the harbor. There were lots of mud sloughs, areas that were really not usable, more of an eyesore than anything else. He turned the harbor around.” The article goes on to mention that Bate, along with a few colleagues from the Port District, including military personnel, and wealthy shipbuilder, C. Arnholt Smith, wanted to turn a sand bar near Point Loma into a finger of land to support restaurants, hotels, boat slips, and a fishing pier. This project, nicknamed “Bate’s Folly” because of intense opposition to it by some San Diego residents, later became Shelter Island. The articles tell a story about how Bate fought long and hard for his island. 150 In particular, he earned his stubborn reputation as a “Bulldog of the Bay” when he fought with residents of Point Loma who didn’t want the development of Shelter Island to block their lovely view of the San Diego Harbor. Bate eventually won the majority 150 Grant Grossman, “Port Innovator John Bate, 78, Dies,” San Diego Union 29 April 1983. 113 vote of San Diego residents, and his determination to build this small island in the bay as a Polynesian paradise on the mainland reflected not only his desire for capital investment in the area but also his personal affection for the Hawaiian islands and everything they represent. In a letter to C. Arnholt Smith, Bate stated that Smith’s idea to construct a tropical-themed island was “perfect for San Diego. All the Snow Birds will come to San Diego as their Polynesian destination. They won’t even need to leave the mainland because everything is right here [in San Diego].” This statement shows Bate’s excitement about the possibilities for making money on the development. Later in the same letter Bate insists that the Polynesian architecture, alongside “[t]hose Hawaiian sounds coming from each hotel[,] will arouse memories of the islands, the swaying palms like beautiful women swaying with the island music.” 151 Bate’s letter reveals his own sexual fantasies, which inspired his designs for the built environment of Shelter Island. Bate’s desires are shared by many American men and belong to the history of colonizing relationships in which native women are sexualized and desired as objects to be possessed. Bate and Smith developed Shelter Island into a tropical paradise, complete with hula dancers who performed at the Kona Kai private yachting club. The two men engaged in this sexualized conquest of the land and the built environment as the United States was also extending its empire to the Pacific Rim and the Hawaiian Islands. In the spirit of John D. Spreckels, John Bate, then-director of the port of San Diego, developed the burgeoning island of military debris and hazardous materials into 151 John Bate, letter to C. Arnholt Smith, n.d., San Diego Historical Society. 114 the artificial island we now call Shelter Island. Bate got this idea from the “successful” dredging of the Ala Wai canal in Honolulu to drain Waik īkī’s swamplands. In a speech he gave to the San Diego Harbor Commission, Bate argued for the project, suggesting that San Diego’s Shelter Island could be an island paradise “…like Hawaii’s Honolulu. The dredging worked in Hawaii. It will work here too,” he exclaimed to the meeting of city officials and private developers. 152 The canal ostensibly was created to clean up Waik īk ī’s so-called swamps, which harbored mosquitoes feared as carriers of disease. However, the engineering project was really undertaken as a reclamation endeavor, to create land suitable for development into expensive commercial and residential real estate. Although the enterprise was a gigantic commercial deal orchestrated by two businessmen, Walter F. Dillingham and Lucius E. Pinkham, the groundwork for reclamation was laid by Sanford B. Dole’s republic, which stole Hawai’i’s government from the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and was backed by none other than John D. Spreckles, the same sugar magnate who developed Old Town in San Diego. This conquest of the land and the government by prominent haole investors translates across the Pacific to San Diego. In both places, the purported “clean-up” actually ruined the wetlands in Waik īkī and San Diego Bay. Instead, they produced landfills that harbor some of the most polluted areas in the Hawaiian Islands and in Southern California. Additionally, Waik īkī’s farmers lost their livelihoods and residents lost their homes. Before the Ala 152 Speech given by John Bate to the San Diego Harbor Commission, 13 July 1932. 115 Wai Canal, Waik īkī was a site where agriculture and aquaculture thrived. It was carefully tended by Native Hawaiians and mostly Asian immigrants who worked in Hawai’i as contract farm labor. Although powerful haole businessmen ultimately displaced these individuals, their cultivation has left an enduring imprint on the region. Those who experienced Waik īkī as farmland have shared their experiences and knowledge in oral histories and critics of the canal’s effects have protested and fought to clean up the Ala Wai. In San Diego, the wetlands have been reduced by approximately 99 percent in the development of Shelter Island, Harbor Island, and Mission Bay in San Diego. It is hard to overemphasize the enormity of the environmental damage recorded in the building of Mission Bay and Shelter Island: by one estimate, dredging the area reduced the space available for natural wildlife reproduction and the basic biological processes of the wetlands from 4,600 acres to 46 acres. The result of the dredging and channeling was the extinction of marine species and plant life in the bay, pollution and sewage runoff problems, and unsafe water conditions. 153 By the late 1940s, the San Diego Harbor Commission completed the island with the continuation of the naval dredging program that provided a new 400-foot entrance to the yacht basin. Dredged materials from this project were used to connect Shelter Island with Point Loma along the Byron Street mole and to raise the mudbank to fourteen feet 153 Showley, “Aquatic Park Mirrors the San Diego Lifestyle,” H-1, H-5. See also Julie Tamaki, “Struggle Shapes for Use of Mission Bay Land,” Los Angeles Times 3 March 1992, San Diego County ed., B-1, B-3. Wetlands in California generally are gravely endangered: approximately 96 percent have been destroyed during this century. Cf. Life on the Edge: A Guide to California's Endangered Natural Resources: Wildlife, vol. 1 (Santa Cruz, Calif.: BioSystems Books, 1994), 121–22; 156–157; 289–290. 116 above low tide—leaving less than seven feet of land at the highest tides. Years later, when the navy was about to tow out to sea 12 million cubic feet of soil and muck dredged up from the bottom of the bay—after all, they could no longer dump it on the mud flat that had become Shelter Island—Bate offered to take it off their hands yet again. He had another idea for the waste. Today, that idea is known as Harbor Island, a second artificial island in the San Diego Bay and the largest aquatic training ground for Navy SEALs on the West Coast. While these environmental abuses deserve a more extensive study, it is important to note that both Honolulu and San Diego are connected by the same processes of conquest and capitalism that come with U.S. empire and tourist economies. The collaboration between the cities, the military, and private capital characterizes this as a process of conquest—one that led to the development and destruction of wetlands throughout the Pacific region during the twentieth century. One Los Angeles Times article from the mid–twentieth century commented directly on this conquest of land and sea, stating that Shelter Island was testament to “man’s capacity to reclaim what was once an uninhabitable dump ground, a menace to shipping in the area, creating an area to fit his need.” 154 This is only one of many media statements that proclaim man’s “mastery” over nature in order to construct the ground on which Shelter Island is built. Shelter Island represented a conquest of nature by military and tourism forces from the very beginning. However, none of the articles mention the horrendous effect on the environment caused by the building of this island. Instead, 154 Al Johns, “Shelter Island Result of Man’s Ingenuity,” Los Angeles Times 9 October 1960, N1. 117 media and newspaper articles at the time reflect the notion that this kind of “mastery” of the landscape and the quality of life represented by this new island were inextricably linked to the logic of imperial growth and military power. A staff writer from the San Diego Union even argued that “America can tame the great uncivilized isles of the Pacific! Why not the small islands of its most prized harbor?” 155 Clearly, Southern California newspapers were connecting America’s military and imperial power to the shaping of landscapes and the built environment. From the beginning, Bate insisted the island have a tropical feel. “East Coast snow birds come here to see waving palm trees and flowers, not the evergreens that grow in their back yards,” he stated as the main reason to line the mile-long island with palms. The new island was shaped like a long banana with palm trees lined up alongside the earthen roadway. These trees are significant because Port Director John Bate had reportedly begged for them and an old yachting friend from Honolulu, Captain Friel, sent the trees as a gift. In 1938, Friel sent a dozen coconut palm trees from Honolulu to San Diego for planting on Shelter Island. Friel, a U.S. marine, yachting enthusiast, and port official from Honolulu, sent the palm trees as a gift to remind San Diego yachtsmen of their so-called “peaceful invasion” of the island of O’ahu when they visited Friel in Honolulu a few years prior. 156 He received word that Shelter Island was being developed 155 Walter Clarke, “New Country Club to be Constructed,” San Diego Union 23 November 1952, C10. 156 “Friel to Send Coco Palms From Honolulu,” San Diego Union 1 June 1938. 118 with a Pacific island theme and, as chairman of the Honolulu racing committee, he sent the palms as a “hearty greeting” from the Pearl Harbor Yacht club. By some accounts, John Bate begged Friel for “authentic” palm trees from the Hawaiian Islands. Either way, this “cultural exchange” between yachting buddies marked the beginning of Shelter Island’s Pan-Pacific “Polynesian” built environment. These palm trees are one of the many features of Shelter Island that directly connected San Diego to Honolulu. With the increased presence of the navy, combined with the popularity of yachting and boating in the early and mid-1900s, the island built of naval waste was a perfect spot for a new tourist attraction that incorporated a Polynesian flair and catered to affluent boat owners. Named one of the top ten best boating vacation spots by 1959, Shelter Island and the whole Mission Bay area of San Diego quickly became a tourist destination for people from all over the United States. One Los Angeles Times editor encouraged tourists from Los Angeles to travel south to the newly modeled boating areas of San Diego: “A trip around the new Mission Bay water sports area in San Diego will open anyone’s eyes to the new boom in boating,” because “no San Diego junket is complete without inclusion of tours… [of] the elegant dining spots on Shelter Island in San Diego Harbor.” 157 Each hotel and restaurant that opened was highly anticipated around the country and especially in Los Angeles. Editorials were commonly written about the new additions to Shelter Island and many were owned by Los Angeles elites. Every inch of Shelter Island’s one-mile-long by 300-foot-wide space was owned by the 157 Al Johns, “Year-Round Vacation Area,” Los Angeles Times 10 April 1960, N1 119 city of San Diego and immediately leased and developed by the highest bidder with expensive Hawaiian and Pacific-themed motels, hotels, boatels, restaurants, and facilities for boating, swimming, and fishing. Bate’s development plan for a recreational island devoted to yachting and its marketing as a tropical paradise was a success. By 1952, the landfill had settled and construction began on the new land. On the west end of the island, the Kona Kai private yachting club was built by C. Arnholt Smith, a millionaire ship-builder also known as “Mr. San Diego,” and run by Jack Warner, who owned Warner Brothers. A member of the San Diego Yacht Club, Smith was tired of the old “dilapidated clubhouse and facility” and assembled a consortium of San Diego and Newport Beach financiers to build a new yacht club on the sandbar across the bay. In an interview, Smith recalls: So I got ahold of Johnny Bates [sic]…and we told him what we wanted to do, and it sounded great to him because he didn’t have much on the waterfront there. So they went ahead and dredged and filled in the sandbar to the land…There were no roads, no nothing out there. We had to drag everything out with tractors and actually built the clubhouse out there. The old sailors…stayed at the yacht club…[we] moved to Kona Kai. We hired an architect from Honolulu to give it the Hawaiian touch. We planted palm trees and put in a swimming pool. We were the only tenants out there in 1953. 158 Smith’s memory reveals the “good old boy” network of development on Shelter Island. While Smith would never admit it, the appropriation and use of this space was driven by a racist and class-biased agenda. Those in power—the Navy, the port director, a wealthy shipbuilder—decided to create a recreational space in which some San Diegans and city visitors could enter while others could not. The Kona Kai Club was developed to provide 158 “Mr. San Diego: An Interview with C. Arnholt Smith,” San Diego Magazine 10 July 1978, 13. 120 a “world-class marina for large, opulent yachts,” and to serve as an aquatic-oriented country club for the San Diego elite. Spaces like the Kona Kai enhanced the lives of its wealthy, white clientele, and excluded most people who could not afford the expensive memberships each year—specifically, the working-class people of color who helped build industries on the island (unless they were employed in the low-wage service positions serving the elite). Soon after Kona Kai was established, the harbor department and other private developers began to build public hotels and restaurants closer to the mainland. Built in 1960, the Half Moon Inn on Shelter Island was designed to be a hotel and boatel with two lobby entrances for check-in: one at street level for people arriving by car and one just below it for sailors in boats. The design combined the two passions of post-World War II Pacific Rim coastal cities: boats and cars. But the dream was too expensive to build, and minus the boat entrance, the inn debuted in full “Polynesian” garb, which was by this time required by the Harbor Department. The first years were slow, and the public relations manager tried everything to spark tourism. Hotel employees were directed to park their cars in the parking lot to make it look like the hotel was busy, and everyone had to dress in costume; according to one staff member, “we were more Hawaiian than Hawaii!” 159 It was in this first decade of development on Shelter Island that the architecture and environment defined for San Diegans what “Pacific Island,” “Polynesian,” “Tiki,” and “Asian” looked like—apparently they were all “Hawaiian.” 159 “Shelter Island 150 th Anniversary” San Diego Union 4 June 1960. 121 The comment of the Half Moon Inn employee that the staff were “more Hawaiian than Hawaii!” was ironic because the Tiki island culture and the architectural forms it spawned were nothing like those in Honolulu during the first half of the twentieth century. However, this exotic Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary spoke to white middle and upper classes in much the same way Spanish colonial architecture and Ramona attracted white patrons in the decades before the Second World War. The Kona Kai remained a private club geared toward this white middle and upper class in Southern California. Smith, however, lamented in an interview that it wasn’t long before “people started screaming because the port authority had leased so much land to a private club.” 160 In order to divert some of the public pressure, Bate asked his buddy Smith, “you’ve got the room here, why don’t you build something the public can use?” 161 As a result, in early 1959, the Kona Inn was built just north of the Kona Kai Club. In September of that same year, Jack Warner, who at that time owned both the Warner Brothers Studios and the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, bought the club and began an ambitious program of improvements. Warner also enticed many Hollywood and television personalities to join the private club, imbuing Shelter Island with an exotic “movie-colony” aura. Smith recalls that the club was quite the center of social events: “We danced around the swimming pool. We had big-name bands down there—Lawrence 160 “Mr. San Diego,” 8-9. 161 Ibid., 9. 122 Welk, Jan Garber, all the big names.” 162 Stars from Los Angeles frequented the club, Art Linkletter’s House Party was filmed there in the 1950s, and famous visitors included Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Ford, and numerous other politicians and sports stars. 163 The popularity of the club attracted a media frenzy that broadcast the island and the private club to people across the country. The popularity of this “Polynesian” paradise on the mainland unfolded in multiple media venues, from newspapers to the new technologies of the television, and was amplified by the incorporation of Washington elites. One article stated that “A Polynesian concept for Shelter Island would help restore a playful spirit to San Diego, following the busy port activities of World War II. The South Pacific was out of reach for most mortals, so primitive effigies carved in wood, rum concoctions, and flowered shirts were emulated at home.” 164 The Kona Kai’s original architectural features came to represent a Pan-Pacific look based on Bate’s, Smith’s, and the architects’ intentions to build a “tropical paradise on the mainland.” 165 Multiple advertisements, newspaper articles and other media encouraged visitors to experience Hawai’i in their own backyards. Rather than framing the islands as part of an exotic past, they were presented as part of a newly acquired American paradise. By 1956, advertisements declared that Shelter Island was an “exquisite Tropical Atmosphere 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid., 8-9. 164 “Bali Hai,” in Shelter Island: An Amazing Century (San Diego Chamber of Commerce, 1997). 165 “Mr. San Diego,” 8-13; The Kona Kai has since been remodeled with multiple changes that reflect a so- called “Pan-Asian environment” including a Chinese red dragon room and a Japanese sushi bar. 123 in the middle of San Diego Bay.” 166 According to advertisements, articles, and media representations, the Polynesian architecture and South Pacific style was what really attracted the largely white, upper-class clientele to Shelter Island for parties and yachting. This exotic style of the Pacific islands spoke to white middle and upper classes in much the same way the Spanish colonial architecture and Ramona role playing attracted white patrons in the decades before the Second World War. The ability of Americans to experience Hawai’i close to home allowed people to feel that they personally owned a piece of the islands—even if it was through a completely fabricated experience. The architecture in San Diego during the early twentieth century became a modality of conquest because it established imagined connections between the United States and its colony that reinforced a powerful fantasy in tourist spaces and enabled Americans to possess their islands materially. Americans could now participate in the process of conquest as they sipped mai tais and wore plastic leis at the Kona Inn or Half Moon Inn. This “tropical” experience, through tourism and the built environment of Shelter Island, reflected a long history of architectural connections between San Diego and Honolulu. Ultimately, these connections were made possible by the military theater of war stationed in O’ahu, Hawai’i and the San Diego Bay during the Second World War. Private investors like Bate and Smith (and John D. Spreckels years earlier) took advantage of the military investment in the area and created tourist destinations based on 166 Los Angeles Times (1886–Current File) 30 July 1956; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Los Angeles Times (1881–1986): C2. 124 their own notions of tropical landscapes and architectural styles. Of course, they claimed they made multiple visits to the Hawaiian Islands and hired an architect from Honolulu to create an “authentic” Polynesian environment. As my dissertation demonstrates, however, architecture in the Hawaiian Islands was influenced as much by mainland architects and developers as those structures on Shelter Island were influenced in the other direction. When mainland developers created their Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary in Hawai’i, they were purportedly creating authentic island architecture. When it came to the development of Shelter Island, a place not readily prone to be called an “island paradise,” they exaggerated the tropical representations exponentially to include the “most exotic” elements and “best” Pacific cultural traditions to form a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary. A Long History of Pan-Pacific Architecture Even though Bate clamored for “authentic” palm trees from Honolulu in the 1950s, at an earlier moment, haole residents in Honolulu clamored for more of a Southern Californian feel. As early as 1916, pleas for “A More Tropical Honolulu” appeared in the magazine Paradise of the Pacific. In the article, Cherilla Lowrey, a member of the Honolulu City Planning Commission and president of the Outdoor Circle, a group of white women working for the “betterment of the city,” presented what was a popular vision of the ideal Honolulu. She sought “a city of beautiful tropical parks, with the cooling waters of splashing fountains; a city whose many streets will call back the 125 satiated traveler—the tourist who is ever seeking the new and picturesque.” 167 As in many articles written during the same time period, Lowrey compared Honolulu with Southern California, pointing out that the streets of Los Angeles and San Diego were lined with palm trees; Honolulu’s were not lined with palms, but they should be. 168 Perhaps most significantly, she summoned images of the recently closed Panama California Exposition held in San Diego’s Balboa Park in 1915 and wondered how their architecture and design could be applied to Honolulu. Within eight months of Lowrey’s appeal, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, an Easterner from Connecticut, famous for designing the Spanish colonial structures at the San Diego Exposition in 1915, was welcomed to Hawai’i by haole business people. Newspapers announced Goodhue’s arrival, noting that it meant “the rehabilitation of Honolulu into the city beautiful.” 169 Over the next decade, Goodhue and his firm popularized an architectural vocabulary for designers practicing in Honolulu, as well as later architects working in San Diego’s Shelter Island. These place-making practices traveled multiple global paths of migration—for example, from the military and private circuits of capital on the East Coast of the United States, through Hawai’i, the South Pacific, Japan, and China, directly to various cities in 167 Cherilla L. Lowrey, “A Plea for a More Tropical Honolulu,” Paradise of the Pacific 29 December 1916, 31. 168 Lowrey, 31. A strong argument in favor of the palms was that they were native to the Hawaiian Islands, but perhaps “more popular” in California, where they are an “introduced species.” 169 “Architect of National Fame Comes to Help Build Honolulu City Beautiful,” Advertiser 2 August 1917, 6. 126 California; the net result is a place like Shelter Island. This next section discusses the curious exchange of a romanticized past and a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary through the built environment, tourism, and military and representational conquest across the Pacific in both Honolulu and San Diego. Looking at architectural developments in these cities demonstrates the intense involvement of tourism and the military—and the active role these forces took in commissioning architects and promoting certain images of their cities through regionalism. Both cities worked hard to create a distinct regional character through their built environments. Throughout the early twentieth century, the architecture in both places reflected larger interests of the U.S. military, elite private developers, and architects working throughout the Pacific Rim to create an architectural language based on the “Spanish fantasy past” on one hand and notions of a “Pacific tropical imaginary” on the other. Much has been written about the architectural landscape of Southern California—that is to say, Mission Revival and Spanish colonial—but I argue that the architectural language developed in Hawai’i during the early twentieth century was equally important to the Southern California region; at the same time, the California style was integral to the development of a “Hawaiian style.” Regionalism was used by boosters in Southern California and on O’ahu to identify each place to residents and tourists from all over the U.S. mainland. In both areas, regionalism was used consciously and intentionally to appeal to tourists, to make them feel they had arrived somewhere unique, and to entice them to stay. Regional stylistic motifs served this purpose; for instance, public buildings like train stations, 127 libraries, schools, hotels, and tourist destinations were designed with regional motifs using federal, state, and private funds. By the turn of the twentieth century, architecture based on the Spanish fantasy past was considered the most appropriate for San Diego. It became a way for architects, clients and tourists to feel connected with the past of the region, albeit a fabricated one. Moreover, its association with the region was so strong that by 1909 it was chosen as the style of architecture for San Diego’s most extravagant and important attempt at self promotion up to that time, the 1915 Panama California Exposition. The exposition featured a wide array of Spanish colonial and mission revival architecture, all designed by none other than east coast architect Bertram Goodhue, whose structures would significantly influence architectural design for the next twenty years in cities across the Pacific. At the same time, city planners in Honolulu were struggling to develop an architectural style for their city. Prior to the opening of the San Diego fairs, the Hawai’i Tourist Bureau began a campaign extolling the virtues of the Islands. While promoting the Islands’ climate and scenery, Anglo boosters also sought to dispel the “myth” of Hawai’i as a cultural “backwater.” They believed that Hawai’i had to be “modernized” in order to attract and serve tourists. Architecture, particularly in public and commercial structures became one vehicle with which Anglo Honolulu expressed its aspirations and defined its modern image. Working with noted mainland architects, such as the same Bertram Goodhue, patrons such as the aforementioned Cherilla Lowrey encouraged the “evolution” of an architecture that was both suited to the locale and “noteworthy” on a national level. In the years immediately after San Diego’s fair and throughout the 1920s, 128 Hawaiian architecture underwent an important transition, beginning with the 1918 Goodhue architectural plan for Oahu College. Currently known as the K-12 college- preparatory Punahou School, the institution was originally called Oahu College and established for children of Christian missionaries. The Buildings and Grounds Committee of the College recommended that the plan be a model “for future buildings, roads, planting and other construction” in the area. 170 Goodhue, his architectural firm, and the trustees at Oahu College created an image of the islands that was identifiable and became popular in later structures on the islands and on the mainland. Climate was essential in the place-making process and boosters and developers created structures with courtyards and porches, which blurred the distinction between interior and exterior. They figured that tourists would want to take advantage of outdoor island life on patios and under covered arcades. Curiously, these features were also prevalent in “Spanish colonial” design, and were well suited to the sunny conditions of both Southern California and Hawai’i. One architect of the time stated that the “Spanish” styles were “especially appropriate to those localities in which a semi-tropical climate prevails”—like that of San Diego and Honolulu. Covered walkways in California were designed with red-tiles and a Spanish theme to protect pedestrians from the sun. In addition, similar arcaded passages in the Hawaiian Islands functioned as an escape from frequent, sudden rainfall. Designs in Hawai’i also needed to ensure adequate ventilation; many buildings—including those designed by Goodhue—are oriented to direct trade 170 Buildings and Grounds Committee, “Report on the Goodhue Block Plan, Dillingham Hall, Bishop Hall of Science and the Thurston Swimming Tank,” no date, Punahou School Archives, Honolulu. 129 winds straight through. In addition, broad overhanging eaves were designed to protect the many windows from both the glare of the sun as well as from the rain. Although climate certainly influenced these designs across the Pacific ideas about what “tropical” or “island” culture meant were extremely influential. Especially in the twentieth century, California and Hawai’i were regions perceived to have the same lifestyle—one of greater simplicity in the modern era made possible by the gentle climate and a life lived outdoors. While the eaves, patios, and ventilation designs served practical purposes, they were executed within a broader tropical imaginary framework of what the city of Honolulu should look like. Goodhue’s team and the trustees of Oahu College went back and forth multiple times just to come to an agreement on the first building—Dillingham Hall, named after none other than Walter Dillingham who dredged the Ala Wai Canal. Dillingham Hall was to be the model for all other buildings in the area. The design incorporated the courtyard and covered outdoor walkways, ventilation, and sloping eaves that jutted out into soft curves—resembling features from East Asia. Goodhue even argued with the trustees over the kind of tiles to use—should they use the green Japanese tiles or the red Chinese tiles? Eventually the trustees won and bright red tiles covered the roof—which were conveniently similar to the red-tiled roofs of Mission revival structures in Southern California. That this amalgamation of architectural forms was brought together at a missionary school begs the question of whether the trustees and Goodhue felt any connection to native islander culture and architecture at all. It seems they selected architectural forms in piecemeal fashion to create a specific “Pan-Asian” style that 130 reflected trends in the larger Pacific Rim. “Pan-Asian” architecture across the Pacific included structural forms common in China, Japan, the South Pacific, and Hawai’i. 171 The tourist industry was also quick to adopt this architectural vocabulary in order to define a sense of place for tourists. In the American Southwest, the presence of Mexican towns and missionary outposts required the logic of Manifest Destiny to perform a radical reordering and restructuring of the narratives associated with the architectural landscape—hence the revival of interest in Spanish colonial architecture. In Hawai’i, the same ideological strain created island architecture and a sense of place, which was inspired by multiple cultural and architectural forms, especially the natural resources of the islands. When transplanted to Southern California, however, it became a kind of exaggerated tropical imaginary, a Pan-Asian hodgepodge that worked to further exoticize and incorporate Hawai’i through architecture and tourism on the mainland after World War II. Tourist destinations like Shelter Island became a tawdry amalgamation of the South Pacific, Hawai’i, China, and Japan—what one developer called “the best of the Pacific Rim and nothing else.” 172 It was what tourists wanted to see and experience, a fully controlled exotic culture without native Hawaiians. Mainlanders could therefore be reminded of intimate connections to Hawai’i at the same time they would be free from interacting with the indigenous people of the place. The architecture provided a place for 171 Another issue, which is only briefly touched upon here but deserves far more extensive analysis, is how the exoticization and commodification of Pan-Asian architectural forms differs from the ways in which “Pan-Asian” identities have been controversially constructed among Asian-origin peoples. It is particularly important to note that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are culturally and economically diverse populations and have been racialized in different ways. 172 Letter from C. Arnholt Smith to John Bate, n.d. San Diego Historical Society. 131 an island aesthetic and hula shows, but even the performers were hand selected as the “right kind” of Hawaiian—which usually meant they were lighter skinned and slim. Island architecture in San Diego became part of the simultaneous exoticization and incorporation of Hawai’i. Thus, architectural projects for tropical tourism in San Diego continued conquest during the Hawai’i statehood process. These structures familiarized exotic lands and helped to render Hawai’i a safe American tourist and military outpost. Projects like the one on Shelter Island welcomed an artificial and highly controlled version of island life to the mainland that systematically excluded non-white populations, except in the realm of service. The architecture of San Diego and Honolulu reflects a kind of conquest insofar as both cities are connected by the military and tourism industries whose interests are reified through built environments across the Pacific. When place-making, as long as the larger American public did not come into contact with recognizable conquest like colonial oppression—an exotic Hawaiian island style on the mainland could portray westward advance across the ocean as a legitimate occupation of territory. Hawaiian statehood was configured as simply the next step in this U.S. colonial fantasy about the Pacific Rim. 173 173 We must also recognize this movement had great local Anglo support and was part of a tradition of island architecture that began to take hold by the late 1800s—mostly as a result of Anglo boosters and elite investment. Regional architectural expression can be a source of pride in the history and heritage of the community. This is visible in numerous educational, religious, governmental, and business institutions, as well as the countless number of private residences which adopted these styles for planning and façade treatments. 132 Building Empire: Representational Conquest and the Annexation of Hawai’i The intellectual constructs and material practices of tourism in San Diego reciprocally shaped the ideologies and structures of U.S. imperialism in Hawai’i before Hawaiian statehood was established in 1959. The development of U.S. tourism in Hawai’i emerged from and operated within four dynamic contexts: the ideologies and structures of U.S. imperialism (i.e., the military); the political economy of export-agriculture; discourses on civilization and modernization; and processes of commodification and consumption. Tourism became an arena of transnational and transcultural relations in which people from Hawai’i and the United States participated in ordering and reordering the U.S. empire. In 1957, Lorrin P. Thurston, publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser, accepted the position of chair of the Hawai’i Statehood Commission (HSC). A middle-class haole from an old missionary family with experience in advertising and political lobbying, Thurston assumed control of an organization committed to making the Territory of Hawai’i a U.S. state, which was a long-running but not-yet-successful endeavor. 174 Thurston sought to finish the Hawaiian Revolution of 1893 led by his annexationist and tourism-promoter father, Lorrin A. Thurston, whose success in securing “incorporated” territorial status for Hawai’i paved the way towards legal statehood. Thurston senior’s push for statehood resonated deeply among U.S. citizens in Hawai’i. Many of them 174 Hawai’i Statehood Commission (HSC), Minutes of the Meeting, 23 February 1957; and Hawai’i Statehod Commission Report,1957–1958. Two organizations that house large collections of the Minutes and Reports of the HSC are the Hawaiian and Pacific Collection, University of Hawai’i at Manoa and the Archives of Hawai’i, Honolulu. 133 wanted Hawai’i to be incorporated into the union because of patriotic as well as economic reasons. They hoped their taxes paid to the U.S. federal government would result in more benefits, their Hawaiian land would gain value, and their statuses on the islands would translate to the mainland. The push for statehood did not have the same effect on the mainland, however, where few people knew much about the history or economy of the islands. Nor did they have as much reason to push for full incorporation of a territory over which their nation had waged yet another conflict in 1898. For U.S. mainlanders, 1898 might have vaguely evoked memories of a “weak” Hawaiian queen and a “likely” U.S. military defeat more than land and prosperity. 175 Thurston, and their U.S. champions adapted representations of history and the islands to suit their contemporary conquest. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century the U.S. media—and in particular, Thurston’s Honolulu Advertiser— characterized political struggle in the “tropics” through tropes initially used by political cartoonists during the War in 1898. The most common images feminized the Hawaiian Islands, presenting “her” as a fair maiden in distress, needing and desiring a white Uncle Sam (figure of the military) to rescue her from the perilous clutches of primitivism and tyranny in the figure of Queen Lili’uokalani. This image of the feminized and sexually available native Hawai’i and the masculine American mainland was reproduced through the experiences of American soldiers on the Hawaiian Islands. 175 Louis A. Pérez, The War of 1898: The United States & Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 134 Architects working in Honolulu were not the only ones to bring designs back and forth to the mainland; military officers stationed in the South Pacific also brought fond memories and souvenirs. These exchanges, combined with cultural expressions like hula and surfing, worked together, as Adria Imada suggests, to create “intimate connections” between Americans on the mainland and their tropical paradise colony. American soldiers were in a sense the first “tourists” who then reported the pleasures of Hawai’i to mainlanders. In many cases, people of color were drafted from Southern California to occupy and conquer other spaces of color. These men and women were not always treated with respect at home, but in the military they proved their “Americanness,” sometimes in contrast to “Natives” in these new territories. Juan “Johnny” Carrillo joined the navy in 1939 at eighteen years of age. “I was drafted into the navy, but I wanted to go,” 176 Johnny explained with pride in a recent interview. “I was at San Diego and before I knew it I was going back and forth on those darmn submarines…We’d arrive in Honolulu and I’d stick my head out for fresh air and a cigarette,” he grinned. 177 A native Californian from East Los Angeles, Johnny was one of the many Latino soldiers who entered the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines at the start of the Second World War. With the Navy, he traveled between San Diego and Honolulu countless times and remembers taking his leave in Hawai’i at the same time as one of his many friends from Southern California: 176 Interview with the author, 13 February 2010, Culver City, California. 177 Ibid. 135 Bobby and I, we didn’t plan it, we just ended up in Hawai’i at the same time. We both had a few days and we wanted to spend it having a good time. We went to the bars and of course there were those island gals we met up with…We had a great time…I brought back some crafts, but mostly just memories. 178 Johnny brought memories back home, just like many other men stationed in the Pacific Rim during the Second World War and beyond. Though he was not specific as to whether the “island girls” were Native Hawaiians, the sexual fantasies and availability of women on the island—whether white or Native— presented memorable experiences for this young and impressionable Latino kid. Clearly, Hawai’i was being presented to these young soldiers as a place for “sexual recreation” as well as a military/work zone. Thus, while Spreckels’ investment in sugar in Hawai’i and yachting in San Diego established a prominent sailing culture that flourished between Honolulu and the San Diego Bay, representations of tropical paradises, places of relaxation and sexual recreation, as well as soldiers’ battle and leisure spaces continued to strengthen connections between the two harbors. Johnny returned to San Diego before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but some of his friends were not as lucky. “I was just a kid back then and so were a lot of them guys who died at Pearl Harbor,” 179 he remembered solemnly, and then shifted back to his fond memories of the islands. “We had a good time in Hawai’i. We had to because there were a lot of bad things too. It was war, you know.” 180 His memories and experiences, funded 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. 136 indirectly by John D. Spreckels, and supported by the extension of U.S. empire in the Pacific Rim are some of the ways in which the Hawaiian Islands became known to the wider American public. Young men and women from the barrios of East Los Angeles to the military bases in San Diego remembered their time on the islands—both good and bad. Sailors affiliated with the Navy and those who were part of an elite yachting culture across the Pacific may have been some of the first to cultivate a taste of the tropical on the mainland, but movies and musicals helped to familiarize the representations to those who had never traveled Spreckels’ maritime routes. Broadway musicals like South Pacific (1949)—which later became a hit motion picture in 1958, featuring Naval officers and their interracial affairs/relationships—and the subsequent rise of Tiki and Polynesian-themed restaurants, clubs, and general décor also brought the islands back to the mainland. Multiple developers saw the Hawaiian islands as a capitalist venture at the same time that they knew tropical architecture could be the next big trend to attract investment and future money-spending tourists on the mainland. As discussed earlier by multiple architectural scholars, spaces and places, and our senses of them, are gendered through and through. 181 Moreover, spaces are gendered in myriad ways, which vary between cultures and over time. And this gendering of space and place both reflects and has effects back on the ways in which gender is constructed 181 Please refer to my previous discussion including work by Joel Sanders 1996; Francesca Hughes 1996; Diane Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman, eds. 1997; Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson, eds. 1996; Duncan McCorquodale, Katerina Rüedi and Sarah Wigglesworth, eds. 1996; Susan Torre 1997; Leslie Kanes Weisman 2000; and Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, eds. 2007. 137 and understood in the societies in which we live. Gendered representations of Hawai’i on the mainland helped animate and revitalize movements to extend U.S. empire to Hawai’i in the late 1950s. 182 These representations are similar to those of the late 1800s and reflect, in part, continuities between turn-of-the-century and mid-century anxieties about “American” civilization and manhood. As historian K.A. Cuordileone argues, “many themes in turn-of-the-century male discourse—the dangers of leisure, affluence, corporatization, feminine influence, the decline of the rugged life—resurface with new twists in postwar expressions of a masculinity crisis.” Revitalizing the character and physical bodies of a civilized Anglo-American middle and upper class through overseas imperial conquest offered a strategy for reasserting a virtuous and virile manhood at the turn of the century. 183 Historically, the tensions of this ambivalent Pacific vision of masculinity are rooted in a post–World War II U.S. discourse of crisis within masculinity centered on issues of empire, labor, and the rise of the nuclear family. Anxieties about the atom bomb, the traumas of shell-shocked troops, and the responsibilities of an imperial burden 182 In the 1950s, island and mainland advocates of statehood used these gendered images as well. See Linda Soma, Index of Political Caricatures of the Hawaiian Kingdom: Pre and Post Annexation, unpublished manuscript, dated 1993, in Hawaiian Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai’i. For a more detailed account of the connections between popular representations of U.S. imperialism and strategies for and practices of Americanization, see Eileen Findlay, “Love in the Tropics: Marriage, Divorce, and the Construction of Benevolent Colonialism in Puerto Rico, 1898–1910,” in Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998): 139-172. 183 On masculinity and postwar America, K.A. Cuordileone, “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety’: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949–1960,” Journal of American History (September 2000): 515–545, cited portions, 525–526; Robert D. Dean, “Masculinity as Ideology,” Diplomatic History (Winter 1998): 29–62. 138 all contributed to the “culture’s self-evaluation, directed at the imperiled state of American manhood.” 184 Now that the war was over and won, the necessity of a hardened and violent vision of masculinity came into question, even as fears of unavoidable conflict with the Soviets arose. This examination of masculinity was also rooted in significant shifts in the social structure and culture of postwar America. As Steven Cohan notes, “demobilization required restoration of the gender relations that World War II had disturbed both in the home and the workplace.” 185 Complicated notions of masculinity, however, were simplified by gendered representations of Hawai’i and the mainland. Gendered representations of statehood achieved their power to mobilize support because they drew from and were coupled with images of the commodified cultural and physical landscapes of U.S. tourists’ favorite overseas tropical vacation destinations, replicas of which were simultaneously being built in San Diego’s Shelter Island. On the 184 Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997): x. 185 Yet in the workplace, a new masculine ideal emerged associated with white-collar labor: “This corporate setting ended up relocating masculinity in what had previously been considered a ‘feminine’ sphere, primarily by valuing a man's domesticity (and consumption) over his work (and production) as the means through which he fulfilled societal expectations of what it took to be ‘manly.’” Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997): xi–xii. In addition, one of the primary manifestations of the new masculinity was the nuclear family. According to Stephanie Coontz, “for the first time men as well as women were encouraged to root their identity and self- image in familial or parental roles.” Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992): 27. The increasing importance of the nuclear family and Cold War conceptions of masculinity are often the same issue. Cultural anxieties about the expansion of communism and the necessity of the nuclear family merged as the family came to represent a symbolic microcosm of the nation. Thus, Coontz points out that “a ‘normal’ family and vigilant mother became the ‘front line’ of defense against treason; anticommunists linked deviant family or sexual behavior to sedition,” 33. Further illustrating the interconnectedness of imperialist and gender ideologies, post–World War II American culture used the melodramatic logic of protecting the nuclear family to bolster imperialist, anticommunist containment policies while simultaneously using the logic of anticommunism and "loyalty" to add weight to the ideological imperative of the “normal” nuclear family. 139 mainland, Honolulu was represented as a wholesome “paradise of the Pacific” for adult tourists seeking safe encounters with the erotic and exotic. Shelter Island’s developers took advantage of that reputation and invited hula dancers to perform at its many Pacific- themed venues. The architecture, dancers, and already popular reputation of Hawai’i attracted visitors to Shelter Island and provided a fully orchestrated encounter with the islands. Tourists, Hollywood elite, yachtsmen, military personnel, and snowbirds from the East Coast ventured to Shelter Island for multiple reasons. 186 In some cases they wanted a prelude to their trip to Hawai’i. In other cases they wanted to remember their time served on islands during World War II. Others were attracted by the wealthy, elite, high profile scene on the man-made island. One way or another, tourism provided for U.S. citizens the most common and familiar lens through which they visualized and experienced the islands. The merging of images of tourism, architecture, and performances with tropes of gendered statehood provided their proponents with a vocabulary for explaining, soliciting support, and securing the participation of U.S. citizens in their struggles. This tropical experience made Hawai’i recognizable, legible, and desirable so much so that the movement supporting Hawaiian statehood increased threefold in Southern California during this time. In 1953 alone, the donations to and membership for the HSC grew exponentially from San Diego in particular. Many HSC members were from the same yachting families who dropped anchor in Shelter Island and made yearly sea voyages 186 Media support for the HSC is well documented by Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). 140 from San Diego to Honolulu. 187 Representations on Shelter Island were continuing what the original nineteenth-century military conquest could not. They worked to conquer Hawai’i by making the islands seem benign, feminized, and familiar to the American public. 188 Many Americans believed that Hawai’i’s relationship to the United States should and must be consummated in statehood. 189 Americans on the mainland, inspired by Thurston and Hawai’i’s moderate Republicans on the islands, promoted tourism and statehood as a dual mandate, premising their joint quest on affirming that the territory provided a future for lucrative capital investment and money-making possibilities. The Hawaiian Islands were configured as a bastion of free enterprise, a veritable “rainbow of democracy,” and a prosperous American consumer culture, which could and should become a force for advancing U.S. foreign policy in Asia and the Pacific. 190 The Islands were further promoted as a cross between exotic Hawaiian and mainstream American, between a primitive past and a utopian future. Thurston’s good friend, “Mr. San Diego,” C. Arnholt Smith, spread the 187 Hawai’i Statehood Commission Report, 1957–1958. 188 HSC, Minutes of the Meeting, 2 August 1956. 189 For more on how many statehood activists presented their fight as a mission to complete the War of 1898, which also continued conquest and included “unquestionably righteous” episodes from the American Revolution, see Eileen O’Brien, “Statehood for Hawai’i’s People,” Paradise of the Pacific (February 1959), 11–15. For an important discussion on how Cold War era politics identified liberty, freedom, and democracy—of the producer and consumer on the global market—as the goals of their new Hawaiian statehood “revolution,” see Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, 83, 86, 87. It is important to note that these fights for statehood had little to do with the wants and needs of native Hawaiians or the large populations of Asian-origin peoples on the islands. 190 Hawai’i Statehood Commission Report, 1957–1958; Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995): 90–102. 141 same message on the mainland through his Kona Kai Club. Both Smith and Thurston imagined their respective Pacific paradises as liminal places that simultaneously offered an idyllic escape back in time from the class and racial tensions of U.S. industrial capitalism and presented a model of social relations that enacted the cherished Anglo American dream of a melting pot that actually worked. 191 Of course, Smith’s interpretation of a melting pot was an elite destination where people of color performed and served wealthy white patrons in perfect harmony. 192 Thurston’s melting pot included mainland conceptions of abundance, domesticity, and mass consumption as the threads holding the races and classes together in peace. Their narratives merged images of tourism and statehood to suggest Hawai’i provided an example of how the U.S. might employ the ideologies and structures of consumption and commodification to counter domestic racism. Imagining Hawai’i as a harmonious melting pot, tourism and statehood 191 Lorrin P. Thurston, 1980, deposition preceding the City of Honolulu’s anti-trust suit against the Honolulu Advertiser, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, cited in George Chapin, Presstime in Paradise: The Life and Times of the Honolulu Advertiser, 1856–1995 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998): 239. 192 Statehood activists in Hawai’i and the United States also represented the Territory as a grown, lei- wearing, multi-racial woman whose union with the United States, to whom she had been betrothed since incorporation into the national family as a child-territory, would make the American dream of a harmonious melting-pot citizenry come true. Each year a new beauty contestant queen, “Miss Hawaii,” served as a poster girl for statehood. In 1953, she was the “lovely Dorothy Leilani Elliss, of English- Chinese-Japanese-German-Hawaiian-Irish-Scottish ancestry.” Statehood activists urged the United States to end its flight from commitment and fulfill its promise to bring Hawai’i into the Union as the “Aloha State” of feminine hospitality. Hawai’i was represented as the perfect, adoring wife for a masculine U.S. nation. For examples of the representation of Hawai’i as a beautiful mixed-race woman deserving of U.S. statehood, see Sydney Clark, All the Best in Hawaii (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1949), revised and reprinted throughout the 1950s; also, Ben Adams, Hawaii: The Aloha State, Our Island Democracy in Text and Pictures (New York: Hill and Wang, 1959). On “Miss Hawaii” of 1953, see A. Grove Day, Hawaii and Its People (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1955): 236. 142 promoters on both sides of the Pacific posited it as a model for the future of the rest of the United States and its foreign-policy in Asia and the Pacific. 193 Although Thurston and his friends in Hawai’i and on the mainland praised a multi-cultural, Pan-Pacific image of the islands and in some cases denounced the kama’aina haole paternalism in Hawai’i and white supremacy on the mainland and overseas, they by no means desired or intended to construct an egalitarian society. Smith built his empire with the tools of the capitalist free market, consumerism, and tourism. He believed in survival of the fittest and the good ol’ boy network. Thurston felt the same and, along with Hawaiian statehood, he negotiated a more open economy and polity in the Islands, which preserved the socio-economic and political structures that promoted and supported haole priviledge and white supremacy. 194 A mix of spontaneity and a decade of planning characterized the public celebration of statehood in Honolulu. The news that the U.S. Congress passed a bill for Hawaiian statehood reached the Islands mid-morning on March 12, 1959. Moments later, and arranged years in advance, the tolling of the bell in Kawaiahao Church (built by New England missionaries in 1842), the blasting of air-raid sirens, and the blowing of steamship whistles broadcast the arrival of statehood. Across the ocean, military ships in 193 For an early representation of Hawai’i as a melting pot that offered a challenge to the mainland model of white supremacy, authored by a Republican colleague of Thurston’s, see Joseph R. Farrington, Hawai’i’s Delegate to the U.S. Congress, “Statehood’s Greatest Test,” Paradise of the Pacific (Christmas 1947): 2–5. On Lorrin Thurston’s concern with negotiating the twin images of Hawai’i, see HSC, Minutes of the Meeting, 25 July 1957. 194 Lorrin P. Thurston to C. Arnholt Smith, 27 March 1952, HVB Folder, “Role of Government in the Development of Hawai’i’s Tourist Industry” (Honolulu, 1957): 6; Thurston, HSC, Minutes of the Meeting, 16 May 1957. 143 San Diego Bay saluted the new state. In Shelter Island, the Art Linkletter show broadcast a song written by Harry Owens that began: “Hawaii is the fiftieth star in the flag of the U.S.A. / Aloha means how joyful we are, / For at last we are brothers today.” As undoubtedly seemed fitting to the rhetoricians who had represented statehood as a marriage between Miss Hawai’i and Uncle Sam, a columnist for Thurston’s Honolulu Advertiser, Bob Krauss, described the public celebration as a “gigantic, exhuberant wedding party.” 195 Of course, not everyone was happy about Hawaiian statehood. Krauss also reported that “Jennie Wilson…who began her career as the favorite hula dancer in the royal court of Kalakaua in 1886,” was reminded of the day she and her mother watched the Hawaiian flag descend on the Iolani Palace grounds on August 12, 1898—the day the U.S. officially annexed Hawai’i. “It was a sad day” she remembered “with tears in her eyes,” and she was not alone. 196 Many, if not most Native Hawaiians opposed statehood because it meant dependence on the United States rather than self-determination. 197 Indeed, this construction of statehood rested upon an illegal act, amnesia, and a history of representation that promoted conquest. At the turn of the twentieth century, haoles claimed that Hawai’i had freely and willingly annexed itself to the U.S., despite the fact 195 Harry Owens, “Hawaii is the Fiftieth Star in the Flag of the U.S.A.,” cited in Lance Tominaga, “Statehood Souvenirs: Recapturing the Memories of ‘59” Aloha: The Magazine of Hawaii and the Pacific (July/August 1989): 53–57. See also Bob Krauss, Here’s Hawaii (New York: Coward-McCann, 1960): 249. 196 Bob Krauss, Here’s Hawaii (New York: Coward-McCann, 1960): 249. 197 Ibid. 144 that an overwhelming majority of Native Hawaiians opposed annexation. In 1945, the United Nations’ Charter stipulated that U.S. colonial administrators would work to develop self-governance in non-self-governing colonial territories under American control. In 1953, the Charter resolved that “independence is the primary form of self-rule unless another status is selected under conditions of ‘absolute equality.’” Until 1959, the United Nations and the United States recognized Hawai’i as a non-self-governing territory eligible for independence. But months before statehood, the United States violated international law by unilaterally removing Hawai’i from this list, thereby exempting the United States from having to offer Hawai’i’s people the choice of any kind of independence. The decision to remove Hawai’i from the list of territories eligible for self-governance was largely fueled by the HSC’s private investors, including C. Arnholt Smith and other financiers from Southern California who understood the importance of tourism in Hawai’i and its benefits in terms of their own leisure and business pursuits. 198 Self-proclaimed as “America’s Finest City,” San Diego has established global economic prominence through its large military complex, free-trade manufacturing, and international tourism industries—all dependent on San Diego’s position as an active port in the Pacific Ocean. As a global city, San Diego attempts to define American national identity through its built environment, memorials, and re-written histories. This national identity is not based on the sacrifices of the past—recent or remote—but rather the 198 Krauss, Here’s Hawaii, 249–250; Nakoa Prejean, “Kanaka Maoli and the United Nations,” in Ulla Hasagar and Jonathan Freidman, eds., Hawai’i: Return to Nationhood (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1994): 276–285. 145 momentum of San Diego’s position at the edges of the mainland empire. Memorials on Shelter Island gesture to the perceived necessity of expansion of capital and trade to other parts of the globe. Indeed, conquest was still taking place as U.S. empire and investments grew so large they would not be contained at the physical bounds of the continent. Instead Americans on the mainland and in the Hawaiian Islands worked to extend their influence and America’s role in the world into the Pacific—to a man-made island in the San Diego Bay and beyond to Hawai’i as well as other sites in the Pacific Rim. The built environment across the Pacific served as a means of incorporating Hawai’i into the nation, and ensured a future of tourism, trade, and investments. San Diego’s Shelter Island is itself a conquest of land and sea. The built environment on the man-made island, which includes multiple memorials to the past, future, and economic relationships throughout the Pacific, shows how San Diego positioned itself as the most likely launching pad—militarily, monetarily, and in terms of maritime industries—for the future of American prosperity. Conclusion: Re-Membering the Future Indeed, the history of the island includes a diverse population of immigrant communities. It is a rich story of grimy fishing villages and working-class folks who depended on the dangerous tuna, sardine, mackerel, and marlin fishing industries. Today, one would hardly imagine such a colorful history existed on the tropical Pacific-themed piece of land lined with palm trees and expensive yacht clubs. 146 Helen Labruzzi remembered this history in an interview with reporter Karen Scanlon in August of 2001. Labruzzi paid little attention as Shelter Island emerged from the sea. “I thought it was kind of crazy,” she remembers, “all that mud and dirt coming in.” Her focus at the time was making her way from her home on Hugo Street to the High Seas cannery. She was a young tuna packer. Packing tuna in the 1930s was done by hand—a stinky job by any account. Helen smiles, “We had our noses in it and didn’t smell a thing, except maybe when we broke open a fish,” she says. “But people on the bus moved away from us when we got on,” she chuckles to herself. Helen came from a proud cannery family. Her mother was a “floor lady” at the cannery and knew the business well. She took pride in her job and insisted that if her daughter was to learn to pack tuna, she should do it correctly. “There was an art to packing a can of tuna, one after another,” Helen’s mother insisted. Helen studied under Mary Drummond, “a real good packer” and learned the special ways of packing tuna. After cleaning and cutting the fish, Helen explains, “[you] pick up the fish with your forefinger and thumb, turn your hand around, and kind of squeeze the hunk of fish to the back of the can…Weigh each can to be sure of the right amount of fish. If not, you bust off another piece of fish to stuff it in the can.” She repeats the hand motions with her own confident fingers rendered shaky and delicate by age. In the days before the tuna boom, Helen recalls that her fisherman father left the shores of La Playa in a small skiff and headed to a larger fishing vessel offshore. Everyone in the Portuguese neighborhood listened for the whistle to blow at High Seas, alerting the workers that the “little boats had come in with sardines and mackerel.” Never 147 mind the time of day or night—“when the whistle blew, workers headed for the cannery.” 199 Helen was just one of the many residents who lived, worked, and died along the sandbar currently known as Shelter Island. In Shelter Island several memorials have more recently been constructed to remember this past. The Tunaman’s Memorial, a larger-than-life bronze sculpture by Franco Vianello, represents fishermen of different racial and ethnic backgrounds— Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Slavic—who were integral to San Diego's fishing economy. Helen’s Shelter Island would be lost at sea if it weren’t for the Tunaman’s Memorial, a project initiated by Portuguese community activist Anthony Mascarenhas only recently in the 1980s. The striking sculpture of tuna fishermen, their rods cast out to sea, honors those that built the industry. It stands near the location where generations of immigrant fishermen skirted a yet unnamed “Shelter Island” shoal and stood offshore waiting their turns to dock and unload at tuna canneries along La Playa. It marks the same shoreline where families waited in anguish for missing loved ones: The memorial “remembers those that departed this harbor in the sun and did not return” from the treacherous sea. Names of the San Diego fishermen gone missing—poor immigrants with work-hardened muscles bronzed by the sun—are engraved on a granite wall behind the immortalized bronze men. Given the history of San Diego and its representations, it should come as no surprise that the popular media story of Shelter Island has erased the Helens of the past 199 Thanks to Karen Scanlon’s detailed interview transcripts with Helen Labruzzi in 1997. Courtesy of the San Diego Historical Society. 148 and instead emphasizes the work of yachtsmen and Navy engineers who represent a new and prosperous future for the city and the nation. In many ways the built environment of the Island, from its phallic shape to its architecture taken from a Pacific theater of war, reflects the male desires of U.S. empire in the postwar era. Even the single monument to the Island’s rich and vibrant past features only fishermen. In fact, the Tunaman’s memorial romanticizes the lost fishermen who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the old San Diego villages, depicting them as ten feet tall, made out of bronzed muscle as they battled the sea. Voices like Helen’s remain hidden in the San Diego Historical Society archives. The history of tuna canneries and immigrant settlements is virtually ignored in newspaper articles and city documents about Shelter Island. Most documentation begins with the story of John Bate, crediting him for “leading the port into the twentieth century.” While his influence on San Diego’s Harbor is not to be diminished, media representations and newspaper articles highlight his story of stubborn determination to build Shelter Island and renovate the rest of the Harbor, while overlooking much of the important development and many of the lives that came before him. Shelter Island is therefore configured as a testament to “progress” and the other memorials placed there are more clearly geared towards notions of a global future that starts in San Diego. The Yokohama Friendship Bell, a large bronze bell housed in a pagoda structure, was a gift from the city of Yokohama in 1958 to commemorate the Centennial Celebration of formal relations between Japan and the United States. It served to mark the establishment of the sister-city relationship between San Diego and Yokohama, which 149 was the first such affiliation on the West Coast. Pacific Rim Park at the southwestern end of Shelter Island was created by artist James Hubbell around a spherical bubbling fountain called the "Pearl of the Pacific." Architecture students from San Diego and its three sister cities, all with important Pacific Ocean ports—Vladivostok, Russia; Tijuana, Mexico; and Yantai, China—assisted Hubbell in creating this fountain, the surrounding mosaic wall, and a dramatic arch. According to the Port of San Diego official website: This representation of a pearl fountain and Chinese fans includes columns topped with ironwork suggestive of Russian calligraphy. The park and sculpture are the ‘third pearl’ in a necklace of Pacific Rim parks created to commemorate the friendship, cultural links, and economic ties that we share with our Pacific neighbors. 200 These memorials are meant to celebrate the relationship between San Diego and the peoples of the Pacific Rim, whose economic relationships are based on routes for global trade in the Pacific. The memorials pay tribute to collaborations between cities as well as the exchange of global capital. 201 Kristin Ann Hass has argued that memorials erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., over the past three decades “are nationalist projects that work to [help the nation] recover from the Vietnam War.” 202 Unlike these perhaps obviously nationalistic commemorations to soldiers’ sacrifices for their country as a nation attempts 200 <http://www.portofsandiego.org/public-art/view-the-art-directory/812-pearl-of-the-pacific-by-james-t- hubbell.html> 201 <http://www.portofsandiego.org/public-art/view-the-art-directory/831-yokohama-friendship-bell-by- masahiko-katori.html> 202 Kristin Ann Hass, Sacrificing Soldiers: War Memorials on the National Mall Since 1979 (forthcoming 2010): 13. 150 to come to terms with the significant losses that occurred in Vietnam, San Diego’s memorials are mainly declarations about the city’s global importance as well as its past and current role in U.S. empire building. This demonstrates the multiple shapes that nationalist projects can take at the different edges of empire. The memorials in Shelter Island were not about sacrifice as much as a hope for the future. By the 1960s, developers, visitors, residents, and military personnel had multiple options for participating in the processes of conquest manifested at Shelter Island. They could build the next man-made islands at Mission Bay and Harbor Island, which would become a marine training ground for military officers. Or they could fly to the newly incorporated Hawaiian Islands for a vacation in the tropical sun. If they couldn’t afford a trip across the ocean to the Islands, they could still sip mai tais at Bali Hai and wear fake leis at the “tropical” Half Moon Inn on Shelter Island. Visitors and residents could also be part of conquest as they wore plastic conquistador hats at Old Town’s bicentennial celebration less than four miles away. At a time when other parts of the nation were coming to terms with Civil Rights demonstrations and anti-war movements, San Diego spent most of its annual budget on a year-long series of events in celebration of 200 years of conquest. In the next chapter I will discuss another form of memorial-making, the bicentennial celebration in San Diego that was constructed to celebrate Southern California’s conquistadores—both the Spanish soldiers of the past and contemporary Anglos of today. The next chapter examines how this past emerges in 1969 and why the 151 bicentennial celebration, meant to commemorate its heroes on the global, national, and local stage, ended up a financial failure. 152 CHAPTER THREE Return to the Spanish Fantasy: Old Town State Historic Park and the 1969 Bicentennial San Diego development in the 1940s and 1950s centered on tropical islands and the future of U.S. empire. In the late 1960s, however, San Diegans returned to the era of the conquistadores for their representational fantasies. This return to a Spanish fantasy past appealed to developers, tourists, and consumers whose appetite for Pan-Asian island “paradises” had soured as the conflict in Vietnam dragged on. These “paradises” were no longer benign representations and created nostalgia for a time when conquest was perhaps clearer. Many Americans believed that the U.S. Southwest was conquered by Spaniards and that these conquistadores were the forerunners to American conquest. Thus, in 1969, San Diegans returned to their Spanish fantasy and celebrated a battle that was won in the name of “progress” and that supposedly paved the way for American conquest—the 1769 establishment of Spanish empire in Alta California. This celebration also required that the anniversary planners attempt to extend the official timeline of U.S. national history to include the era of Spanish colonization—an effort that ultimately proved unsuccessful. This chapter offers a genealogy of Old Town, its reconstruction, and the debates surrounding it throughout the second half of the 20 th century to show how representational practices shifted in San Diego back to a Spanish fantasy past during the final years of the conflict in Vietnam, and the negative response of the larger American 153 public to these unacceptable local representations. I use these representations to interrogate the narratives that became popular for Anglo San Diegans during this time. Why did re-enactments of conquest appeal to some Americans in San Diego and offend others in 1969? Who benefited from this kind of pageantry and memorialization? I examine the post-World War II development of Old Town State Historic Park, which culminated in a bicentennial celebration of Spanish conquest. Conquest of the sociopolitical landscape in Southern California took literal form in the unscrupulous taking of Mexican land and continued in the re-creation of Old Town during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the exertion of hegemonic control is hard work, to roughly paraphrase Stuart Hall, and pushing aside a hugely significant resident labor force was not an option for San Diego’s civic boosters and urban builders. Instead, business owners and city officials wrote people of Mexican descent into the city as workers in low-wage service positions throughout San Diego, and simultaneously out of history through the decades-long concerted effort to replace many of the original buildings in Old Town with new ones that looked old. Thus, cultural performances—in which wealthy Anglos celebrated the diversity of their “California-Spanish-Mexican” heritage during the 200 th Anniversary—in conjunction with the redevelopment of Old Town’s landscape and workforce became expressions of “official” public history and everyday empire. This chapter provides a critical glimpse into how ideological struggles over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements impacted San Diego, and in particular how these conflicts reached a crisis during the 1969 bicentennial celebration. In 1969, 154 Richard Nixon was inaugurated president, the Vietnam War and protests for peace continued, while Chicano, Black Panther, Asian American, feminist, and LGBTQ fights for civil rights erupted across the nation. Boosters in San Diego responded to these perceived crises with a bicentennial celebration meant to stabilize identities and race relations, and while these kinds of commemorations had worked in the past, this time they failed. Constructing “Official” Public Histories Foundational studies of public commemorations like Susan G. Davis’s Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (1986) and David Glassberg’s American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (1990) revealed how public historical imagery delineated what was public and what was private, and which groups belonged to the public and which groups did not. These works showed how public commemorations co-opted formerly excluded social groups over time to fashion narratives of community development and build lasting economic and political relationships between rival communities. Since the publication of Earl Pomeroy’s In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (1957), Americanists interested in heritage tourism and the politics of historical memory have subsumed commemorative activities under the study of public memory, making the two fields permeable and interdisciplinary. Multiple works from Michael Kammen’s Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991) and John Bodnar’s Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in 155 the Twentieth Century (1991) to Hal K. Rothman’s Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (1998) and David Wrobel’s Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West (2002), have examined how different societies use and understand their histories in relation to tourism. These studies examine the ways in which pasts are created, interpreted, or forgotten, and how they become institutionalized, communicated, and employed daily. Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of “invented tradition” is foundational to these studies. Specifically, Hobsbawm explained how the British monarchy’s creation of public rituals helped consolidate their hegemony and gain the consent of the masses for their continued reign. 203 However, looking at American patriotic commemorations, John Bodnar challenged this premise. He asked why—if Hobsbawm’s assertion was true in the United States—non-elite people would simply accept these imposed traditions. 204 Instead of a top-down approach, Bodnar suggested that the American past and traditions were actually contested sites where people struggled and negotiated at local and national levels—or between “vernacular” and “official” versions. 205 Bodnar’s way of understanding the processes involved in historical re-enactments begs the question: How does one version 203 John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 204 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); John Bodnar, Remaking America. 205 Bodnar notes that these terms were developed by Susan Davis. Vernacular, that is local, memories or communications interact with those produced at a higher level of power, whether economic or political. Phoebe Kropp argues that the Spanish fantasy past is essentially the story of the creation, adoption, and installation of a public memory. Bodnar, 13-14, 256 n., Susan Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2986): 16-18. 156 of history become presented and elevated above all others so that it is accepted unquestionably as “public” or “official”? Or, as David Glassberg posited, “with all the possible versions of the past that circulate in society, how do particular accounts of the past get established and disseminated as the public one?” Glassberg notes that this process—of one version gaining public legitimacy while others do not—is inherently political and a part of building and maintaining empire. 206 This struggle over public memory therefore represents a struggle about how the past is remembered and about the very meaning of national identity—about power and who gets to count in the nation. 207 During the mid-twentieth century, San Diego’s boosters pushed to make Old Town into a state historic site. This push attempted to legitimate an Anglo-centric view of local history as well as establish San Diego’s importance to the nation’s history. In order to understand the significance of this particular built environment to San Diego residents, 206 David Glassberg, “Public History and the Study of Memory,” The Public Historian 18, 2 (Spring 1996): 11. Glassberg’s study of historical pageantry is extremely important to this chapter. In his book, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century, he examines how one manifestation of public memory—historical pageantry—evolved and operated in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Glassberg attempts to answer the question “Where do Americans get their ideas about history?” by looking specifically at “public historical imagery,” 1. He sees such imagery as “both a reflection of the larger culture, and its prevailing ways of looking at the world, and a major element in the shaping of that culture,” 2. Glassberg goes on to provide detailed descriptions of urban pageantry in the early twentieth century, considers tensions between various factions as to whether the pageants should be patriotic and civic or primarily recreational, and chronicles how local communities perceived and used the pageant. 207 Holidays, parades, and other civic rituals have been indicators of American identity since the late 18th century, as a number of recent books have pointed out. For a more in-depth discussion, refer to: David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism,1776–1820 (1997); Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (1986); Ellen M. Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, 1865–1920 (2000); and Matthew Dennis, Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (2002). 157 tourists, and developers, we must first look at the tradition and importance of heritage tourism in the United States. Preserving the Nation: Women, Racialization, and Tourism Although no national policy existed regarding historic preservation until 1966, public and private efforts in the nineteenth century initiated the journey towards legislation. In California and across the United States, women’s groups played important roles in preservation efforts from at least the 1850s. 208 In 1906, President Roosevelt passed the Antiquities Act “on the behalf of the nation’s history and land” to prevent the “excavation of antiquities from public lands without a permit from the Secretary of Interior.” 209 Ten years later, in 1916, the Department of Interior established the National Park Service, the nation’s first agency for the regulation and management of public space, including national monuments. Decades of preservationist lobbying meant that by the end of the 1940s, the National Trust for Historic Preservation Act was signed into law to encourage public participation in preserving and protecting historic “sites, buildings, and objects of national significance in American history.” During this post–World War II period, the production and growth of the interstate highway system, population growth in urban centers, the subsequent white flight, and increasing suburbanization inspired a passionate backlash among white elites against government urban renewal projects. 208 Kropp, California Vieja (2008). 209 Thomas F. King, Cultural Resource: Law and Practice, 3 rd ed. (New York: Altamira Press, 2008): 19. 158 Many whites objected to federal funds being used for urban renewal because they had abandoned the cities and now wanted resources directed at rural and suburban sites. Preservationists pushed for the renewal of historical landmarks rather than urban spaces. The first lady at the time, Ladybird Johnson, and multiple women’s organizations around the country fought for the preservation of the built environment and “America’s history.” After a century-long fight, the women’s persistence was rewarded when Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 to preserve historical and archaeological sites in the United States of America. 210 It is clear that sites with supposed historic value have been important to Americans for quite some time. These sites have defined and represented our national, shared history and therefore our national identity. Across the United States, preservationist societies have worked tirelessly to establish historic landmarks. These sites are claims to legitimacy within and incorporation into American history. In San Diego, boosters pushed to make Old Town into a state historic site as a bid to claim Southern California and its history as important parts of the nation as well. 211 Preservationists themselves, however, worked toward these ends for various political and personal reasons. 210 Ibid. 211 For useful and complex treatments of California boosters, refer to William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe (2004); Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); and for western boosters in general, look to David Wrobel Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002). 159 Women across the country used historic preservation as a means of entry into the body politic and in order to gain public recognition. For example, in the 1850s, Ann Pamela Cunningham founded the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, a private, non- profit organization that campaigned to purchase Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, in Virginia. They launched an unprecedented appeal for donations through newspaper articles directed toward “the Ladies of the South” in order to prevent further destruction of the house, which was already in shambles. Most importantly, this movement allowed the women to stake a claim to America’s history and propelled them into the public eye, paving the road towards suffrage. In her groundbreaking work, California Vieja, Phoebe Kropp shows that women’s clubs targeted the past to build the case for their civic participation in the future. 212 In California, as on the East Coast, women played a significant role in the preservation and use of the built environment. While “ladies” on the East Coast sought to carve out a public space for themselves as the protectors of America’s colonial past, women in Southern California fashioned themselves as “historical housekeepers” of the Spanish fantasy heritage. 213 This history of preservation, restoration, and conservation has not been without political and cultural hitches. Tensions over historic preservation have played out on multiple levels. For instance, links between historic preservation and commercialization were brought into question at Mount Vernon. The Ladies’ Association opposed a 212 Kropp, 57. 213 Ibid., 267. 160 proposal to convert the house into a commercial resort. This tension persisted for years as the women fought to “simply preserve” the landmark for its “natural and innate beauty and importance to the history of our great nation.” 214 While the estate never became a “resort” per se, over the years it has become one of the most commercialized attractions for heritage tourism in the United States. 215 Commercialization, it seems, is inevitable as a majority of national monuments and historic landmarks have become “tourist traps” in the truest sense. Mount Vernon is only one of countless examples in which preservationists have questioned public and private uses of land and the re-creation of “commercial” versus “authentic” landscapes. In Southern California, these tensions between an “authentic” and a “commercialized” past are important markers of representational conquest. Many Anglo women boosters in the region desired what they believed was the “accurate” historic preservation—even if it was of a Spanish fantasy past. These representations hardly lined up with the diverse histories of people in the region. In fact, much of the romantic Spanish imagery was harmful to Native American and Mexican populations in the area, relegating them to the past in a narrative of Anglo progress. 216 Anglo women advocated this representational conquest for multiple, complex reasons linked to the racialization of Mexicanas and Chicanas. While Mexicanas and Chicanas were racialized as provincial 214 Ibid., 56. 215 Mitchell Schwarzer, “Myths of Permanence and Transience in the Discourse on Historic Preservation in the United States,” Journal of Architectural Education 48, no. 1 (September 1994): 3-4. 216 Kropp, 5. 161 and inferior, “Spanish American ladies” claimed a kind of honorary whiteness and romantic cultural clout. In the early twentieth century, women’s organizations helped promote the romantic Spanish past to raise their own statures as “Spanish American ladies” as opposed to “Mexican women.” 217 This racial distinction, coupled with nostalgic architecture, allowed Anglo boosters and proponents of restoration projects to become key promoters of white superiority, racially restrictive covenants, and racist stereotypes of Mexican-origin peoples. During this time, Mexican and indigenous women had limited participation in this creation of a “Spanish” culture, while their Anglo counterparts were able to expand their influence within the public sphere. Both men and women in San Diego used a commercialized “Spanish fantasy heritage” to smooth out the ugly and unequal history of “conquest, genocide, and war” in cultural heritage preservation projects. 218 At the same time, historic preservation and commemoration in the United States has ultimately been connected to tourism and the money-making potential of a particular place. While the concept of “national historic preservation” has been around for quite some time, “heritage tourism” did not emerge as a major industry out of public commemorations in the Northeast, the Middle Atlantic, and the South until after World War II. Before 1940, Americans traveled to the West and Southwest for exotic civic 217 Schwarzer, 57. 218 Kropp, 5. 162 pageantry such as the Ramona plays in San Diego. In See America First, Marguerite Shaffer shows how tourist campaigns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called Americans to “See America First.” 219 Public commemorations, heritage tourism, and civic pageantry emerged in the American Southwest to promote city building and local investment, and to attract settlers to the region. San Diego’s civic elite similarly viewed tourism and pageantry as key local industries that would help link the city’s regional history to the larger national culture. By the 1960s, boosters pressed the importance of cultural heritage tourism. This kind of tourism became quite popular and grew in salience, particularly after the signing of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966, which provided funds for preservation and commercialization. Whereas earlier preservation work was funded by donations and private developers, the U.S. government granted increasing amounts of public monies to states, cities, and boosters for this purpose. The NHPA encouraged private development of public lands to boost the economy and create increased tax revenue from tourism and commercial enterprises. Developers and boosters alike pushed for increased profits through new campaigns that advertised these places as uniquely American. They suggested it was a person’s patriotic duty to learn about U.S. history by visiting these heritage sites or “living museums.” 220 219 Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). 220 Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First (2001); Melanie K. Smith and Mike Robinson, Cultural Tourism in a Changing World : Politics, Participation and (Re)presentation (Ontario, Canada: Multilingual Matters, 2006). 163 As a “living museum,” Old Town comprises visual and material records related to San Diego’s Spanish, Mexican, and American past. In this way, the park becomes an archive, linking memory and empire through its representations, including those of the 1969 bicentennial celebrations. As Shawn Michelle Smith has indicated, “an archive circumscribes the meanings of the [representations] that comprise it, charging images with a particular cultural discourse and significance; even as the archive purports to document historical occurrences, it also maps the cultural terrain it describes.” 221 Thus, depositories such as Old Town also construct knowledge and ideologies, and are always conceived with political intent. Archivists and researchers alike choose certain images while excluding others, and those at Old Town State Historic Park are no exception. Further, the archive is a vehicle of memory, and as the foundation for any historical record, it makes certain people, places, things, ideas, and events visible, while rendering others invisible. In this sense, archives have an ideological function not only in their inception but also across time; they largely determine which and how histories will be remembered and forgotten. Representations of history and fantasy in these “living history” archives provide a lens through which to theorize U.S. empire in a commercial space where notions of history and fantasy are both confused and intimately intertwined. This historic space is an archive that has been reconfigured and re-created many times by various people from developers to tourists to shop owners. Thus, examining Old Town as an archive brings 221 Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture, (Princeton University Press, 1999), 11. 164 forth the everyday experiences of ordinary people coping with and re-defining empire on a daily basis. Old Town Becomes a State Historic Park City-planning directors, Chamber of Commerce members, and other city officials used a 1946 plan, called the “Eliot Plan” as a blueprint for their cause of turning Old Town into a state park. The Eliot Plan was five-fold. It was intended to: Safeguard the historic sites of the Area as a “living museum;” Encourage the construction and operation in the area of buildings in the style of “Early California;” Develop crafts and home industries of that period in order to create; A colorful “atmosphere” of Restaurants, Theatre, Dance, Fiestas, etc., which will attract tourists, and to recognize; The cultural contribution of the Early California-Spanish-Mexican background to San Diego, California and the Nation. 222 These objectives reveal that Old Town’s historic preservation was connected to tourism and revenue-generation from the start. They also show how Old Town becoming a state historic park was part of an attempt to claim national historical significance. The authors of this plan and the city officials who lobbied for Old Town’s recognition were simultaneously promoting San Diego and its history as integral and important parts in the nation. While this plan attempted to include San Diego’s “California-Spanish-Mexican background,” it also ignored the indigenous histories that were crucial to the region and 222 Glenn A. Rick and Charles W. Eliot, Old San Diego Plans for Development: Report to the City Council By the City Planning Commission. Original dated January 1946, 9. The 1946 Eliot plan was never implemented for multiple reasons. Most importantly, the NPHA in 1966 provided the city of San Diego with ample funds for development where none previously existed. 165 the nation. Old Town’s Mission de Alcalá was the site of the first major Native American uprising in Alta California, but to this day, the Indian freedom fighters have never been commemorated. A Spanish friar by the name of Father Luis, however, is commemorated with a statue and a plaque as the first martyr in Alta California. It is no wonder that the Kumeyaay tribe has been strategically ignored since the mission of the Old Town plan was “to build…‘a center of interest befitting [San Diego’s] importance as the birthplace of civilization in the west.’” 223 The Kumeyaay, then, were always already outside of this version of history since they were seen as the very people Westerners came to the New World to “civilize.” The road to official designation as a state historic park was difficult, particularly because by 1968 the Department of Parks and Recreation had failed to come up with a cohesive plan for development—other than Eliot’s 1946 plan. Part of the reason a decision couldn’t be reached was that there was intense opposition to Old Town as a heritage site. Angry letters reached the mayor of San Diego claiming that this push for state “parkhood was all based on falsehoods.” 224 If it weren’t for the heavy hand of then- Governor Ronald Reagan, who expedited state funds to San Diego to acquire Old Town property from homeowners—many of them old Californio families—the park might never have happened. 225 But even after Old Town was granted official “parkhood,” it became entangled in other controversies over California expenditures. The future of Old 223 Letter of Old San Diego Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Rick and Eliot, 9. 224 Letter from Sandy Goodman, n.d. 225 “Reagan Will Push Old Town Purchase”, San Diego Union, February 24, 1967, section B, 1: 6-7 166 San Diego was tossed around in a battle in the state assembly over Governor Reagan’s proposed spending plan. Suddenly, the little town that was overshadowed for a century by Horton’s New Town was part of a swirling debate over state funds. Multiple members of the assembly saw Reagan’s earmarks for Old Town, an amount exceeding $410,000 in public bonds, as “fat that needs trimming.” 226 They also had other things in mind for spending money, such as the purchase of privately held navy lands for public use. The fate of Old Town soon became the center of a debate between the privatization of public space and the socialization of private space. Senators in Washington, D.C., mostly Republicans, also weighed in on the matter, putting pressure on Democrats in the state assembly to “Save Old Town.” 227 The Old Town restoration project sought to promote a golden era of American conquest and the romance of the frontier, fueled by Western movies and the celebrity of on and off-screen cowboy, Ronald Reagan. In the end, with Reagan’s persistence, San Diego got its money for the development of Old Town and leased out the restored buildings to private entrepreneurs. 228 The case of Old Town demonstrates how restoration projects and the reconfiguration of the park as a state historic site provided the means through which the past could be remastered and manipulated to serve contemporary ideologies and to act as an “authentic” window into the past. San Diego boosters established the ideal time period 226 Ned Fitz, “National Eyes on San Diego’s Old Town,” San Diego Union 12 June 1967, section B-1. 227 Ibid. 228 Ibid. 167 for restoration as the years between 1821 and 1871. This time period was significant for multiple reasons: first of all, this era was a complex time in which economic, social, and religious transitions took place; secondly, the years highlight the romantic Western, Spanish, and pioneer stereotypes of early American conquest; third, and perhaps most importantly, those years include the first moments of Anglo-American domination in the Southwest. The romantic story of the Wild West included a clear racial hierarchy in which people of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American descent were considered inferior to Anglos, merely colorful background characters in the American story of a difficult and heroic life on the frontier. It was this view—of a golden era of American conquest and the romance of the frontier—that the Old Town restoration project sought to inculcate in the late 1960s and for two decades afterward. The next section looks at the inauguration ceremonies for Old Town as an official State Historic Park. In 1969, Old Town San Diego State Historical Park served as the focal point of the city’s bicentennial festivities, established because 1769 was the year Spanish priest, Junipero Serra, founded the mission at San Diego de Alcalá. Anglo Americans used everything from fake conquistador helmets to puppets, to re-enact and celebrate Spanish and American conquest and to attempt to re-create national identity from the nation’s edge at Old Town San Diego. San Diego Turns 200! A 1969 commercial produced by San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc., the official organizer of the city’s “birthday,” features the San Diego mission in the background and 168 El Hidalgo, the bicentennial “mascot,” speaking in what city officials described as a “thick but refined Spanish accent.” Wearing an updated version of the traditional Mexican charro suit—tight-fitting bell-bottomed pants and matching jacket tailored to the waist with red trim and button accents—El Hidalgo is a cross between Zorro and Butch Cassidy (Figure 5). He enters the scene riding a majestic horse. Dramatically rearing on its hind legs, the horse halts to a stop. The camera zooms in and El Hidalgo presents a winning smile. “Come join me in wishing San Diego a happy 200 th birthday!” He exclaims in his “refined” accent. With a flourish of his hand he expertly directs the horse and the viewers toward the mission in the background. The scene transitions to a brightly decorated fair in the plaza of the Old Town historic park. A voice-over briefly describes San Diego’s history and the city’s position as “the beginning of civilization in North America” where “anything is possible!” On the screen are images featuring the Old Town grounds, short clips of Balboa Park, and El Hidalgo having dismounted his horse. Figure 5: San Diego mascot, El Hidalgo, in front of the San Diego de Alcalá mission. Still photograph taken during the filming of the 1969 commercial. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 169 He walks through throngs of tourists as they enjoy Ballet Folklorico performances, Aztec dancers in colorful costumes, a marionette re-enactment of Cabrillo’s landing, and, of course, people dressed as conquistadores, padres, and sultry señoritas. After a cheesy montage of images from the fair accompanied by 1960s music with a “Mexican flair,” the camera again focuses on El Hidalgo, who is now leaning on the centerpiece of the plaza, El Capitán, a cannon brought from Spain in 1769. El Hidalgo and El Capitán are in the center of a large crowd of people, many of them wearing plastic conquistador hats and looking into the camera. With a tip of his dashing charro hat, Hidalgo asks the viewer to “Visit San Diego, and finish what valiant conquistadores started 200 years ago!” The commercial ends with the camera panning out to reveal a sea of people wearing colorful costumes, smiling and waving at the camera. 229 This commercial serves as an entry point into national discourses on empire, race, and conquest within a particular cultural and historical context. It reflects popular fears and needs of a time and place and, like other forms of media, it relies on common understandings of meanings and symbols. But how do we make sense of these meanings, particularly in light of the fact that the celebrations surrounding this commercial failed miserably? The reasons why the San Diego 200th anniversary was a social and financial failure highlight an important historical turning point in the way people of color could be represented in the United States. Like many public commemorations during the twentieth century, the 200 th planners used a set of traditional representational techniques that relied 229 San Diego 200 th Anniversary Commercial (#1275). Box 25. California Room Collections. 170 on common understandings of meanings and symbols in Southern California— representations that were ultimately unacceptable and potentially offensive in 1969. 1969: San Diego’s 200 th Anniversary Failure To honor of 200 years of America’s “progress, prosperity and strength,” San Diego city planners organized star-studded events as well as Mexican charros on horseback; flag-planting ceremonies for both the American flag and Official 200 th Anniversary flag; re-enactments of Cabrillo’s landing; and treks to the San Diego mission. At the “end” of the Civil Rights movement and in the midst of the Vietnam War, San Diego leaders offered a heavy-handed celebration of American empire and military might. This celebration was designed to complement the imperialist strength of the military industrial complex in the area. From Navy vessels docking in the bay to large jets flying overhead, San Diego’s military played an important part of the birthday celebration. A 200-gun salute even kicked off the birthday party with cannons aboard Navy ships in the harbor and artillery pieces at the Figure 6: Opening ceremony 200-gun salute, January 1, 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 171 Marine Corps Recruit Depot (Figure 6). While people in barrio Logan, the primarily low- income, Latino neighborhood to the east, reported they were initially frightened by explosions that sounded like war, hundreds of others gathered at the bay to watch Navy vessels and private boats sail by with American flags hoisted high. Fireworks exploded above the harbor, in the words of one observer, “turning night into day.” 230 The city expected millions of visitors to pour into San Diego for the year-long series of events. Although some residents and tourists participated in the dramatic opening ceremonies, the streams of money-spending tourists never really showed up, leaving the city of San Diego severely in debt. By some accounts the deficit was only $805,000 and by others it was over $1.5 million—an amount unprecedented for a city’s birthday party. 231 The year before the bicentennial, city officials proudly boasted their goal to unite Americans under the identity of a communal past that was located in San Diego at Old Town. 232 Celebration director Hugh A. Hall explained, “Americans will see the story of our great nation unfold as they watch the padres, conquistadores, and Indians perform in Old Town…Only in America could this history be possible.” 233 Hall suggested that people from all over the United States could come and visit this outpost of empire and 230 Cordell papers. 231 Chamber of Commerce minutes add up to more than $1.5 million, however, it is important to note that not all minutes were present in the archive and other figures may exist that are unaccounted for; San Diego Chamber of Commerce minutes, Minutes and Correspondence File 307, 1969-71. 232 San Diego Chamber of Commerce minutes, Minutes and Correspondence File 307, 1969-71. 233 Charles Cordell and Hugh A. Hall interviews with Dick Bowman, San Diego Union, 1968. 172 experience Western history—a truly American history around which people could rally and celebrate while struggles over the Vietnam War and civil rights were tearing communities apart elsewhere. The construction of a shared sense of American heritage entailed a re- visualization of this past. As Alon Confino has observed, nationalism is “an iconographic process.” The “everyday level of perceptions of the past” or “how an image of the past endures in material objects of everyday life” is crucial to the nationalizing project. 234 And for San Diego boosters, the Spanish conquest alongside military strength in Southern California provided a wealth of potent visual material ranging from colorful festivals to a canon of easily recognizable racial stereotypes and architectural structures. These iconographic processes were used en masse in the planning and implementing of San Diego’s 200 th birthday celebration. The festivities rallied around a pure, unrefined, American character—found both in the figure of the Californio and the American military man. These distinct local and regional identities could be assembled to create a composite whole. The process allowed everyone to participate in the project of nation building at a time when the nation was perhaps the most divided since the Civil War. The mediation between the “intimate local place and the abstract national world,” as Alon Confino has argued in his study of national memory in Germany, is typical of this process of nationalism. He explains, “the nation is a conglomeration of opposing and at times contradictory memories [which] in 234 Confino, Alon. The Nation as Local Metaphor: Wiirttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918 (Chapel Hill and London, 1997): xii, 8-10. 173 Figure 8: Image from the 200th anniversary celebration, 1969. Plastic helmets featured prominently for Anglo-Americans who wished to pretend they were modern-day conquistadores. spite of their confrontations—add up to something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.” 235 Such is certainly the case in Old Town San Diego, where celebrations of conquest, the Wild West, and the military allowed Americans to define national culture in familiarly local terms and in contrast to exoticized notions of Mexican and Native American cultures. Within this framework, the restoration of old San Diego was important for cultural identity on local, regional, and national levels simultaneously. Perhaps the easiest figure for Anglo-Americans to rally around was the conquistador, because he symbolized triumph and military might in a military city. There were multiple representations of conquistadors, featured on coins, as a puppet, or as a man in full Spanish colonial costume (Figure 7). Curiously, conquistador helmets became especially popular during the festivities, and people 235 Ibid., 9-10. Figure 7: Conquistador at the 200th anniversary festivities with member of the 200 th anniversary committee, 1969. Courtesy of the California Room at the San Diego Public Library. 174 were captured on film playing modern-day conquerors (Figure 8). As Anglo men and women dressed up for kicks, Mexican men and women in the area were portrayed as belonging to the past, rather than as present-day citizens of the nation. 236 Their presence was necessary to complete the fantasy world of Spanish colonization and thus people of Mexican descent were hired to play Mexican peasants, and to work in the service industry, which was by this time flourishing in Old Town (Figures 9-12). Anglos’ encounters with hyper-racialized bodies in controlled spaces like Old Town—in which Anglos were invited to dress up as conquistadores, padres, and señoritas what Latinas/os were called to dress up as Mexican mascots and peasants for money—allowed them to come to terms with the meanings of empire and racial differences and inequalities. These performances naturalized exploitative social relations and invented a collective history of social progress that supposedly started in 1769 with Spanish padres 236 Kropp,11. Figures 9-12: Anglo Southern Californians dressed up as señoritas and bandidos to celebrate conquest and "diversity." At far right, two young San Diegans of Mexican descent found performance work as Mexican peasants hired for the bicentennial celebration. 175 and conquistadors. Anglo San Diegans rehearsed a romantic tale of heroic virtue in civilized conquest, a story that included civil trade with Mexico and a history of racial succession in which Spanish and then Anglo conquests marked essential steps in social progress and toward modernity. They even dressed up in stylized ethnic garb to play the parts of the Spanish conquerors. In particular, Anglo women profited from this public role-playing and, as Phoebe Kropp explains, when they “donned the señorita’s costume for an evening, they gained both celebratory license and credit for preservation.” 237 In doing so, they continued the celebration of the Spanish fantasy past, a myth that had been established in regional culture and elevated to public memory for decades. Their enactments were neither benign nor naïve gestures of appreciation of Spanish heritage as they claimed they were. This process echoes the whitewashing that took place in turn of the century Los Angeles, as explicated in William Deverell’s groundbreaking Whitewashed Adobe. Deverell explains that the whitewashing was not a coat of impermeable paint rendering Mexicans invisible in Los Angeles. Instead it served more as a stage production’s curtain that could obscure when necessary but illuminate on demand. As Deverell provocatively argues, the elaborate performances “all had to do with rendering Mexicans expressly visible, lest they disappear into the polity, into the neighborhoods, into the city of the future.” 238 This rang true in San Diego’s bicentennial celebration. 237 Ibid. 238 William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe (2004). 176 On the surface it might seem that nothing changed from the turn-of-the-twentieth- century representations in Old Town to the 1969 celebrations. After all, many people continued to enjoy the same problematic festivities in 1906 at Ramona’s Marriage Place, in 1915 and 1935 at the San Diego Expositions, and in 1969 at the bicentennial. Plenty of people resisted and protested the same representations in each of these historical moments, yet planners didn’t listen to opposing viewpoints. Just as boosters, city officials, developers, and business people ignored the letters of angry citizens in the first half of the twentieth century, so did planners in 1969 as they designed the celebration activities and representations regardless of dissent in the local neighborhoods. For example, the Mexican mascot, El Hidalgo, was not exactly palatable to everyone. Mr. Miguel Archuleta, a Latino resident, commented in a letter to the San Diego Bicentennial Committee: “Look at him traipsing around like a dog on a chain! Being Spanish is a proud heritage and should not be made fun of!” 239 Not everyone agreed with the bicentennial either. For example, a poignant though perhaps misguided letter to the San Diego 200 th Executive Committee called the whole premise of the anniversary into question, “Why don’t we celebrate the end of the Mexican war? That’s when we became American. This 200 th anniversary is for Spain, not for America.” 240 These were just a few of the differing opinions offered to the bicentennial planners. They reveal complicated understandings of race, conquest, and nation, and the extent to which individual residents 239 Miguel Archuleta, letter to the San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, March 1969. San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Papers, MSS C-B 899, 1, San Diego Public Library. 240 Anonymous, letter to the San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, January 1969. San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Papers, MSS C-B 899, 2, San Diego Public Library. 177 were invested in the bicentennial and the history of San Diego. Their investment hearkens back to earlier San Diegans like José Guadalupe Estudillo who wrote letters of protest over the elision of other histories. Planners, however, were unfazed by these letters and pushed forward with their designs for the year. In 1969, movements against the Vietnam War continued to mount in San Diego as the war dragged on. Anti-war radicals had split into several groups throughout the country, including the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which spoke out openly against the war and staged national sit-ins, protests, and walk-outs. Locally, the SDS at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) protested against the war. They also connected the ideologies behind the war to those behind the 200 th anniversary. One SDS student even stated the bicentennial was “a celebration for the war machine and the man” because it condoned and promoted empire and imperialism in San Diego “like what's going on in Vietnam.” 241 Many students expressed their dissatisfaction with the celebration activities by simply not going. Others protested against the bicentennial festivities, using anti-war tactics like teach-ins and picketing. 242 There had been protests against the Vietnam War at UCSD since the mid-sixties, and until conflicts started to escalate in 1969, most of these protests consisted of peaceful demonstrations, with speeches and teach-ins, pickets and signs. The SDS used similar methods for resistance at the bicentennial celebrations, albeit in smaller numbers. From 241 “San Diego Birthday Party’s Uninvited Guests,” San Diego Union, May 4, 1969, B-1; Rebecca E. Klatch, A generation divided: the new left, the new right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 242 “Radical Students Pick Chicago as Convention Site,” San Diego Union 12 June 1969, A-6. 178 picketing outside the Old Town site, to setting up informal teach-ins about empire and imperialism at or near the events and activities, students used their anti-war sensibilities to argue against the 200 th Anniversary of Spanish empire building. At the same time, the movement against the festivities was small and tangential compared to the more significant protests against the war in Vietnam and the involvement of the UCSD regents with the military, the Navy, the Pentagon, the Defense Department, and “corporate war- profiteers.” Additionally, in response to some of the protests at the festivities, the 200 th anniversary planning committee pushed for police to curb student protests—on and off campus—which ended up slowing the anti-war movement as well. 243 By the end of 1969, the year-long bicentennial party that celebrated 200 years of conquest was a complete cultural and political failure. The city of San Diego was also in a crippling deficit. In fact, the anniversary was the first major attraction in San Diego featuring the same Spanish fantasy past to fail miserably. Things had changed and the vital cultural and political transformations of the 1960s were reflected in the subsequent social failure and financial disaster of the 200 th anniversary. The failure of the celebration came as a surprise for many people, particularly those masterminding the festivities. Planners knew that San Diego had been the site of wildly successful World Expositions in both 1915 and 1935. Additionally, business was thriving at Old Town and Balboa Park. In 1969 they figured it was again time to cash in 243 Tom Hayden, Reunion: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1987; “Uninvited Guests,” San Diego Union. 179 on the popularity of the steadily growing Southern California destination. 244 However, even during the year before the events started, George A. Scott of the San Diego 200 th Anniversary Executive Committee was appalled by the lack of money management. Scott stated, “after 16 months, we have raised $123,073.33 out of the $470,000 we should have by now from the [San Diego] Business Community. Additionally, we have spent almost half of this $123,000 figure in order to raise that much…never [have I] been in a campaign where there has been so much fundraising activity (including free dinners, luncheons, and cocktail parties) to raise so little money.” 245 Scott and others were appalled by the amount of money spent on fundraising, but these figures paled in comparison to money wasted on merchandising and advertising that never yielded any profits. From signature Jack Daniels San Diego 200 th Anniversary bottles of whiskey, to commemorative coins and flags, the merchandise of the bicentennial ended up costing more than some of the festivities. By May of 1969, the 200 th Executive Committee knew they were in big financial trouble. At this time, the events in Old Town alone projected a loss of $805,000, a figure that was realized by December of that year. Shows in the Old Town Arena, dubbed “Fiesta 200,” reported extreme losses. For example, the committee estimated $933,000 in revenue and spent accordingly. By May they reported a net loss of over $100,000 in 244 San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, Regular Meeting Minutes, Tuesday, 14 May 1968. 245 Ibid. 180 Fiesta 200 alone. 246 Furthermore, their commitment to a “diverse array of performances to commemorate our diverse California-Spanish-Mexican history” was quickly abandoned as they realized the “Indians and Ballet Folklorico [were] not bringing in $933,000.” 247 Robert W. Arnhym of the Executive Committee explained the bottom line, “If we get rid of the Indians they are now costing $31,000 per month. But we took in $30,000 this month. By June [we] will be in a net position. [We’ll] break even plus maybe $10. If we unload them now, [we] will get no profit…you don’t throw out a chance for revenue at this point.” 248 This statement was one of desperation and others echoed Arnhym’s plea to secure any revenue possible. But by the end of the year, the 200 th Executive Committee meeting minutes were focused on cutting losses, and negotiating with creditors and sponsoring agencies. 249 Alongside poor money management and inflated revenue projections there were other difficulties that contributed to this failed celebration. For one, people simply didn’t visit the festivities after the summer months of 1969, but 200 th planners were committed to a year-long event. Two, the state-funded advisory and planning committees were constantly changing, with people serving only six-month terms—any organizer knows 246 San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, Regular Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, 28 May 1969. 247 San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, “Statement to the City of San Diego,” January, 1968; San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, Regular Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, 28 May 1969. 248 Ibid., “Arena Area Fiesta 200.” 249 San Diego 200 th Anniversary, Inc. Executive Committee, Regular Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, 19 November 1969. 181 that leadership has to be consistent for an event or cause to be successful. Three, many of the events were expensive and only open to wealthier people—those in barrio Logan apparently never even knew of the festivities until the 200-gun salute caused a panic. Most important to this study, however, is the fact that the change in attitudes between the 1935 Fair and the 1969 bicentennial reflects a deeper national concern about the implications of U.S. conquest and the culmination of ongoing discussions about America’s role in the world. I return to the question: Why did re-enactments of conquest appeal to some Americans in Old Town San Diego and offend others who boycotted the festivities? Concern over the role of Americans in the world and elitist attitudes of the planners both influenced the representations of national identity featured in the 200 th Anniversary. The bicentennial celebration was meant to give Americans from across the nation an event around which to rally, but not everyone saw San Diego’s “beginning” as warranting a national commemoration. In fact, to demonstrate just how marginal San Diego was to national consciousness of the time, one must only look to the fervor that arose around America’s “Bicentennial Era” just two years later in 1971. At the televised launch of this era, the speaker of the House opened: “Amid the dissension that sometimes amounts to hate in our country today, it behooves us to remind ourselves that we are a united nation...” 250 This call for national unity was not only a response to criticisms of 250 Lyn Spillman, “Imagining Community and Hoping For Recognition: Bicentennial Celebrations in 1976 and 1988.” Qualitative Sociology 17 (1994): 1. 182 U.S. empire in the waning years of the Vietnam War, but also marked the beginning of the country’s “real,” official bicentennial, one that excluded the history that San Diego city officials fought so hard to highlight. San Diego’s 200 th birthday was never mentioned. The decade-long national bicentennial, however, was celebrated widely throughout the nation including Southern California and San Diego. This suggests, in the larger national consciousness, Americans did not recognize the U.S. revolution (celebrated during the “Bicentennial Era”) as a kind of conquest. It was, in fact, Manifest Destiny. With these national celebrations we see a continuation of the mythology that the United States was founded on anti-colonial principles and fueled by a kind of divine destiny to rule much of North American land. 251 Many Americans preferred to believe it was their divine right to lay claim to the lands of the United States, instead of recognizing the Anglo settlers who founded the United States as a colonizing force. By 1969, the attitudes of many Americans were less than favorable towards what they perceived as racist and “negative” representations. Indeed, representations of people of color were complicated on a national scale by civil rights struggles and battles over identity politics. In other words, these kinds of representations could no longer go unchallenged. At the same time, questions about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam prevented the traditional myths of a Spanish fantasy past and an Anglo American future from achieving incontrovertible permanence, particularly in light of the prominent and problematic military industrial complex in San Diego. The 1969 bicentennial 251 This was especially evident to Americans when they compared their “righteous” Manifest Destiny to the undesirable colonial powers of Europe. 183 representations highlight the tensions between the tradition of celebrating conquest and military might in San Diego, and the social movements and identity politics gaining ground throughout the entire country—especially at Universities across California from UC Berkeley to UC San Diego. These tensions reveal how empire came to be negotiated in this military and cultural outpost and highlight the salience of identity politics and contestation of national identity. The failure of the bicentennial celebrations was a failure to recognize the importance of representation in the struggles of people of color in the 1960s and beyond. Ironically, the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War were also the likely impetus for San Diego boosters to plan this bicentennial celebration in the first place. These struggles caused ideological crises expressed, in part, by conflating social unrest with the loss of American supremacy. San Diego city planners relied on racist imagery and a celebration of Spain’s role in U.S. conquest—since they “prepared the land” for Americans—to try and stabilize identities in the face of America’s imperial decline. Declaring the 200 th anniversary at the “founding” by Spanish padres and conquistadores, and aligning themselves with Spain, San Diegans reclaimed imperial and racial might – which was found in a romantic and prosperous Europe (i.e., Spain). As one can see form the SDS protests, this celebration of imperialism and military, however, was far from the minds of many Americans in 1969. As demonstrated by the many letters and boycotts of the year, a glorification of conquest in San Diego was inappropriate for many people. The fact that the bicentennial was a failure points to popular debates over the virtues of 184 colonization and conquest, the meanings of racial difference, and the morality of dispossession. Continuing Conquest in Everyday Empire Returning for a moment to analyze the bicentennial commercial and the peculiar figure of El Hidalgo demonstrates the tension between problematic expressions of empire and conquest created by city boosters and the tradition of resistance by San Diego residents. El Hidalgo is a corporeal representation of conquest. His body and name (after the Treaty that ended the war and “completed” American conquest) is a representation and a result of these histories of conquest. His “refined Spanish accent” and placement in front of the mission gestures to vestiges of linguistic (a Spanish accent), religious (the imposing adobe mission in the background), and racial (as the indigenous past is erased and ignored) conquest and domination in the area. El Hidalgo wears a charro suit, traditional Californio/Mexican attire reflective of Spanish empire in the new world that is also used in Ballet Folklorico dances (featured in the commercial), cultural practices that were developed in Mexico over centuries and reflect regional differences and similarities. Ballet Folklorico performances blend the indigenous, Mexican, Spanish, and more recently American cultures that come together in Mexican mestizo music and dance. At the same time, El Hidalgo’s charro pants flare at the bottom, adopting the style of the times, making him hip and palatable to a contemporary American audience. El Hidalgo is a figure from the past and a result of conquest, but firmly stylistically placed in the present of 1969. 185 Thus, San Diego natives and visitors shaped and contested a dynamic civic culture of heritage tourism and the built environment. Everyday expressions of U.S. empire depicted in Old Town demonstrate a continuum of representational conquest, as well as various ways conquest is understood and challenged on a daily basis. As various social actors struggled to benefit from the commercial success of Old Town and the Estudillo adobe, they became part of larger structures of power, but their particular footsteps often transgressed these boundaries and continually transformed the city itself. Twentieth century encounters with the built environment in the fully orchestrated space of Old Town allowed ordinary Anglo visitors and Latina/o residents to imagine the past and to negotiate the meanings of empire, racial differences and inequalities through evolving conceptions of belonging to a nation at the edges of that empire. In 1969, the bicentennial was a celebration and continuation of conquest and the commercial demonstrates how conquest was celebrated in multiple ways. For example, the historical overview indicates San Diego is the “beginning of civilization in California,” ignoring the long history of indigenous settlement in the region. Of course, “civilization” refers to a modern understanding of Western progress, including economic and political structures located in Europe—in this case, in Spain. Locating the beginning of civilization at 1769—when Father Junipero Serra established the first mission in Alta California at San Diego de Alcalá—not only celebrates the violent oppression of a well- established indigenous tribe, the Kumeyaay, but also nullifies the years of Mexican sovereignty and transforms the last two centuries of war, rape, upheaval, and dispossession into a story of Western progress, from Spanish conquistadores to American 186 soldiers. Significantly, the end of the commercial calls attention to the underlying theme of the entire bicentennial celebration when El Hidalgo asks potential visitors to “Visit San Diego, and finish what valiant conquistadores started 200 years ago.” He invites viewers to participate in the continuation of conquest, highlighted not by the cannon or the bloody sword, but by the sea of plastic conquistador hats shining brightly in the sun all around him. He is surrounded by modern-day conquistadors who, by attending the 200 th anniversary, not only celebrate Spanish conquest, but continue it. This continuation of conquest is featured prominently in the further development of Old Town as an official State Historic Park only a few years after the bicentennial. Whose History Counts? Claiming a Stake in the Nation In 1977, after ten years of preliminary studies, the State Department of Parks and Recreation issued the Preliminary Old Town State Historic Park Resource Management Plan, based on the Old Town Master Plan completed a few years prior by architect Robert Ferris and the firm of Delawie, Macy, and Henderson. Dissent about the bicentennial was nothing in comparison to the heated public debates about Old Town’s “official” representation that ensued after the adoption of this plan. The plan proposed to redevelop Old Town as a kind of “sister to Williamsburg,” a “living experience” in the history of the Spanish, Mexican, and American periods beginning in 1821 when Spanish soldiers first erected dwellings outside the walls of the Presidio, and ending in 1872 when a fated Mrs. Schiller lit a fire in her kitchen stove and burned down half the village. Basically, the $11 million, 25-year plan called for the 187 removal of more modern structures and the reconstruction of about 45 of the original buildings in and around Old Town Plaza from the 1821–1872 time period. This meant that all the buildings erected for the bicentennial as well as the Mission Playhouse (used for Ramona and Mission Plays and eventually rebuilt) would have to go. Additionally, the successful and new (at the time) Bazaar del Mundo would expire along with its lease in 1991. Calling for reconstruction of the interpretive period as accurately as possible, the plan proposed extensive measures to ensure historical “authenticity” in every area involved. Lighting and fixtures would look as old-fashioned as possible, streets and sidewalks would be torn out and replaced with special “earth-colored surfacing” that would “resemble the bare native soil, alternately dusty and muddy,” and landscaping of the plaza, too, would reflect the original look. 252 This reconstruction of Old Town into an “authentic” representation of San Diego’s past troubled many people for various reasons. In particular, owners of small shops and the bigger Bazaar del Mundo in Old Town criticized this new plan and even fought back in court. Friends of the Bazaar were infuriated, in fact, at the prospect of losing their popular commercial site. Others were up in arms about the landscaping of the Old Town Plaza. Project manager Earl V. Carlson wanted to create an “authentically pure experience in Old Town.” This included a re-creation of the plaza, which was, “until late in its history…a wind-swept, sun-baked, or muddy square.” The plan suggested, “the present landscaping creates a false impression of the form and function of the plaza as it 252 State Department of Parks and Recreation, “Preliminary Old Town State Historic Park Resource Management Plan,” 1977. 188 originally existed so trees and shrubs should be removed or pruned to restore the original open spaces.” 253 This outraged San Diegans who feared wholesale defoliation of Old Town. And on March 11, 1977, a public hearing was held to try to iron out these issues. By some accounts, over 200 people crowded into the public space. After hearing the testimony of project manager, Earl Carlson, Old Town State Park manager, James E. Neal, and around fifty San Diego residents, the State Park and Recreation Commission approved the Preliminary Old Town State Historic Plan. The commission added language to “assure the continued greenery of the plaza,” amended the plan to include a five-year review (instead of the original 15), and called for the retention of existing parking spaces until alternative lots could be created. It also made one crucial change: the commissioners declared that no action could be taken to destroy Bazaar del Mundo without prior review by the commission. This history is important for a few reasons. First of all, it set a precedent for the next thirty years that would allow private capital to take over much of Old Town. Second, the arguments over the plan were about private businesses and the green space in Old Town; critics of how Old Town represented racial and ethnic diversity through its built environment didn’t appear en masse for another decade. In the meantime, the commission moved forward with its plan amid continued criticism. By 1987, numerous newspaper articles, public letters to city officials and San Diego residents, and flyers given out at the Park asked: “What is going on in Old Town, San Diego?” One flyer, put out by an organization called the Defenders of Historic Sites, 253 Ibid. 189 stated, “When completed only 5 out of 82 buildings in Old Town State Historic Park will address the period before 1846. None of the structures will represent the Indian People who helped build Old Town.” 254 Other brochures brought to light the fact that “Virtually no Spanish language historical sources were considered” in the framing of the 1977 plan. 255 One writer’s incendiary remarks summed up the accusations: [The State Park Plan] is a statement of [San Diego officials’] continuing contempt and insensitivity that they have for San Diego’s Indian and Latino past. State Park planning documents completed in 1977 lay out their completed vision of a Park where the lives of early Indian and Latino people will serve as little more than a prelude to the arrival of Anglo-Americans. 256 These arguments continued for the next 10 years, stalling the reconstruction of other buildings in Old Town. The issue of how San Diego’s history would be re-written came to a head again in 1997 when Parks and Recreation approved the reconstruction of the 1869 McCoy House as the new Visitor Center. During the excavation work for the McCoy project it was discovered that the McCoy home, an Anglo-American mansion, was built over the foundations of the old Silvas Adobe Complex, which was built circa 1821 by descendents of Miguel Silvas, a Spanish soldier who arrived in the 1770s during Spanish control of the region. Building over the Silvas Adobe Complex would effectively eliminate the potential reconstruction of other archeological sites—including a number of Mexican 254 Defenders of Historic Sites, “What is going on in Old Town, San Diego,” c. 1987. 255 Defenders of Historic Sites, “Do you believe this is a fair, accurate or balanced treatment of history?” c. 1987. 256 Jack Williams, “To the Citizens of San Diego and California,” The Center for Spanish Colonial Archeology, 1987. 190 Republic Era homes (1821–1846), and at least one prehistoric Native American site. One article in La Prensa San Diego, by Dolores Fino and Daniel Muñoz, stated that “The re- write of Old Town San Diego does not begin and end with the Silvas Adobe Complex but is a continuation of the revisionist history being created by the Department of Parks and Recreation.” 257 Descendents of the Silvas family filed a lawsuit against Parks and Recreation, claiming that the American Interpretive Era should include their ancestors’ house because, “it is as much a part of the history as the McCoy house.” The organization, Defenders of Historic Sites, was resurrected as Protectors of Historic Sites, with David Martinez (a Silva descendant) as Chairman. Not only did Martinez actively fight for Latina/o and Native American representation in Old Town, but his group also brought to light the fact that this decision to build the McCoy house over the Silvas Adobe was an Anglo decision to erase Mexican history. In 2000, the Department of Parks and Recreation completed the reconstruction of the McCoy house. The lawsuits and public uproar, however, prompted Old Town developers to call the complex the “Silvas-McCoy Site.” This is an example of the ways in which empire is negotiated and representational conquest has continued recently in Old Town. Battles over this history are battles over a public archive and whose history gets to count. Nothing demonstrates this more than the fights over Old Town’s racial representation. The structures in the space have taken on a larger historical significance 257 Dolores Fino and Daniel Muñoz, “San Diego’s Historical Past Being Destroyed!” La Prensa San Diego, 24 April 1998. 191 Figure 13: El Capitán pictured in San Diego Union, 1966 as they become representative of an entire people’s history. One author put it succinctly in a letter to the State Parks and Recreation, We must not give short shrift to the Spanish and Mexican periods in Old Town. This representation is not only for us. It is for our children and for our future. How will they learn about history on their field trips to Old Town, when half of the history is missing? 258 These poignant questions about representation in Old Town reveal its importance to San Diego residents. Fast forward to the contemporary moment and the makeshift bicentennial buildings in Old Town have disappeared. But the same cannon, El Capitán, (the one on which El Hidalgo was leaning at the end of the commercial) still stands as a photo opportunity and a toy for budding conquistador children. On any given day, one can visit San Diego’s Old Town State Historic Park and pose alongside El Capitán, a bulky iron cannon standing sentinel in the center of the plaza (Figure 13). Parents often take pictures of their children next to the cannon, looking into its vast black hole, even climbing on top of it, and sometimes making sound effects of imagined battles and explosions. The children know what the cannon is used 258 Maria Espinosa, “Dear State Parks and Recreation, I am concerned about the future of Old Town.” San Diego Public Library file on Old Town, written 18 July 1998. 192 for, and yet its danger is rendered benign as it stands mutely part of a “living museum” of U.S. history at the park. The death and violence the cannon now represents and was once responsible for are glossed over or simply ignored as the cannon becomes a relic, a symbol of a righteous conquest, and a child’s jungle gym. The violence of the cannon’s past, however, should not be overlooked because it is part of the history of San Diego and holds traces of U.S. empire. El Capitán is one of only two pieces of artillery that remain from the old days of Spanish rule; the other cannon, El Jupiter, is on display at Fort Stockton in Presidio Park. Both came on ships from Spain and were used in the Spanish Fort on Ballast Point to defend colonists from Indians, Russians, and Americans. From approximately 1850 to 1870, during the first years of American rule, the old cannon in the plaza was hammered deep into the ground, muzzle down, and used as a whipping post for Indians who “misbehaved.” The cannon itself is a testament to violence and death. According to its plaque and placement in Old Town’s plaza, however, one would think it was a “noble defender” rather than an instrument of death. Nevertheless, it stands as a historic symbol of the violent transitions that took place over centuries of conquest. Perhaps a plaque with images of broken bodies and bloody torsos would help people to understand the history of “The Captain”? Is El Hidalgo asking viewers to continue this same violent conquest when he suggests that visitors should “finish what valiant conquistadores started 200 years ago”? Viewers might assume that he is referring to a metaphorical conquest. However, in these very stories continually retold at Old Town is also continuation of conquest, through representation. 193 Tourists have arrived in Old Town for enjoyment and most would not find reminders of the psychic and physical pain of conquest enjoyable. However, the systematic erasure of the violent history is far from benign. The representations in Old Town often gloss over or completely ignore the violence of conquest and war for the entertainment of millions of mostly white, middle to upper class visitors who tour the park each year. While the demographics of visitors have changed over the years, now including more people of color from all different backgrounds than ever before, the stories told in the park have changed little—from the early 1900s to the 1960s to the present day—because they all reflect and justify conquest while simultaneously erasing its pain. Despite controversies, arguments, protests, boycotts, and even yelling matches between city officials, residents, and historians over the years, the representations in Old Town San Diego offer a history of natural racial succession communicated by live historical actors and emphasized through intense commercialism. These representations are part of the same ideological strain that enables visitors over the years to continue conquest. Visual examples of this temporal continuum are found in the 1969 commercial and in the present day children mounting the cannon, El Capitán. Both visual images make long-standing connections between San Diego as a place where the military industrial complex, national identity, and ideas about the future of the U.S. are played out. The image of El Hidalgo leaning on the cannon suggests the easy symbiotic relationship of mythical histories and wartime violence—erasing the historical significance of the Californio families and indigenous tribes. Instead, El Hidalgo is a 194 living representative of the very people at which the cannon was aimed. Meanwhile, the contemporary image of children climbing on the cannon presents an almost trite juxtaposition of innocence and war that does not do justice to the long history of supposedly benign representations of U.S. conquest (and is symbolic of the indoctrination of this history). As the military industries that provide for the economic development of the greater San Diego area create new technologies of war, children and parents—indeed, the American public—learned long ago that the cannon is not pointed at them. While children figure prominently in the way the park represents history— primarily because they are the targets for multiple educational events and projects held there—Old Town attempts to be relevant to all visitors. In doing so it has used multiple strategies, from selling the fantasy of Ramona and a fabricated history in the early 1900s; to fighting for designation as a state historic park and celebrating its 200 th birthday in 1969; to profiting from a commercialized Pan-Latino marketplace, Bazaar del Mundo, run by business woman Diane Powers (1972–2005); to finally deciding the park wasn’t “historical enough” and bringing in a company from Buffalo, New York, to take over concessions in 2005. Representations in Old Town are complicated precisely because they re-imagine U.S. history and therefore national identity. The representations of Old Town’s histories are an exercise in remembering or re-creating specific occasions, events, and victories while forgetting those who trouble the notions of American (also read “white”) supremacy. Thus, representations act as modalities of conquest and the expansion of empire. For over a century, questions about the fate of Old Town have always also been entangled in notions of national identity and race relations. 195 This conflict came to a head again in 2004-2005 when the park’s lease ran out. Rather than re-lease to Diane Powers, California State Parks chose an outsider, Delaware North, to operate the former Bazaar del Mundo. This started another intense round of controversies as Powers filed a lawsuit against the state of California and her supporters protested by boycotting the park. In accordance with its mission, the park today is continuing to move in a “historic” direction focusing on Old Town’s history from 1821 to 1872. The challenge for park interpreters is how best to restore and represent this period of transition from a territory of Spain, to Mexico, to the United States. At first glance, a focus on this period seems to showcase conquest, colonialism, and imperial desires. Upon deeper inspection, a critical eye towards the processes of conquest is curiously absent as children play in the plaza park with the cannon, El Capitán. In the very forgetting, in the absences created by this selective memory, empire and conquest are lived out. Instead, like many other historic parks, the story told in Old Town is one of rightful progress and racial succession. There is hardly an acknowledgement of the complicated and often violent transitions between Spanish, Mexican, and American governance. Already forgotten, or at least ignored, are the multitude of critical moments in which revolts and struggles called conquest into question. Alongside the children playing on El Capitán, the shooting of an old Californio by an Anglo American “pioneer” is reenacted every Friday. This reenactment acts as a slap in the face to decedents of early inhabitants, and is part of the ongoing reenactment of American conquest. Be that as it may, the historical actors—inevitably an Anglo American man playing the pioneer, and a Latino man playing the Californio—believe in 196 the story their actual bodies are retelling. These individual actors reveal that the processes of and ideologies behind conquest are much more complicated than a simplified narrative of violence, dispossession, and domination. While I have detailed how representations in Old Town are about claims to history, national identity, and who gets to count, I do not mean to suggest that people of Mexican descent were wholly “defeated” by or acquiesced to Anglo dominance in the region. Many Latino residents have resisted these representations and found new spaces for political and cultural autonomy. Over the years, everyone has wanted a piece of the origin story of San Diego, because controlling the representation in Old Town is about controlling history and claiming a stake in and a right to San Diego. Anglo San Diegans have used representations of people of color—mostly Mexican bodies, or people in Mexican and Spanish costumes—to explore their own fears of political and economic dependency on Mexico for labor and trade, to articulate American mastery in relation to other world powers during the 1969 bicentennial celebration, and to negotiate their place within the nation through everyday expressions of empire. The fights over representation in Old Town and the failure of the bicentennial celebration are proof that racial representation was far more complicated than Anglo boosters and developers had previously thought. Particularly after the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, offensive and stereotypical representations of racial “Others” were no longer acceptable to many Americans. In the post-Civil Rights era of celebratory multiculturalism, many displays of people of color have been considered taboo. Yet, that does not mean that processes of representational conquest have ended. 197 Indeed, they have continued in other more insidious ways. In the next decade, the U.S. looked farther out over the Pacific and set its sights on rapprochement with China. In the next chapter I turn to cultural diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and how they are reflected in local conservation projects at the San Diego Zoo. Here the giant panda has not only come to stand in for China and racial Others, but also efforts to display and conserve giant pandas have played a curious role in representational conquest. The animal itself is significant because the shift from “ping pong diplomacy” to “panda diplomacy” reveals how two nations—the U.S. and China—have negotiated empire at the national level. What happens when the economic relationship between empires is too important to allow for the messy and controversial face-to-face public expressions and negotiations of empire? 198 CHAPTER FOUR Panda Politics: National Identity and U.S.-China Cultural Diplomacy From Ping Pong to Pandas: Cultural Diplomacy between the U.S. and China In the late 1960s to the early 1970s the U.S. government developed a new diplomatic relationship with China through what came to be called “ping pong diplomacy.” Prior to this time, Communist China was closed to the world and especially capitalist nations like the United States during the intense Cold War. Alongside the friendly competitive sport of ping pong, Americans “rediscovered” China through tourism, and the Chinese government strategically gave countries gifts of their treasured giant panda couples—a traditional gift from the Chinese rulers “meant to signal a peaceful relationship.” 259 By the late 1970s, zoos throughout the world vied for the endangered species. The San Diego Zoo was no exception. It desired a pair of giant pandas to inaugurate one of the most expensive, state of the art research and breeding programs in the world. This diplomatic transition from ping pong to pandas was a logical if ironic development in cultural exchange between the two nations. The docile and loveable panda fit perfectly into U.S. notions of Orientalism and American nation building projects. The large bears also came to represent a new era of diplomacy that 259 James A. Baker, “America in Asia: Emerging Architecture for a Pacific Community,” Foreign Affairs 70 (Winter 1991/1992); Chen Jian, Mao’s China and The Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 199 allowed both the U.S. and China to fully control cultural interactions between the two nations. The Chinese government “used the panda as a political tool, giving treasured pairs to certain countries—Japan, England, France, Spain, Mexico, and North Korea—as a gesture of friendship.” 260 China sent Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing to Washington D.C.— two pandas that were depicted as the world’s most famous diplomats. For months, American zoos lobbied for ownership of the exotic immigrants, their behavior reminding Washington Post writer Judith Martin of “a day care center with lots of aggressive children and only two teddy bears.” 261 According to zoologist George Schaller, “one American zoo even offered one thousand Holstein cows for a pair.” 262 Since the gift was intended for the people of the United States, President Nixon decided to bestow the pandas on the National Zoo. Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were transported to the Washington D.C., and for the next twenty-six years reigned as the only giant pandas in the United States. The gift of giant pandas was quite controversial at first. Animal rights groups castigated China, claiming that pandas would be traumatized by their international trips; they argued the already endangered animals should stay in their natural habitat rather than become money-making attractions. The critiques abruptly stopped the practice of sending pandas as “gifts” and “short term loans” and set the stage for the practice of long 260 George Schaller, The Last Panda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 8-9. 261 Ignatius, D. “The Panda Puzzle.” The Washington Post 14 December 1999, A38. 262 Schaller, 9-11. 200 term international, scientific collaboration between U.S. zoos and Chinese biologists that has remained strong for decades. Within ten years, however, cultural diplomacy between the two countries shifted from ping pong, art, and musical exchange—in which people from China and the United States were able to come together as active agents engaging in conversation and community—to the giant panda. People from both China and America attempted various types of cultural exchanges through the visual and performing arts and even sports, but curiously, only the generally benign “panda loans” have been the most successful modalities of U.S.-China cultural exchange. Endangered and exploited, the panda began to stand in for this active exchange as a benign emblem of China. 263 Giant panda exchanges during the 1970s demonstrate the extent to which culture has been used as a way for diplomats and countries to show who they are, to assert power and to build lasting relationships. In this case, foreign policy and cultural diplomacy were reduced to an animal exchange that left no room for individual agency or person to person negotiations. Rather than engage in complicated cultural exchanges that would require a critical forum for cooperation and a medium for finding shared solutions, the U.S. and China resorted to the visual of an easily controlled diplomat that represented China to the larger American public. The panda could hardly be seen as offensive because animals are perceived to be outside the realm of politics, and looked as threatening as a child’s plaything. Add in the burgeoning environmental movements in 263 It is telling that when Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing arrived at the National Zoo in 1972, no news account mentioned that they were endangered, even though the WWF had adopted the giant panda as its logo in 1961. Today, no news account would omit this fact. 201 both countries during this time, and the panda became a cultural symbol, an icon for peace and environmentalism, and the perfect representative of the “Orient.” 264 Cultural diplomacy is perceived to be successful because it appears “sincere,” however this chapter shows how the panda exchanges were diametrically opposed to building strong and “sincere” relationships between countries. While the panda loans are not inherently detrimental to cultural diplomacy, they allow no room for cultural debate or difficult ideological conversations. The popularity of the panda loan programs, and simultaneous decline of other forms of cultural exchange, exposes the desire of each country to maintain full control over cultural diplomacy. The adoption of pandas at multiple zoos across the U.S. was the result of multiple negotiations, but not between two countries. Most negotiations took place between private entities such as individual zoos, the Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species (CRES), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and China’s Wildlife Conservation Association. Today, the terms of panda loans remain similar to the agreements made in the 1970s and 1980s. Each year, American zoos continue to shell out cash for the black 264 Through the figure of the panda, the orient is represented in everyday life. Edward Said's evaluation and critique of the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important background for postcolonial studies and this project. His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of assumptions as it questions various paradigms of thought which are accepted on individual, academic, and political levels. The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West. Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). 202 and white bears, 265 however, they must also agree to a list of terms and conditions—e.g., zoos are not allowed to make a profit off of the bears and every panda born in captivity has to eventually return to China, its “home.” The conversation thus becomes one of animal preservation, reproduction, environmentalism, and even citizenship rather than coming to terms with different political, economic, and social systems and building relationships between peoples and countries. This shift in diplomacy, from people to animals, shows the extent to which animals are seen to stand-in for people. This also illustrates how both countries desired full control over the cultural formations they exchanged more than a long-lasting cultural relationship. Using the giant panda as a primary modality of exchange has been the ultimate way of controlling cultural diplomacy. These loans also developed into a modality through which cultural forms of imperial “conquering” continued to take place in the latter half of the twentieth century. How then does the successful reproduction of giant pandas become crucial to diplomatic relationships and the extension of empire? The first part of this chapter describes in broad strokes, the circuit of panda exchange from China to Washington D.C. and later to San Diego. 266 Starting with ping pong diplomacy and subsequent State Department conversations, the chapter sheds light on the ways in which nations navigate the precarious edges of their empires. From the 1970s to the 2000s, power relationships were negotiated and circuits of exchange were 265 Approximately $1 million a year per panda. 266 It is important to note that Washington D.C. and San Diego are not the only American cities that have hosted giant pandas. Atlanta, Memphis, and others have also arranged successful panda loans with China. 203 forged through cultural diplomacy and giant panda loans. In shaping these global circuits, American and Chinese governments also generated certain byproducts including the growth of local tourism industries and both domestic and international scientific collaborations, which are created and transformed by these exchanges. For example, the popularity of the zoos in San Diego and Washington D.C. flourished with the arrival of the pandas and the two cities became partners in preserving and reproducing the giant bears. American zoologists working to increase the panda population also collaborate with scientists in China, connecting the countries in new and interesting ways. Tourists also play a part as they visit these sites to view the cute and cuddly pandas before they are gone forever. Panda tourism not only attracts visitors to the zoos, but also the revenue helps to fund reproductive research and guarantees years of scientific collaboration and cooperation. Next, the chapter turns specifically to the development of “Panda Politics” through the figure of the giant panda and animal representations at the San Diego Zoo. A brief history of zoos and animal exhibitions followed by a focused analysis of biopower and racialized maternalism illustrates how pandas have become so culturally potent in the U.S. and particularly in San Diego at the edges of empire. The bears have been a way for San Diego to gain prominence in the nation through its engagement in panda preservation and reproduction. Panda loans have also facilitated San Diego’s participation in debates over national concerns and anxieties. 204 Scholarly discussions about the giant panda have mainly been concerned with its endangered status, scientific distinction, and relevance to environmentalist agendas. 267 Shifting this focus to look at how the panda is configured within a political and diplomatic framework reveals its connection to certain political frameworks in the United States. The figure of the Giant Panda and narratives about the intriguing bears have become platforms where concerns about the dissolution of the nuclear family, “proper” motherhood, and reproduction play themselves out on a national and global scale. Locally, in San Diego, discourse around the panda reflects national tension about the need for biopower. Thus, framings of the black and white bears form a kind of politics unique to this animal. Under the rubric of “panda politics” I identify a range of political and theoretical concerns including: “proper” motherhood, racialized maternalism, the fetishization of the “Child,” state biopower, and coded forms of moral panic over family values. Each of these social and political concerns is embedded in public discourse about giant pandas. I argue these representations of the bears function as a kind of “panda politics” and become representative of national concerns over larger social and political issues in the U.S. The bears are a cultural symbol that signifies the ultimate conquered body—and the “natural” order of things—the way things ought to be. Panda politics are a set of ideological constructions that have been built around giant pandas through public representation of the large bears. Because the bears cannot 267 George Schaller, The Last Panda; Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York: Norton & Company, 1980); Douglas P. Murray, “Exchanges with the People's Republic of China: Symbols and Substance,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 424 (1976); Laidler,K. Pandas: Giants of the Bamboo Forest (London: BBC Books, 1992). 205 speak for themselves, a variety of commercial media, news reporters, and politicians from the United States and China as well as representatives from the WWF, CRES, and the San Diego Zoo speak about and on their behalf. Representations of the bears act as a certain kind of politics that is many times contradictory and reflects different, conflicting and coinciding ideological perspectives. It is not my aim to outline every one of these tensions or alternatively to expose scientific research and environmentalist movements around the panda as commercial hoaxes. It is my goal, rather, to theorize how the often contradictory representations of giant pandas function as a kind of politics of conquest. Panda politics is therefore, the set of discursive frameworks in which pandas in the U.S. are configured and constituted through public representations and the human gaze (as visitors at zoos, as newspaper readers, etc.), and how these seemingly inconspicuous narratives actually reflect and construct larger political and social ideologies locally and nationally. This chapter ultimately illuminates different ways the giant panda has been used politically by the state, local and national media, and even individuals—framed within conservative discourses of gender, the family, and “proper” reproduction to appeal to a general American public through a politics of representational conquest. Before any of the panda exchanges could take place in San Diego or Washington D.C., however, a new commitment to mending the U.S.-China relationship was necessary. The following section chronicles U.S.-China cultural diplomacy during the 1970s. This new diplomatic relationship was made possible on two fronts: in the lengthy efforts by the U.S. State Department to “open” China to economic and diplomatic trade 206 and in the visit of the U.S. table tennis team to China. This history is crucial to understanding the ways in which empire is negotiated through cultural diplomacy and the panda breeding programs at the San Diego Zoo. U.S.-China Rapprochement: Cultural Diplomacy and Negotiating Empire “Ping Pong Diplomacy,” as the press dubbed it, first played a key role in 1971. At the 31 st World Table Tennis Championships (WTTC), held that year in Nagoya, Japan, an American table tennis player hitched a ride on the Chinese team bus. Two days later, the Chinese government invited the entire American table tennis team to visit China. The American table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, was at the time a 19-year old college student from Southern California. Tall and lanky with shoulder-length hair, Cowan’s “rolling stone of a manner” captured the imagination of Americans and Chinese. 268 While practicing with Chinese player, Liang Geliang, one afternoon in Nagoya, Cowan lost track of time. A Japanese official came to close the training area and Cowan realized his bus and his teammates were nowhere to be found. With no way to get back to his hotel, Cowan was visibly worried. A Chinese player waved to him to get on the Chinese team bus. After about ten minutes of talking through an interpreter to the Chinese players, Zhuang Zedong, captain of the team, came up from his seat at the 268 Li Gong, The Road to Create Diplomatic Relation: The PRC's American Policy from 1972 to 1978 (The Center for Cold War International History Studies, East China Normal University, 2005). <http://www.coldwarchina.com/zwxz/zgxz/gl/001822_7.html> (Accessed October 13, 2006). 207 back of the bus to greet Cowan and presented him with a silk-screen portrait of the Huangshan Mountains, a famous product from Hangzhou. Cowan wanted to give something back, but apparently all he could find was a comb. The American hesitantly replied, “I can’t give you a comb. I wish I could give you something, but I can’t.” When it was time for them to get off the bus, hordes of photographers and journalists were waiting for them. In the political climate of the 1960s, the sight of an athlete from Communist China with an athlete from the United States—especially a hippie from California—was sure to garner attention. Cowan later presented Zedong with a T-shirt decorated with a red, white and blue, peace emblem flag and the words “Let It Be” (Figure 14). 269 During a 2002 interview Zhuang Zedong told more of the story: The trip on the bus took fifteen minutes, and I hesitated for ten minutes. I grew up with the slogan ‘Down with the American imperialism!’ And during the Cultural Revolution, the string of class struggle was tightened unprecedentedly, 269 Zhuang Zedong described the incident in a 2007 talk at the USC U.S.-China Institute; Jean Loup Chappelet, "Sport in China: The Emergence of a Sport Giant." Olympic Review (Lausanne), no. 174 (April, 1982): 175-179; Allen Guttmann, "The Cold War and the Olympic." International Journal 43, 4 (1988): 554-568. Figure 14: Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan exchanging gifts. 208 and I was asking myself, ‘Is it okay to have anything to do with your number one enemy?’ 270 Zhuang recalled remembering that Chairman Mao Zedong met with Edgar Snow in 1970 and said to Snow that China should now place its hope in the American people. As the bus was bumping along, Zhuang looked in his bag for an introductory gift. Deciding against badges with Mao’s image, silk handkerchiefs, and traditional Chinese fans, he finally picked the silk portrait of China’s landscape. Photographers crowded the bus upon its arrival. One journalist asked Cowan, “Mr. Cowan, would you like to visit China?” Glenn answered frankly, “Well, I’d like to see any country I haven’t seen before—Argentina, Australia, China... Any country I haven’t seen before.” Trying to be provocative, the journalist pressed on, “What about China in particular? Would you like to go there?” Glenn smiled a toothy grin, “Of course,” he said. The following day, Japanese and American newspapers printed the photographs of Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan emblazoned with headlines about the U.S. table tennis team’s desire to visit China and the beginning of so-called “ping pong diplomacy.” 271 270 Allen Guttmann, "The Cold War and the Olympic." 271 For these histories and other information on the political climate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, see Henry S. Bradsher, “China: The Radical Offensive.” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 989-1009; Jay Mathews, “The Strange Tale of American Attempts to Leap the Wall of China.” New York Times 18 Apr. 1971; Harry Schwartz, “Triangular Politics and China.” New York Times 19 April 1971: 37; Justus M. Van der Kroef, “Before the Thaw: Recent Indonesian Attitudes toward People’s China.” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 513-30; Eugene Wu, “Recent Developments in Chinese Publishing.” The China Quarterly 53 (1973): 134-138. 209 On April 10, 1971, the flamboyant Southern Californian along with eight other American players, four officials, and two spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland (Figure 15). 272 They spent their time from April 11–17 playing exhibition matches, touring the Great Wall and exploring China. Meanwhile, Kissinger and Nixon held their breath when they heard the U.S. table tennis team was visiting China. In particular, Nixon was concerned that the delicate balance of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China was in the hands of a 19-year old Californian. 273 After all, they reasoned, how could this irresponsible youth effectively represent the nation? While perhaps the entire White House and State Department waited with bated breath for news on the table tennis team’s trip, the edges of empire came into sharper focus. California became a major site of diplomatic possibility. 274 At the same time, it seemed that 272 When the Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs received a report that the U.S. table tennis team hoped to be invited to visit China, the initial response was negative. Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong agreed it would be best not to invite the Americans, but when Mao Zedong saw the news in Dacankao, a newspaper for high-ranking government officials, he decided to invite the U.S. table tennis Team afterall. For the full account see Justus M. Van der Kroef, “Before the Thaw: Recent Indonesian Attitudes toward People’s China,” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 513-30. 273 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979). 274 Ibid. Figure 15: Glenn Cowan entering China. Life Magazine 10 April 1971. 210 only by dealing with China—passively through Cowan’s trip and actively through panda loans—Southern California at the edges of empire could become the center of attention. A week later the team returned without difficulty and boasting new international friendships. Even though Cowan and Zedong never saw each other after that 1972 visit, they had a lasting friendship that spanned decades. While this kind of negotiating cultural diplomacy was perhaps a simple matter of etiquette and amicability between individuals, negotiations between the two nations was not so easy. Later that year, in July 1971 President Nixon surprised the international community by announcing on national television a dramatic change in U.S.-China relations. He revealed that his National Security Adviser, Dr. Henry Kissinger, had secretly traveled to Beijing in July, and that the president himself would go to China early next year. 275 The “Nixon shock” was a major diplomatic breakthrough between China and the United States after twenty-two years of bitter animosity. It was the result of the slow and prolonged evolution of America’s China policy. And it took not only ping pong diplomacy but the urging of multiple scholars and policy makers to change U.S. foreign relations with China. Four consecutive U.S. administrations from Truman and Eisenhower to Kennedy and Johnson had followed an uncompromising policy of “containment and isolation” toward China, but a thawing of this Cold War hostility was already apparent during the Johnson presidency. In March 1966 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presided 275 China: U.S. Policy Since 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1980): 198. 211 over by Chairman William Fulbright from Arkansas, held twelve hearings on “U.S. Policy with Respect to Mainland China.” Dubbed the “Second Great China Debate,” the hearings had been markedly different from the first conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Witnesses included virtually all the most prestigious China scholars in the United States. 276 During the Fulbright Hearings, 198 China scholars and experts in an open letter urged the government to modify its China policy. The Johnson administration showed its flexibility when Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared U.S. China policy as “containment without necessarily isolation.” 277 During the next administration, both Nixon and Kissinger strongly believed in the importance of rapprochement with China. President Richard Nixon is even quoted as saying in an interview with Time Magazine, “if there is anything I want to do before I die, it is to go to China.” 278 In 1972, Nixon got his wish. He and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger visited China with the goal of rapprochement. 279 This was possible only after many years of State Department preparations and dealings with China as well as a strong belief that the PRC was the key to getting out of 276 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., ed., The Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1973 (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), 305-8; China: U.S. Policy Since 1945, 161. See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Policy with Respect to Mainland China: Hearings, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 1966 for the complete hearings. 277 “Experts on China Urge U.S. to Seek A Peking Accord,” The New York Times, 21 March 1966; Su Ge, “Liushi Niandai Houqi Meiguo Dui Hua Zhengce de Jiedong’” [The ‘thawing’ of American China policy in the late 1960s], A merican Studies (Beijing) 11, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 76. 278 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 701. 279 Ibid., 164. 212 Vietnam. 280 The U.S. was mired in the Vietnam War and sought a way out. Rapprochement with China looked increasingly attractive to the White House and State Department. They reasoned that China could put pressure on North Vietnam allowing the U.S. to withdraw “honorably” from its violent occupation of the territory. While public opinion and government policy in the United States were moving toward rapprochement with China, China found itself in the political chaos created by the Cultural Revolution. Eventually, China moved toward a détente with the United States because of the growing Soviet threat, and with the desire to expand scientific and technological exchanges. 281 The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a blossoming of U.S.- 280 Despite concerns over communism, U. S. policymakers felt that they could use Chinese support in negotiating with North Vietnam. To them, China appeared to have considerable influence in this region of the world and they hoped that China’s intervention would create conditions for U. S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In the end, however, China had limited leverage over North Vietnam. Yet, peace in East Asia was too important economically, since discontinuing the war would cut costs and allow the U.S. to focus its efforts elsewhere—like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. China also wanted to mend the relationship; with the U.S. no longer a threat, China could focus more on its shaky relations with the Soviet Union. Beijing and Washington intensified good-will gestures. In July 1969 the U.S. State Department eased restrictions on trade and travel to the PRC. In September the U.S. Ambassador to Poland--Walter Stoessel-- chased the Chinese chargé d’affaires Lei Yang down a flight of stairs in Warsaw to deliver Kissinger’s message that the U.S. was prepared for serious talks. Zhou responded by releasing two Americans captured in Chinese waters in February and invited Stoessel to the Chinese Embassy. In November the U.S. Navy ended the symbolic destroyer patrol of the Taiwan Strait. By January 1970, at the 135th meeting of the U.S.-China ambassadorial talks, China expressed its readiness for serious negotiations. Mao gave his personal approval of China’s rapprochement with the United States by inviting an old American friend from the Yanan period, writer Edgar Snow, to stand at his side on Tiananmen to view the October 1970 National Day parade. In later conversations, Mao told Snow that China would welcome a visit by Nixon. See Kissinger, White House Years, 687; Xu Xuechu and Zhou Yongzhang, Mao Zedong Yan Zhong de Meiguo [United States in the Eyes of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Zhongguo Wenshi Press, 1997, trans.): 308; Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution (New York: Random House, 1972): 11-12. 281 The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of 1968 and the accompanying Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty alarmed China. China proposed a new round of ambassadorial talks with the United States in Warsaw in November. It voiced its interest in renewing relations with Washington on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, namely, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non- aggression, non-interference with internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. The United States, however, did not respond quickly or positively enough to this plea. After bloody border clashes with the Soviet Union on Zhenbao Island in March 1969, Zhou Enlai summoned four veteran army 213 China relations including careful trade, triangular interactions between the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union, the controversial issue of the status of Taiwan, and the hope that China would help the U.S. withdraw from Vietnam. 282 Nixon’s trip to China in February 1972 marked the beginning of a transitional period in U.S.-China cultural relations. During Kissinger’s advance mission in 1971, the two sides had already worked out the basic principles of a joint communique. Kissinger had urged that the two nations should work to expand trade as well as scientific collaborations and other cultural exchanges. In Nixon and Kissinger’s week-long secret talks with Zhou in Beijing and Shanghai, they quickly agreed to the expansion of cultural exchanges. 283 In the official Shanghai Communique signed on February 28 th , cultural Marshals Chen Yi (Ch’en I), Ye Jianying (Yeh Chien-ying), Xu Xiangqian (Hsu Hsiang-ch’ien), and Nie Rongzhen to convene a strategy forum to reassess China’s “dual adversary” relations with the two superpowers. The Marshals endorsed a report to Mao, calling for immediate resumption of the Warsaw talks with the United States, talks which had been canceled in January as a result of controversies over the defection of a Chinese diplomat in the Netherlands. To the Chinese leadership, Moscow had clearly emerged as China’s number one threat. See Richard Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” quoted in Kissinger, White House Years, 164; and China: U.S. Policy Since 1945, 176; Wang Guoquan, Wo de Dashi Shengya [My ambassadorial career] (Beijing: World Knowledge Press, 1995, trans.): 154-55; Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 15, The People’s Republic, “Part 2: Revolution within the Chinese Revolution, 1966-1982” (New York: Cambridge University Press): 411. 282 Several studies allege that the Nixon administration had already provided private assurances to China on the crucial issue of Taiwan in exchange for Chinese support for U.S. policy on Vietnam. See Claude A. Buss, China: The People’s Republic of China and Richard Nixon (San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman, 1974); Harry Schwartz, “Triangular Politics and China.” New York Times 19 April 1971, 37; Justus M. Van der Kroef, “Before the Thaw.” 283 See Ethan Signer and Arthur W. Galston, “Education and Science in China,” Science 175, no. 4017 (7 January 1972): 15-23; and also Walter Sullivan, “2 U.S. Scientists will Visit China,” The New York Times, 11 May 1971; “Memorandum of Conversation,” 21 February 1972, 9, in Nixon Presidential Materials Collection, President’s Office File, Memoranda for the President, Box 87, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; also available from the National Security Archive located at the George Washington University, “Record of Historic Richard Nixon-Zhou Enlai Talks in February 1972,” Document 1, at [www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive]. 214 exchange, including the sharing of science and technology were specified as top priorities in extending this bilateral relationship: The two sides agree that it is desirable to broaden the understanding between the two peoples. To this end, they discussed specific areas in such fields as science, technology, culture, sports and journalism, in which people to people contacts and exchange would be mutually beneficial. 284 In contrast, the two sides reached a compromise on the Taiwan issue only after intense bargaining. The Shanghai Communique stated publicly that “the United States acknowledges that all Chinese on each side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” 285 According to Nixon-Zhou conversations declassified by the National Archives in 1999, privately Nixon went further to assure Zhou of U.S. concessions regarding Taiwan. 286 Washington and Beijing’s skillful conduct of cultural diplomacy had greatly facilitated their rapprochement process. In 1972, the success of Chinese-American political rapprochement, especially their 284 “U.S.-Chinese Communique on Nixon-Chou En-lai Talks,” The New York Times 28 February 1972. 285 Ibid. 286 Nixon affirmed that: “There is one China, and Taiwan is part of China;” “We have not and will not support any Taiwan independence movement;” “We will . . . use our influence to discourage Japan from moving into Taiwan;” “We will support any peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue;” and “We seek the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic.” In “Memorandum of Conversation,” 22 February 1972, 5, in Nixon Presidential Materials Collection, President’s Office File, Memoranda for the President, Box 87, National Archives, Washington, D.C. See also: Li, Chunling. The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis between the United States and the People's Republic of China and the Warsaw Talks (The Center for Cold War International History Studies, East China Normal University, 2007). http://www.coldwarchina.com /zgyj/fdfx/002162.html (Accessed October 23, 2007); Li Gong, The Road to Create Diplomatic Relation: The PRC's American Policy from 1972 to 1978 (The Center for Cold War International History Studies, East China Normal University, 2005). http://www.coldwarchina.com/zwxz/zgxz/gl/001822_7.html (Accessed October 13, 2006); Beijing Review (English Version). Beijing, China. 1979 - 1981. 215 agreement on the critical Taiwan issue, had set the stage for the revival of the two countries’ historical cultural relations. Before leaving the PRC, Nixon presented his hosts with official gifts from America; these included: “a pair of musk oxen and two large redwood trees from California,” an assortment of “silver bowls, cigarette lighters, or cuff links with the presidential seal,” and “ceramic models of American birds.” 287 In reciprocation, the Americans were to expect two pandas, a traditional gift from the Chinese rulers “meant to signal a peaceful relationship.” 288 An interesting aspect of this entire affair from a diplomatic and geopolitical standpoint is that at the same time the administration provided American press corps members with details about the animal exchange—the two musk oxen and the panda pair—Kissinger was “quietly giving the Chinese the fruits of American intelligence,” providing “classified information on Soviet military operations” and “about the state of discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union.” 289 This marked perhaps the first—but definitely not the last—time animals have been used to mask or stand-in for preeminent U.S. and China diplomatic affairs. As the world at large perceived the situation, however, the Nixons had simply charmed their 287 Jeffrey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004); Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007). 288 Kimball, Vietnam War Files; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger; Ta Jen Liu, U.S.-China Relations 1784-1992 (New York: University of America Press,1997); Baker, James A. “America in Asia: Emerging Architecture for a Pacific Community.” Foreign Affairs 70 (Winter 1991/1992); Chen Jian, Mao’s China and The Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 289 Henry S. Bradsher, “China: The Radical Offensive.” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 989-1009. 216 hosts and the televised images of their sightseeing tours had captivated audiences around the globe. 290 Despite a perceived openness to cultural exchange, diplomacy was strictly monitored and only certain types of culture were allowed in and out of both countries. Evidently, ping pong was seen as a benign sport easily imported and exported, allowing the U.S. and China to begin to smooth their rocky relationship. Art and classical music were also considered harmless enough and by September 1974, a national organization called the United States-China People’s Friendship Association (USCPFA) was established in Los Angeles, making the West Coast an important site of cultural negotiations. But these projects of cultural exchange backfired as the United States welcomed a large PRC performing arts troupe in 1975. The troupe performed a song entitled “The People of Taiwan Are Our Brothers” and the lyrics, “we must liberate Taiwan” became a lightening rod in the United States, prompting protests and, in the words of a State Department press release, “inappropriate levels of political unrest.” The State Department immediately cancelled the whole tour. 291 The cancellation of this artistic event exposed the highly restricted cultural exchanges between the two countries, and revealed a relationship that was growing increasingly unstable despite years of 290 Betsy Ochester, Richard M. Nixon (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2005): 67-9. 291 Robert S. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969-1989 (Stanford University Press, 1995). 217 cultural diplomacy. 292 The United States and China required a cultural exchange that was both non-threatening and long lasting in order to maintain its important economic relationship. The Giant Panda provided an easily exploitable and controllable cultural diplomat. Pandas Are the Answer! An investigation of the cultural importance of giant pandas in the United States is necessary now more than ever since they have become a mascot for biopower and racialized maternalism. On one hand, liberal ecologists have used the panda to advocate for environmentalist agendas. On the other hand, the media framing of pandas throughout the United States brings to the fore continual issues in racialized discourses about the way motherhood and reproduction ought to be enacted. Media coverage of these controversial issues resorts to an oversimplified narrative that reduces these issues into either good or evil, black or white, because notions of motherhood and reproduction are too complex for simple discussion and easy solutions. The giant panda—black and white in body and political symbolism—is the perfect icon for this oversimplified state rhetoric on family formation. The panda is popular—and even loved—locally in San Diego and nationally in the United States. Every zoo outside of China that has ever exhibited giant pandas has been overwhelmed by people clamoring to see them. And the bears themselves are 292 Claude A. Buss, China: The People’s Republic of China and Richard Nixon (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974). 218 treated like royalty; no other zoo animals have such lavish habitats or so much attention devoted to satisfying their every need—or what people believe they need. Airplanes, helicopters, and news crews materialize when a panda arrives in the U.S. or when one must be moved. The media cover their every action—even down to their sexual exploits—much like paparazzi stalking Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. People mourn when a giant panda they know about dies, feeling the loss deeply. When Ling-Ling and, later, Hsing-Hsing died at the National Zoo in Washington D.C., the media recounted their lives, the details of their deaths, and the effects of their absence on the human community. In 1993, Ling-Ling died the same week as ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev. Although it has been declared that “no male dancer ever had more influence on the history, style and public perception of ballet than Rudolf Nureyev,” both cultural icons were eulogized in print and on the air in roughly the same measure. 293 Six years later, news articles reported that Hsing-Hsing was euthanized after months of failing health due to kidney disease. During this sad turn of events, the Associated Press noted that the panda’s death “is like the passing of a close friend.” On Hsing-Hsing’s final day, he “was given his favorite foods, which included blueberry muffins, sweet potatoes and the panda staple, bamboo shoots.” 294 Children around the country sent 293 John Percival, “Biography of Rudolf Nureyev” <http://www.nureyev.org/biographie_introduction.php>. 294 This is reminiscent of the final meals of prisoners, which provides a different perspective on pandas in captivity. 219 sympathy cards, and a photograph of the well-loved giant panda was posted on his empty cage in memorial. 295 This affection for giant pandas extends internationally, beyond the bears held at American zoos. George Schaller, director of Science at Wildlife Conservation International, described how his Chinese colleagues objected to the practice of simply giving numbers to the giant pandas that were radio-collared on panda reserves. He wrote, Giving a name to a panda is a weighty matter, not something to be done casually or carelessly, for with a name the animal ceases to be just one among others in the forest and instead becomes a member of our community, one whose behavior we will observe, debate, and judge as much as our own. 296 More recently, the international significance of naming a giant panda was reflected locally when the newest cub born at the San Diego Zoo was given her name in an official ceremony before a “cheering audience of about 200 zoo officials and patrons, as well as Chinese government officials and [even] a troupe of Chinese lion dancers.” 297 These are just a few instances that reveal the import of pandas to people in China and the United States. These examples also show ways in which pandas have been anthropomorphized, or likened to human beings. Through media framings, the animals have been infused with human desires, emotions, and values. It’s as if giant pandas are people. Noticing the Western love of these bears—and perhaps with cynicism—expensive hotels and other 295 The Associated Press. “D.C. Zoo's Panda is Euthanized: Hsing-Hsing was '72 Gift from China”; [Rockies Edition] Denver Post 29 November 1999, A-05 296 Schaller, The Last Panda. Again, this naming of pandas is in contrast to the ways in which the prison system takes away the names of prisoners, dehumanizing them by giving them a number instead of a name. 297 Greg Gross, “Giant Panda Cub Given a ‘Precious’ Name at Zoo”. The San Diego Union Tribune 27 November 2007, B-2. 220 deluxe enclaves frequented by Westerners in China are often referred to as “panda houses.” Across the U.S. in both Washington D.C. and San Diego, California, five-star hotels boast “panda packages” for wealthy tourists and families who wish to partake in all the hotel amenities as well as zoo discounts. Pandas have been a part of Chinese culture for millennia but they stand out in the West for other reasons as well. In their 1966 book, The Giant Panda, Ramona and Desmond Morris cite a litany of reasons for the giant panda’s cult status, based on a study of British children’s reported attraction or aversion to various animals. 298 First, some features of giant pandas make them resemble people: they have flat faces and no tails, they sit upright, their “thumbs” allow them to manipulate small objects, including bamboo, and importantly, their genitals are hidden from view. I might also add that their unique colorings accentuate their facial features and they are almost perfectly symmetrical—an aesthetic virtue throughout classical Western art and design. Second, more than a few people gush and coo over babies, and many features of giant pandas appear infantile: again, their flat faces, disproportionately large eyes in equally disproportionately large heads, playfulness, apparent clumsiness, the appearance of softness and cuddliness, a round outline, short cute names, and especially their apparent need for protection. 299 Moreover, biologist Stephen Jay Gould traced the evolution of 298 R. Morris and D. Morris (revised by J. Baarzdo), The Giant Panda (New York: Penguin Books, 1981). 299 Ibid. 221 Mickey Mouse from a slightly repulsive rodent to a loveable mouse as the character’s appearance became progressively more infantile, more panda-like. 300 The Morrises also suggest that the popularity of teddy bears prepared Westerners to love pandas as “super teddy bears.” 301 This latter hypothesis is perhaps the weakest theory for the panda craze. Throughout history, bears have held much cultural significance in U.S. society—especially in the American West. (California’s state flag even has a brown bear as its main feature.) And the black and white pandas are particularly intriguing bears. Other reasons for the popularity of giant pandas include: the fact that they are big but apparently harmless to people and, with their bamboo diet, to other animals as well. The giant panda’s striking black and white color appeals to people too (think Dalmatians, Shamu the killer whale, penguins, even tuxedos and Oreo cookies—and possibly, bold black brush strokes of Chinese calligraphy on white paper). Then there is the panda “mystique”: it is rare, it lives like a hermit in mysterious fog- shrouded mountains, and its history is romantic, tragic, full of drama and danger. They are severely endangered and most reports estimate only around 1,000 to 1,600 pandas exist in the wild. Attempts to classify the giant panda have also sparked multiple debates, 300 Stephen J. Gould, The Panda’s Thumb. 301 R. Morris and D. Morris, The Giant Panda. The teddy bear first appeared in the United States in 1903. Named after the 26 th American president, Theodore Roosevelt, the story holds that he had been hunting all day without finding a bear to shoot. His hosts on the trip, not wanting him to go away disappointed, captured a black bear and tied it to a tree for him to kill. Upset by this unsportsmanlike conduct – and lucky for the poor bear – the president refused to shoot it. The press reported the incident, and apparently by the next year the American people knew the story so well that Roosevelt changed his mascot from a moose to a bear for his re-election campaign. At the same time, the wife of a New York novelty store owner created toy bears and sold them as unique Americana under the name, “Teddy’s Bear.” People snapped them up quickly, and soon retail giant Sears, Roebuck and Company was selling the toys, which are still loved today. 222 and scientists generally agree that pandas are part of the bear family and an evolutionary anomaly because they have opposable thumbs. 302 Over many centuries, pandas have been one of few species given to other countries as diplomatic representatives and gifts of friendship. More recently, pandas have been seen as exceptionally docile and charming for such large animals. And—unfortunately perhaps—in terms of cold, hard cash, pandas are and continue to be extremely valuable. All of these conditions and traits—both endemic and ascribed to the wild bears—have combined over the years allowing international mass media to portray and fetishize the Giant Panda as uniquely Asian and as an “authentic” symbol of China. It is important to note that over the last fifty years pandas have become increasingly popular in environmentalist agendas. For example, from its inception in 1961, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has claimed the panda as its symbol. This is only one of many organizations that is concerned with the giant pandas’ survival. But they also use the animal to make people aware of its endangered habitat and eco-system. On the WWF’s website (www.panda.org), the question is posed: “Why is this species important?” Their conservationist team thoughtfully answers, and I quote them at length: Panda habitat is found at the top of the Yangtze Basin, an ecoregion shared by both pandas and millions of people whose ancestors have utilized the region's natural resources for millennia. The Basin is the geographic and economic heart of China, and is one of the critical regions for biodiversity conservation in the world. Its diverse habitats contain many rare, endemic and endangered animal and 302 Stephen J. Gould, The Panda’s Thumb. Scientists have also argued for decades over whether the panda is a member of the bear family or the raccoon family. Since this paper is not about the scientific as much as the cultural significance of the giant panda, I will not engage in speculation about this classification of the animal. Suffice to say that recent research has concluded that the panda is indeed a member of the bear family, or at least more closely related to bears. 223 plant species, the best known being the giant panda…The survival of the panda and the protection of its habitat will ensure that people living in the region continue to reap ecosystem benefits for many generations. 303 This quote sums up many of the arguments for species protection; the panda is ultimately important because its survival also indicates the survival of the human race. In this single excerpt, the plight of the panda is linked to the plight of the environment, the plight of the economy, the plight of the region and the plight of the world. While these connections may be important, they are once again a reflection of human desires placed on the symbol and body of the giant panda. The panda’s survival is a main concern for scientists, ecologists, reporters, and even local Chinese residents. Yet, rather than leave the panda and its environment alone or protect it from hunters and industrial development, zoos across the United States have vied for pandas and created multi-million dollar research institutes committed to captive breeding and forced panda reproduction. Producing panda babies has become important to maintaining the panda family, and in turn, the national and human families and their futures. In this way, the Giant Panda has come to represent national anxieties about the very survival of the human race. Internationally, the panda has reflected and in some cases actually worked to enable diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China. Beginning in 1972, when President Richard Nixon made his groundbreaking visit to China, pandas Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling were not only the most famous of cultural diplomats, but also the hype around the bears masked Kissinger’s divulging of state secrets and Cold War 303 WWF “Mission Statement” http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/about_species/ species_factsheets/giant_panda/index.cfm (Accessed April 14, 2007). 224 strategies. 304 After the pandas arrived at Washington’s National Zoo and became its star attraction, intense efforts to get them to breed were soon to follow. In 1976 it was reported that the male panda, Hsing-Hsing, tried to mate with Ling-Ling's ear, then her wrist, and finally her right foot. 305 The following year, as if to mimic the courtship of the pandas, the Carter administration began a similarly confused diplomatic ritual with China; Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, and National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, disagreed on how or when to approach Beijing, much less where to fit Taiwan in the new U.S.-China relationship. 306 In both cases, it was an issue how and where the panda entered the diplomacy that impeded a fruitful outcome to the interaction. In 1979, the United States and China established official diplomatic relations. Like clockwork, in the same year the San Diego Zoo began working with Chinese zoos to help preserve the endangered animals. Four years later at the National Zoo, Ling-Ling gave birth and although the cub died within days the pandas mated each spring throughout the 1980s. The diplomatic relationships did not fare much better, as the Reagan administration tried desperately to open China up to the West. They even used panda conservation efforts for small talk, just to get the conversations going. 307 The results of both efforts fell short of expectations. By 1987, the People’s Republic of China 304 “A Bear-Ometer for U. S.-China Relations” Foreign Policy 121 (November - December, 2000): 14-15. 305 “Odd Panda Mating Ritual,” Washington Post 27 November 1979, C-4. 306 “A Bear-Ometer for U. S.-China Relations.” 307 “Panda on the List of Acceptable Conversation Topics for President in China” New York Times 11 June 1987. 225 sent two giant pandas, Basi and Yuan Yuan, to the San Diego Zoo for a 200-day loan. More than two million people viewed the pandas during their stay. This panda loan was one of the few ways in which U.S.-China relations remained strong during those years. In fact, one well known panda expert exclaimed that the giant panda was the “only thing keeping diplomacy alive” between the two countries. 308 Over the next five years, specifically after the Tiananmen Square massacre, U.S.- China relations froze. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States after he accused George H. Bush of “[coddling] aging rulers” in China. 309 Diplomatic relations between the two countries were at a virtual standstill. Panda loans and conservation projects might have been a way to open conversations again, but before any kind of panda diplomacy could take place, Ling-Ling died of a heart attack at the National Zoo. More turbulence between countries erupted in 1995 when the President of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, visited the United States and his alma mater, Cornell University in New York City. This sparked a further deterioration of relations with China that culminated in the Taiwan missile crisis. In spite of China’s threats and intimidations, Mr. Lee was re-elected President with an overwhelming majority in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election. Meanwhile, San Diego was working hard to continue their relationship with the PRC. Their ultimate goal was to enter into a long-term panda loan 308 George Schaller, The Last Panda (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993): 41; “A Bear-Ometer for U. S.-China Relations.” 309 “A Bear-Ometer for U. S.-China Relations.” 226 with the country. After years of red tape and application paperwork, the zoo and China agreed on a twelve-year research loan of two giant pandas, Bai Yun and Shi Shi. They were delivered to San Diego in 1996, the same year Clinton also began renewed efforts towards positive diplomatic relations with China. Only a few years later, in 1999, allegations about Chinese spies at Los Alamos National Laboratory and NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade threw relations into crisis again. The same year, San Diego’s panda, Bai Yun, gave birth to Hua Mei, the first giant panda born in North America to survive to adulthood. This birth actually allowed for certain relations between the countries to flourish at a time when other diplomatic possibilities were nonexistent. Millions of people around the world watched Hua Mei grow up via the San Diego Zoo’s Panda Cam and increased zoo revenue confirmed that the pandas were indeed a lucrative investment. 310 By the turn of the 21 st century, Beijing agreed to loan the National Zoo two pandas to go with the growing panda family in San Diego. Desperate to win congressional approval for permanent normal trade relations with China, U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley asked if the Chinese could speed delivery of the photogenic pandas. Although this request was refused, not long after Beijing approved the panda deal, the House of Representatives extended trade relations to China. One million people streamed through the National Zoo to see Mei Xing and Tian Tian in the first four months after they were released from quarantine. Included in the crowd was then-President Bill 310 Ibid. 227 Clinton on one of the last days of his term in office. The Panda Cams on the Giant Panda Website recorded about half a million visitors in that same time and thousands of words of welcome arrived via emails and letters. 311 One might take a step back from the incredible cultural potency of the Giant Panda to ask: What is going on? How did the giant panda become a major point of symbolic investment and a symbol for diplomacy and reproduction in the United States? The San Diego Zoo provides a lens through which to look at the long history of animal representation. This history demonstrates some of the ways in which animals have come to stand in for people, particularly racial Others. Zoological exhibits and conservation projects at the San Diego Zoo reveal the state’s role in fostering a certain kind of conquering gaze. Animals as Racial “Others” The Panama-California Exposition of 1915-1916, staged in the newly transformed Balboa Park in San Diego, celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal and the new age of technological mastery over nature. As in other fairs around the country, rhetorics of progress overlaid a long history of racism. The exhibition was a paternal display and celebration of the detritus of the “weaker” culture that had been transformed into both a commodity and a spectacle. It was a way in which boosters and city officials reassured themselves of these things and convinced themselves that conquest was over and they 311 Ibid. 228 had won. Boosters and officials of the fairs needed to assert dominance through the rhetoric of conquest. Their insistent assurance of themselves as conquerors in this relationship points to both anxiety about power and utter confidence in it. It is within this context that the modern San Diego Zoo emerged as a notable attraction in the city. Through the aforementioned representations, the visitors to the fair—and later the zoo—were equally engaged in a form of conquest. It was not merely a metaphorical or passive conquest—as has been suggested elsewhere—because these representations do cultural and social work. They work to visually define people and animals and they work to place subjects into a particular, naturalized hierarchy. When people visit the fairs and the zoo, they are exposed to a variety of people and animals from all around the world, but they are also presented with implicit lessons about power, race, gender, difference, and conquest. In other words, these exhibitions teach patrons about culture, nature, and the way things ought to be. Robert Rydell argues that world’s fairs attempted to validate racial hierarchies constructed by anthropologists that served to justify imperialism and conquest. 312 While serving as a metaphorical conquest and celebration of imperialism, exhibitions also reified social and cultural hierarchies, continuing the conquest of racial Others by placing them into a particular view. Highly circulated representations from the fairs relegated people (and animals) into a particularly limited framework, permitting only a constricted range of characteristics and definitions—of who certain people can be, of what they can 312 Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 229 do, of their possibilities in life, of their natural propensities, etc. These notions of social worth became encoded in the racial landscape of San Diego at the fairs, in post cards from the fairs, and in various images that persist today. This type of conquest is performed again and again in the city through the reproduction and dissemination of material representations in tourist sites like the San Diego Zoo. Although the meanings of representations lie in their interpretations, which cannot be universally fixed, Stuart Hall has elsewhere contended that certain representations are produced in an attempt to “close” interpretation and stop what Hall calls the “flow” of meaning. In San Diego, only a singular interpretation and representation of racial Others was exhibited at the fair—the way things should be according to the San Diego elite. As mentioned in earlier chapters, this representation became naturalized as “common sense” through images, public memory, the built environment, and the exhibition of animals at the zoo. In other words, dominant groups in San Diego influenced who and what was represented at the fairs; they also influenced how subjects and objects were represented. The fact that representation is linked to power makes it impossible to ignore the visual images and material symbols at the fairs as well as their legacy in the San Diego Zoo. This legacy goes back to the Panama-California Exposition in 1915-1916 when San Diego displayed the era’s “latest in agricultural, industrial, horticultural, and technological inventions and refinements.” Of course, the fair could not be complete without representations of an “authentic” Spanish village, Indian village, Mexican 230 village, and a makeshift zoo. 313 Developers of the San Diego Zoo transformed this temporary display of peoples and curiosities into a permanent exhibition of animals, habitats, and cultures. Animals were displayed at various sites around the exhibition. Buffalo, deer, wolves, ducks, bears, and a herd of elk graced the fairgrounds. Like their human counterparts, these animals attracted the attention of an audience seeking to glimpse distant corners of the nation. The rhetoric of domination that suffused the entire exposition found its most profound expression in the collection and display of artifacts, people, culture, and animals. Non-white “primitive” peoples and animals became linked metonymically, tied to each other by virtue of their similarly stereotypical environments and as common objects of an imperial gaze. Like the San Diego Exposition’s Spanish, Mexican, and Oriental villages of yesteryear, the modern zoo also simulates ethnic cultural settings. These processes of marking are now maintained through the zoo’s exotic animal habitats, ethnic souvenirs in gift shops, and ethnic aesthetics around the park. The zoo and the expositions have linked animals to their “natural” habitats in the same way they have also connected people to easily recognizable and commodifiable environments. In other words, the zoo marks animals and humans, binding them to each other through “ethnic” environments. Further, these methods for culturally marking 313 Kevin Starr, The Dream Endures (1997); see also Matthew F. Bokovoy, The San Diego World’s Fairs (2005). 231 certain places, plants, animals, and people may seem natural to visitors because the histories of the symbolic uses of animals and exotic “Others” coincide. 314 In the tradition of the early 20 th century exposition grounds, the exhibits at the San Diego Zoo are currently organized around ethnically themed collections of exotic animals and habitats such as the “African Savanna,” “Asia,” “Tropical Rain Forest,” and “Northern Trail,” just to name a few. Some of the themed areas even feature simulacra of exotic human sites. For example, next to the gift shop at the zoo’s main entrance to the African Savanna is a detailed simulacrum of an “African Village.” The only people in the “Village” are the visitors themselves, but the zoo’s designers created a sense that native Africans and safari-goers once occupied the space by including human artifacts—e.g., a transistor radio that plays nostalgic tunes, clothing, and cooking utensils. Similarly, the zoo uses an Orientalist aesthetic around the panda enclosure, making various signs and structures out of bamboo to create a whole Asian experience. Donna Haraway asserts that humans use animal “counterparts” as a mirror that they metaphorically “polish” in order to look at themselves and contemporary society. 315 Western visitors to the ethnically themed spaces of the zoo are not invited to see their own suburban or city lives reflected in the animal “mirror.” Instead, visitors see ethnically and culturally marked habitats, which are linked to culturally marked animals and people – exoticized “Others.” This is a “mirroring” based on difference as visitors to the zoo understand these habitats to be 314 Desmond, Staging Tourism. 315 Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989). 232 different from their own urban and suburban lives. Embedded in these processes of looking is the gaze and its relationship to representation and power. According to Michel Foucault, the process of exhibition is always already one of power. 316 The exhibits at the San Diego Zoo reflect the power of the gaze on multiple levels. If one mode of power is placing animals—and people—into a particular view, then another is certainly the gaze itself and modes of looking. For example, in the San Diego Zoo exhibits, “almost total control is exercised by humans over animals’ movements and activities, with minimal opportunity for the animal to exercise its own preferences and priorities.” 317 Here, the gaze, in the Foucaultian sense of panoptic surveillance, is inextricably linked to power. 318 At zoos across the country, the animals are mostly powerless objects of zoological, commercial, and recreational gazes. The coitus of pandas, whose every minutia is monitored closely and broadcast on the internet, is a perfect example of the ways in which animals are constantly subject to the gaze of humans, and under constant scrutiny, surveillance and examination. Morbello argues that zoo animals are stripped of any power they possess in nature because they are rendered incapable of reciprocating the visitor’s gaze through the zoo’s architecture; dividing walls as well as cage structures and animal habitats positioned on lower planes separate 316 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 317 Matthew Morbello, “Zoo Veneers.” 318 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 233 possibly intimidating and powerful animals from their audience. 319 These architectural settings make visitors feel visibly safe and dominant. At the zoo domination hinges upon the denial or exclusion of competing possibilities of gaze, as well as the human ability to constantly monitor with cameras, viewing areas, and weblogs. At the same time, cameras and other apparatuses of surveillance within the zoo are purposefully obscured in an attempt to hide the obvious relations of power. As one zoo employee explained, “The zoo runs like a stage show; you only see what the directors want you to see. Everything is designed so the visitors can have the full experience of being in nature… so you won’t see keepers’ entrance doors, gates, drains—you know, reminders of people—because it’s about the animals and about the landscape.” 320 In seeing other humans gazing back from the other side of the exhibit or encountering artifacts of human surveillance and encroachment, visitors might be tangibly reminded of these roles of domination and subjugation. They might also be reminded that the human population is the reason animals are endangered, extinct, and in cages. In this way, the zoo’s environmentalist messages are made benign and any political agendas are hidden within the attempt to camouflage a human presence. 321 Further, the strategic placement of 319 Morbello, Matthew. “Zoo Veneers: Animals and Ethnic Crafts at the San Diego Zoo.” The Communication Review 1, 4 (1996): 521-543. 320 Interview conducted on March 24, 2007 with staff member, “Jan.” 321 It is worthy to note that humans are constantly under surveillance as well. From cameras placed around the zoo aimed at human eating and shopping areas, to signs that warn against feeding or provoking deadly animals, to rules for appropriate behavior posted at various intervals and the entrance/exit of the park, these modes of surveillance serve to discipline the public. Within the zoo, animals, visitors and employees are constantly monitored, creating multiple different layers of domination. 234 viewing areas, windows, doors, and other architectural features in the exhibits erases obvious signs of humans, leaving the animal exoticized and seemingly “untouched” by Western hands. Unsurprisingly, many animals are kept at the zoo precisely because—like ethnic Others in the fairs—they are considered exotic and will therefore attract an audience. All of these practices and technologies of looking reveal that the enclosures of the zoo are about conquering nature and by default, the people of color associated with those natural environs. The expositions and the San Diego Zoo are examples of the ways in which the city of San Diego has historically featured controlled environments displaying exotic animals and peoples as a way to justify imperialist power and an ongoing representational conquest of the region. Together with the presence of the military industrial complex and multiple connections between Washington elites and their San Diego vacation homes, the expositions and the zoo serve imperialist desires and sustained notions of social and political hierarchies. To put it another way, zoo animals and their environments become lessons about national and ethnic identities for American citizens. They put certain people and animals in their respective “places” and ask patrons of the zoo to accept these social hierarchies. The pandas fit perfectly within this agenda; they represent China and have become a “unique and manageable” emblem of Asian identity, many times in opposition to an “American identity.” 322 They not only symbolize difference, but also they represent the perfect immigrant—the animal version of a “model minority.” 322 Arlene Davila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, 2001): 75. 235 The San Diego Zoo has appropriated the panda as an exotic Asian symbol to be seen, enjoyed, and preserved against the forces of extinction. However, the history and cultural significance of the panda is obscured, as is the history of brutal Western consumption and development, which is at least partially responsible for the threat of extinction of the panda. 323 Instead of acknowledging these important aspects, the panda’s existence is reduced to the myth of conquest, maternalism, and “proper” reproduction for Western imagination and consumption. Additionally, the panda is objectified as an exotic body. It is put on display at the San Diego Zoo and twenty-four hours a day on the “Panda-Cam.” This live broadcast of the pandas’ habitat is constantly shown on the internet at www.sandiegozoo.org. 324 The dominating and objectifying gazes of the visitor/consumer are present conflated throughout the zoo and most visibly in the gift shop. An entire industry of panda memorabilia has been created—from plush toys and jewelry to cartoons and books. It is reported that the National Zoo stores carry more than 800 different panda items, from inexpensive post cards to $200 plush toys. Between these extremes are panda T-shirts, bobble-head dolls, mousepads, and toasters that brown the bread in the shape of a panda. However, perhaps the most unique commercial product is “Panda Poo Poo Paper.” In San Diego, the panda’s excrement is made into paper and sold at the zoo stores. These novelties, called Panda Poo Poo Products, reveal the extent to which giant pandas are fetishized in the United States. 323 Andreas Kontoleon and Timothy Swanson “The Willingness to Pay for Property Rights for the Giant Panda: Can a Charismatic Species Be an Instrument for Nature Conservation?” Land Economics 79, No. 4 (2003): 483-499; George Schaller, The Last Panda (1993). 324 <http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/ex_panda_station.html>. 236 In San Diego, tourists experience an imagined Asian culture through the panda without having to recognize China’s complex society and rich traditions, and without having to interact with people of color in an uncontrolled environment. Remnants of exotic Others in the themed exhibits act as memories of a human presence while excerpts and brochures around the park frame the visitor’s understanding of the environment as a scientific “museum” concerned with animal welfare, “captive propagation,” and biopower—all ways of controlling and conquering nature. The giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo provide the perfect example of this kind of conquest. In what follows, I trace a short genealogy of the giant pandas’ association with racialized maternalism—a kind of conquest. Racialized Maternalism and Conquest Over Nature The giant panda provides a lens through which to examine different forms of conquest and imperialism. The first live giant panda to come to the United States presents a complicated story about how the animals became linked to the figure of the Child and discourses about “proper” motherhood and the family during the early twentieth century. As George Schaller demonstrates, this ideological formation extends to scientists working towards panda preservation. These discourses work to conquer our most private of realms by attempting to establish a particular notion of the family. While family formation is one framework that pervades talk about giant pandas in the U.S., the bears have also become a kind of cultural icon synonymous with racialized maternalism, a term that I define as: the imposition of a racial meaning and hierarchical values on 237 different types of mothering. Racialized maternalism works through a top-down, unilateral relationship, where the dominant party—in this case, the United States—is the benefactor of most interactions. It is a kind of conquest in that it actively promotes a certain kind of maternalism, motherhood, and family formation that is linked to race, while denigrating and controlling other formulations. Individuals and nations act as mother figures that try to simultaneously protect and control. It renders certain women as “unfit” mothers and other women as “appropriate” or “better” mothers. It is about social control and the policing of certain women and family formations. Extended to the nation, racialized maternalism is both a set of discourses (in the form of moral claims) and actions (in the form of sanctions and even kidnapping—as in the case of the first giant panda, Su Lin). These discourses and actions position the United States as superior in terms of care-giving; in contrast, China is seen as the “bad” mother that is incapable of proper care-giving. Here, mothering is linked to both nation and race through an Orientalist lens and giant pandas, as symbols of China, stand in for the nation as bad mothers. Thus, racialized maternalism has been used to situate the United States as a proper care-giver who—through a perceived racial superiority linked to notions of progress and mastery over nature and science—is able to give the “appropriate” maternal care. Racialized maternalism is therefore a way of conquering the most intimate realm of our lives—the family. It became linked to the panda during the first half of the twentieth century. The history of panda hunting and capturing is reminiscent of the histories of genocide and conquest of peoples. In the 1920s, when big game hunters were celebrities, 238 giant pandas became the Holy Grail of hunting expeditions—the ultimate trophy. By the 1930s, however, goals had shifted and panda hunters were determined to bring back a panda alive. This too was a cruel endeavor and hunting parties commonly carried with them large metal cages, chains for restraining struggling prey, and whips to “break” a wild animal. During this phase of panda-mania, multiple American explorers vied to bring home a living giant panda. One unlikely competitor was Manhattan socialite, Ruth Harkness. In 1936 she ventured into the Chinese wilderness and returned to San Francisco (and later Chicago and New York) with a baby giant panda that she named Su Lin. Huge crowds greeted them, clamoring to see the little cub. Given the violent tradition of hunting expeditions, it was particularly surprising that Harkness showed up, not with a caged panda, but with the cub in her arms like a mother carrying her human child (Figure 16). At this moment, the panda became connected with the figure of the Child—an innocent being in need of help and guidance, incapable of caring for itself. But the panda was Figure 16: New York Times (December 20, 1936). 239 also associated from this point with the need for preservation and Western care-giving techniques, the only “appropriate” option within the framework of racialized maternalism. The case of Su Lin reveals contradictions within the representation of the giant panda that continue to play out powerfully on a global stage. These pandas are simultaneously ancient symbols and investments in the future; each panda becomes both a potential parent and a constant innocent. Historically, the figure of the innocent “Child” has had enormous symbolic value in U.S. cultural, political, and economic arenas, and is often used to fuel and invoke political battles over “America’s future.” 325 In many ways, from the fact that the panda “looks infantile” to the way Harkness treated Su Lin like a human baby in the 1930s, the “Panda” can be likened to the figure of the “Child.” Lee Edelman describes the “Child” as “the emblem of futurity’s unquestioned value” whose innocence “solicits our defense.” 326 Thus, early and contemporary media constructions of the pandas have resonance with an American audience not simply because the bears are exotic and rare. Rather, it is what the image of the “Panda” represents metaphorically in terms of dominant ideologies about childlike innocence and reproductive futurity that captivates the American public. Later, in the 1970s, when the plight of the panda became increasingly important to people from all over the world, China was castigated by conservationists for giving the 325 Lee Edelman, “The Future is Kid Stuff,” in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004): 1-31. 326 Ibid. 240 endangered animal as gifts. A delegation from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), led by Sir Peter Scott, visited Beijing in September 1979 to initiate a cooperative research project on the giant panda, found only in fringes of the Tibetan Plateau. Consequently, in May 1980, George B. Schaller, renowned wildlife specialist and conservationist from New York, came to study and “save” the panda with a missionary’s dedication and enthusiasm. More than four years later, however, he left the project deeply disappointed and frustrated, as revealed in his journal published almost a decade later: The panda project began with headlong passion for a grand cause, perhaps a romantic fantasy, and with an optimism that arouse out of the vaguest understanding of the true dimensions of the problems ahead…. There is so far little protection of wildlife and forests, much less actual management of habitats for conservation. Segregated on its mountaintops, harried by poachers, its habitat shrinking, the panda has become an elegy. 327 Clearly painful and charged with emotion, Schaller’s book is the only published account by a zoologist of the perplexing social, political, and cultural circumstances that confront the conservation of an endangered animal in contemporary China. International concerns and academic interests in China’s environmental degradation and nature conservation grew alongside rapid industrialization and economic development, but so did hostility towards Chinese inhabitants of the “pandas’ territory.” Conservationists like Schaller blamed the Chinese for their “backward” and “insufficient” technologies for reproductive engineering. This was the beginning of a new era of racialized maternalism. 328 327 Schaller, The Last Panda, 233-234. 328 The first instance of racialized maternalism in regards to the giant panda goes back to the 1930s in which a Manhattan socialite, Ruth Harkness, kidnaps a panda from China and fights to bring it back to the U.S. for a hefty sum. In order to get it out of China, however, Harkness treats the cub like her own baby 241 In 1980, Schaller went to China again on a zealous mission “to help initiate work and introduce our Chinese co-workers to new technology, ideas, and techniques.” He arrived with hope that through “selfless dedication and uplifting ideals… with a shout of triumph, [we may] proclaim the panda saved, a noble venture concluded.” To Schaller, this triumph would only be possible with the help of Western science, technologies, and “correct” maternalism. Apparently, he believed the Chinese doctors and zoologists were incapable of breeding and feeding pandas and their kin. 329 In one instance, Schaller was filled with furious resentment when he saw the Chinese reserve staff fail to alleviate the “unhappiness” of a panda: “I found little empathy for animals in China,” he wrote, “Perhaps noteworthy is the fact that the Chinese written character for ‘animal’ means ‘moving thing.’” 330 He further blamed the failure of the panda project on the bureaucratic structure of Chinese society: Enthusiasm and goodwill count for little when the enemy is a vast bureaucracy of local officials who myopically use obstruction, evasion, outdated concepts, activity without insight, and other tragic traits to avoid central-government guidelines and create ecological mismanagement on a dismaying scale. There is so far little protection of wildlife and forests, much less actual management of habitats for conservation. 331 Perhaps nowhere in modern scientific or environmental undertakings—except in the eugenics projects during the first half of the 20 th century and wildlife conservation in the and makes well-publicized claims about the evil Chinese caretakers who would be horrible mothers. American zoos, she argued, would be much better suited to caring for the panda baby. See Margaret Salazar, “Panda Politics: Discourse on Motherhood, Reproduction, and the Family” forthcoming. 329 Schaller, 250-251. 330 Ibid., 233 331 Ibid., 233-234. 242 second half—can one find an ethos and mentality so strikingly passionate about biopower, reproductive futurity, and racialized maternalism. The difference between eugenics experiments and panda conservation is only that the former is geared toward controlling a population of “undesirables” and the latter is about increasing the population of “desirables.” Both, however, are two sides of the same ideological coin. One should not ignore the fact that some advocates of biopower believe it is their duty to “rule over,” control, and conquer nature—to manage the reproduction of people and animals—for their usefulness as well as their socially constructed cultural value. Indeed, it is fitting that human rights struggles as well as its wildlife crises are two issues that seem to go hand in hand. Local Connections After a visit in the 1980s, the first pandas arrived to the San Diego area in 1996, when the San Diego Zoo partnered with China’s Wildlife Conservation Association to bring the animals to the United States as part of a larger effort to study and breed them, hoping to protect them from extinction. To accommodate the pandas, and to create hype and commercial interest in the animals, the zoo built a high-tech Panda Research Station and public viewing areas. At the Station’s opening ceremonies, the San Diego Zoo’s governing board invited Glenn Cowan, the very same table tennis player from California who supposedly started ping pong diplomacy, to give opening remarks. Cowan was unfortunately unavailable, but the Chinese consul general, and multiple state department officials from Washington D.C. were in attendance. 243 Countless articles in the Washington Post recount the events and celebrations, comparing San Diego’s facilities to those in Washington D.C. and announcing that “the scientific community is awaiting San Diego’s future contributions to the preservation of giant pandas throughout the world.” 332 One article even mentioned how the pandas in Washington D.C. were unable to produce offspring. It suggested that “Perhaps San Diego’s Mediterranean climate will help their couple reproduce for the good of pandas everywhere.” 333 These articles in Washington D.C. and many others throughout the nation prove that this was seen as an important event in both domestic and international communities. Clearly, the eyes of the nation were on San Diego—not for its bicentennial as the “beginning of Western civilization” on the West Coast but because of two giant black and white bears from China. San Diego was finally nationally recognized for its contribution to the nation. Despite all of this hype, pandas are not in the United States to stay. From the 1990s, pandas have been on a twelve-year, rotating loan that is part of an ongoing global conservation plan. The project includes a program for increasing panda reproduction, understanding their genetic make-up, surveying the wild panda population, and learning about physiological and behavioral responses related to the pandas’ scent marks. 334 Bill Fox, president of the Zoological Board of Trustees explained, “We are taking a giant step 332 Leslie Robert, “Conservationists in Panda-monium,” Science 241, 4865 (29 July 1988): 529-531. 333 Ibid. 334 Dusty Walton-Brown, “History of the San Diego Zoo,” San Diego Historical Society <http://history.sandiego.edu/ gen/local/zoo/dusty.html>. 244 toward unraveling some of the biological mysteries of Giant Panda behavior and reproduction...the Giant Pandas will enhance the research efforts that are already underway here and in China.” 335 According to San Diego zoologists, “only around 1,600 Giant Pandas survive on earth.” The San Diego Zoo hopes to increase that number through “encouraged” and forced reproduction. 336 The zoo is engaged in many captive propagation projects and does not stop at “protecting” pandas exclusively. It also has a “frozen zoo,” where the ovaries and sperm of many endangered animals are frozen for future use. These practices reveal the extent of biopower exercised at the zoo and particularly among endangered animal populations. In particular, the pandas’ situation as a severely endangered species has been used as a way of promoting biopower, and emphasizing the importance of human heterosexual reproduction and nuclear families. Biopower is one of the many ways the San Diego Zoo enacts a kind of conquest that is discursive and physical. It is a conquest that is both state sanctioned and private. In the summer of 2001, the first baby giant panda born at the San Diego Zoo was featured on the cover of USA Weekend, with the headline: “Beyond Cute: Why the San Diego Zoo’s baby panda, Hua Mei, is the most important animal on the planet.” The media represented her as proof of a successful zoo breeding program; a technological coup in that she was conceived via artificial insemination; and a conservation public 335 Ibid. 336 Ibid. 245 relations triumph. As San Diego Zoo behaviorist Don Lindburg said, “…[seeing this infant] translates to a universal sense that pandas should always be a part of nature.” 337 While Lindburg’s comment may simply reflect his desire to take giant pandas off the endangered list, “nature” here refers to the “natural” habitat of the zoo and panda research stations both in China and the United States Given the fact that pandas born in the U.S. are always “returned” to China’s Woolong panda conservatory, this statement actually refers to a complicated network in which “nature” is fabricated by the scientists involved in the captive reproduction programs. Posing forced reproduction as “natural” is yet another way in which some scientists and media frames have obscured the active conquest of animals and nature. This obsession with giant panda reproduction and family relations is also mirrored in hundreds of newspaper articles. Their titles alone reflect ongoing concern over motherhood and the panda family: “Panda Mom has all the Right Moves” one headline declared; another announced “Panda Mom Does Everything Right;” yet another explains that the “New Baby Panda Could Have Significance for its Entire Species,” and their future. 338 Other headlines focus on heterosexual panda couples, referring to them as dedicated couples and framing them within a clearly human discourse about dating: “Romance in Store for Pandas” and “Love is in the Air as Pandas at San Diego Zoo 337 D. McCafferty, “Saving the World in Glorious Black and White,” USA Weekend 23-24 June 2001. 338 Steinberg, James, “Panda Mom has all the Right Moves,” The San Diego Union-Tribune 27 August 1999, B-1; “Panda Mom Does Everything Right,” The San Diego Union-Tribune 2 December 1999, B-1; “New Baby Panda Could Have Significance for its Entire Species,” Xinhua News Agency 8 November 2007, 1. 246 Mate.” 339 These articles and their headlines explain that love and romance must be present for a couple—even a panda “couple”—to have sex and procreate. After the pandas mated, headlines read a little differently, focusing on “successful” panda sex and reproduction: “San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Couple Enjoy Mating Success,” “Panda Pair Churn Out the Cubs” and “San Diego Zoo Dynamic Duo is One of the Most Reproductively Successful in Captivity.” 340 Another headline proclaimed the “Super Couple at San Diego Zoo is Super Fertile.” 341 These headlines call attention to an intense interest in giant panda reproduction as well as heterosexual coupling in the United States. Since the goal of the captive propagation projects is to increase the panda population, many of the articles about pandas both in captivity and in the wild refer to “successful”—also read “monogamous”—pairs and couples. Other articles and news stories refer to the baby pandas born in captivity: “Our newest panda cub, Su Lin [named after the first panda], is the third to be born at the San Diego Zoo. Her parents are Bai Yun and Gao Gao.” 342 Thus, along with the emphasis on heteronormativity and reproduction, the presence of baby pandas in the articles completes a nuclear family 339 Bell, Diane. “Romance in Store for Pandas.” The San Diego Union-Tribune 1 May 2007, B-1; “Love is in the Air as Pandas at San Diego Zoo Mate.” The Associated Press, Charleston Daily Mail 11 April 2005, 3-C. 340 Allison Hoffman wrote multiple panda articles including: “Panda Pair Churn Out the Cubs: San Diego Zoo duo is one of the most reproductively successful in captivity,” St. Louis Post - Dispatch 24 November 2007, A-24; “San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Couple Enjoy Mating Success,” Oakland Tribune 24 November 2007, 1; and “Super Couple at San Diego Zoo is Super Fertile,” The Associated Press, Reported in The Grand Rapids Press 24 November 2007, A-11; “San Diego Zoo Dynamic Duo is One of the Most Reproductively Successful in Captivity,” Turkish Daily News, (National ed.) 23 November 2007, 1. 341 Allison Hoffman, “Super Couple at San Diego Zoo is Super Fertile,” A-11. 342 San Diego Zoo official website < http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/ex_panda_station.html>. 247 formation and spotlights concerns for America’s future. Any concerns are of course remedied through reproduction. This intense interest in panda procreation—both natural and forced—illuminates a historical moment in which a national discourse about the family, reproduction, and biopower were powerfully associated with the giant panda in the American media. These national anxieties about American families are articulated through media representations of the bears and acted out in zoo captive propagation programs—the most obvious attempt at conquering both nature and our most intimate realms of existence. The anxieties about American families in the first half of the 20 th century only continued and were exacerbated during the second half. The United States became increasingly concerned with family values, and distinguished between “welfare queens” and “acceptable” mothers. Sarah Banet-Weiser has argued that state rhetoric on “returning to the family” has “structured much of public discourse in the United States” in the twentieth century. 343 From “Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report characterizing the black family as a ‘tangle of pathology,’ to Dan Quayle’s charge in 1992 that the popular television sitcom Murphy Brown was contributing to the deterioration of traditional family values,” and particularly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the rhetoric of family values has “insisted that a particular formation of the family is a necessary condition for the survival of democracy.” 344 The rhetoric of family values became a 343 Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Elian Gonzalez and “The Purpose of America”: Nation, Family, and the Child- Citizen” American Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2 (June 2003): 155. 344 Ibid. 248 critical issue in shaping U.S. domestic policies, and established a narrative structure for the media and the nation in which the “ideal” family includes a heterosexual, married couple in a committed relationship with each other and their children. Banet-Weiser explains that this narrative “retains both rhetorical and legislative power despite the realities of family life in the U.S.: there are far fewer families that resemble the traditional nuclear family than families configured differently.” 345 It is within this cultural and political milieu that pandas have come to stand-in for animal, human, and national families—as another form of panda politics. The politically conservative rhetoric of “returning to the family” is commonly used to frame the narratives of the pandas at the San Diego Zoo. The stories we tell justify this need for biopower and reproductive futurity. In the same competing frame of representation, the San Diego Zoo is situated as the “care giver” that is necessary to the survival of the pandas—to their future—through biopower, the power over literal life. Foucault explains in History of Sexuality that biopower is “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations.” 346 The government’s concern with fostering the life and sustenance of its population may seem harmless enough. However, this emphasis on protecting life, encouraging reproduction of only certain populations, and even forcibly removing the reproductive freedom of others has a long and sordid history. World War I eugenics 345 Ibid. 346 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (New York: Penguin Books, 1998): 140. 249 projects, the Holocaust of the Second World War, and racist public health policies in the United States all share these ideologies as points of origin. 347 While the regulation of sexual health, reproductive practices, family structures, and sexual partners in the U.S. deserves a more extensive discussion, here I look at how these tactics are exercised through the giant panda captive propagation project at the San Diego Zoo. The discourse on proper care giving, invoked by veterinarians, biologists, zoologists, and endocrinologists working on the panda preservation project at the San Diego Zoo recognize the state institution’s role in securing the pandas’ “best interests” as it exercises biopower. For example, the San Diego Zoo website explains that human intervention and care-giving techniques are crucial and have enabled a fourfold increase in the panda population. The article also details the ways in which the mother panda’s rearing methods are insufficient on her own: In the wild, mother pandas will care for only one of the young. In panda facilities…keepers help to hand raise any twin cubs. One baby is left with the mother and the keepers switch the twins every few days so each one gets care and milk directly from the mother. 348 Additionally, the tragic news a few years ago about the panda mother in Mexico accidentally crushing her baby—she apparently rolled on top of it while sleeping— simply adds to the aforementioned 1930s discourse about inadequate mothers and the need for state (and Western) intervention. Now, however, with new bio-technologies and zoological knowledge motherhood can be realized through artificial insemination and zoo 347 Natalia Molina, Fit to be Citizens? (2006). 348 San Diego Zoo official website <http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giant_panda.html>. 250 keeper intervention. Media frames in which the pandas’ parenting strategies are inadequate effectively configure the bears as perfect poster children for the biopower of state institutions like the zoo. The state therefore must intervene in the panda family to ensure a future. The use of the giant pandas as symbols of the nuclear family, as well as their “encouraged” and forced reproduction, helps the United States to forget its role in endangering the panda in the first place. Throughout history the state has also played a significant role in dissolving the same nuclear family it wants to protect. These contradictory frames are smoothed out through the inconspicuous figure of the giant panda and reflect the crux of panda politics. The Legacy of the Giant Panda In the 1970s and 1980s, relations between China and the United States were too important to leave to individual citizens. Instead, the government preferred to use pandas as cultural diplomats. Negotiations of empire were enacted and supported through these international scientific collaborations along with the physical trade of the bears between the United States and China. San Diego was quick to focus attention on panda reproduction, which resulted in long term panda loans and the first pandas born in captivity to live to adulthood. A concentration on reproduction, however, also created other dangerous byproducts such as a renewal of biopower and racialized maternalism. Conquest is still alive, as zoologists decided when and how to impregnate female pandas. 251 Giant pandas have been used for political gain through cultural diplomacy as the perfect non-agent representative of China. They are interesting to the American people not only because of their exoticness, but also because of their media manipulation. The American media has represented pandas within multiple, contradictory (and similar) frames and narratives that reflect conservative ideologies about family. The example of San Diego in particular reveals the ways in which pandas have historically represented both children and nuclear families in American media framing. At the same time, pandas provide good, non-vocal media subjects, easily used in terms of discourse on racialized maternalism and reproductive futurity—their framing normalizes American ideologies that favor nuclear, heteronormative families, and state biopower. Thus, the reason pandas are loved is not necessarily because of their cute- and cuddly-ness, but because of what they can represent to American people and how media representations frame them neatly within imperial discourses about the family, the nation, and the future. Because pandas are seen as an emblem that, in different times and places, can represent a number of perspectives, the animals have become a different kind of diplomatic celebrity. Pandas, while not inherently political, are catapulted into the political realm through media framing. Panda couples have become emblems of the nuclear family, biopower, and even childlike innocence. At the same time, it could be argued that pandas throughout the United States are represented within common conservative discourses on immigration. The animals are unable to represent themselves, but it is in the slippage between these various and many times contradictory media perspectives that problematic ideologies and politics become obvious. Pandas, largely considered benign and lovable 252 bears, become a potent and insidious symbol that actually promotes certain—sometimes dangerous—configurations of conquest in “panda politics”: racialized maternalism, reproductive futurity, and biopower. The panda became a symbol for the diplomatic relationship between the United States and China—a symbol that also concealed international conflicts over imperialism, such as the turbulent relationship between China and Taiwan. Another cultural conquest occurred in Washington D.C. as attention afforded to the panda diverted interest from the U.S. occupation of Vietnam and its history of violent warfare all over Asia. Similar to the development of the Estudillo adobe into Ramona’s Marriage Place, in which alterations to the built environment worked to erase the history of conquest in the area, so did the figure of the panda work to obscure other national and international processes of conquest. 253 CONCLUSION This dissertation provides four historical examples of how the Western U.S. borderland region has inspired a plethora of tourist representations that function as conquest in the Pacific Rim. I demonstrate that throughout the twentieth century, tourism became an incredibly potent way for extending U.S. empire through visual images and material symbols that perform some of the cultural work of conquest. These representations helped to restructure the American racial order, and Southern California's geo-political location became central to the extension of empire to other places in the Pacific Rim. In Southern California, visual images and material symbols of a Spanish fantasy past and a Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary have played significant roles in shaping the official view of regional history and the assumptions of what ought to be preserved or forgotten. The deep connections and consequences of these “fantasies” continue to inform regional expression. Representations of the San Diego military fleet week and the city’s sports teams exhibit a striking constellation of racialization, white masculinity, and colonialism that reflect fantasy pasts and future imaginings. Fleet Week Posters The words “Wherever you are…Whatever you do…We Salute You. We Support You. We Thank You!” are prominently displayed on San Diego’s Fleet Week 2006 posters. These words appear above the cityscape of proud San Diego skyscrapers towering above hundreds of cartoon spectators bearing American flags flying in the wind. 254 The spectators look out at the viewer and towards a group of five navy men in neatly pressed, white uniforms standing erect on what can only be imagined as a naval carrier. The men are gazing across the San Diego harbor at their welcome committee of civilians gathered on the shore. The poster asks us to identify with the sailors—all young, white men—as they approach the rocky land. The decision of the designers of the poster to highlight the aforementioned and relatively gender neutral motto at the same time that male figures are the only people featured in the poster demonstrates their recognition of the military as a site dedicated to the production of masculine subjects, irrespective of the soldier’s biological sex. It is perhaps suggested that both within the poster and in the military branches—Marines, Navy, Army, and Coast Guard—whose insignias flank the bottom left portion of the poster, males as well as females train to become ‘men.’ The features most prominent in the background of the poster are the iconic skyscrapers of the city’s downtown. The twentieth century urban skyscraper, a pinnacle of patriarchal symbolism, is rooted in the masculine mystique of the big, the erect, the forceful. Skyscrapers in our cities compete for individual recognition and domination— ideas in line with American military strength and man’s mastery over the land, gravity, and nature. It is significant that the people are standing on what looks like the public park on San Diego’s Shelter Island, a mud bank that was transformed into an island by the equally formidable forces of the military and tourism in the city. From the male subjects in the foreground to the skyscrapers in the distance, the poster presents a complete picture of masculinity that links architecture, the military, and the city of San Diego. The poster is an advertisement for the masculinist celebration of 255 the San Diego military industrial complex during fleet week (which actually lasts from May through October) in the city. It distills many of the integrating themes of this dissertation, and especially the ideas of colonial forces moving across the Pacific Rim. It represents close connections between pasts, presents, and futures in trans-Pacific spaces, through an imaging of the male conquest of the region: in this picture, the waters are only occupied by white, American men—images that hearken back to the Great White Fleet of 1908; an American flag stands at the top of a skyscraper, representing patriotism and the nation, and standing like a phallus that connects man-made structures from water, to earth and sky. This poster is a powerful expression of white American masculinity, connecting embodied memories with the gendered places and spaces of San Diego. In other words, the content and context of this poster are a meditation on white American masculinity as framed by United States imperialism and militarism. This ‘male’ symbolism and its potency emerges in relation to ideologies of colonialism and contending imperial models of masculinity that can also be found in San Diego’s sports industrial complex. Sports Teams and Mascots The fleet week poster and the many representations of military in San Diego demonstrates the potent Southern California interest in martial pursuits. Excitement over forms of masculine aggression and military might has also been manifested in professional and college sports team mascots throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Importantly, mascots, particularly Native American mascots have increasingly 256 become questionable, contentious, and problematic as representations that reflect empire, demean a large group of people, and force public debates and policy changes. 349 In San Diego, these mascots represent colonized images of honorary whiteness (Padres baseball team), idealized caricatures of white male military valor (Chargers city football team), and invented Native American culture (Aztecs college football team). These characters help enact spectacles that are consumed by sports fans and connect a racially oppressive present with a colonial past. Here, as in other Southern California spaces, Anglos have created new historical accounts and exploited as well as nurtured racial stereotypes and idealized versions of masculinity to serve the tourist economy, including this system of sports consumption, fandom, and entertainment. Since the 1960s, the Chargers football team has symbolized not only the conquistador past but a promising future of technology and military. The Chargers’ name initially referred to the steeds that carried medieval knights into combat—as they 349 For more on the debates and controversy surrounding Native American mascots see Dennis J. Banks, “Tribal Names and Mascots in Sports.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 17:5– 8 (1993); Ward Churchill, “Let’s Spread the Fun Around.” In Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Monroe Common Courage Press, 1994): 65-72; Jane Frazier, “Tomahawkin’ the Redskins: ‘Indian’ Images in Sports and Commerce.” In American Indian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Contemporary Issues, ed. Dane Morrison (New York: Peter Lang, 1997): 337-46; E. N. Jackson and Robert Lyons, “Perpetuating the Wrong Image of Native Americans.” Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance 68(4): 4 –5 (1997); C. Richard King, “Spectacles, Sports, and Stereotypes: Dis/Playing Chief Illiniwek” in Colonial Discourse, Collective Memories, and the Exhibition of Native American Cultures and Histories in the Contemporary United States, ed. C. Richard King (New York: Garland, 1998): 41-58; Charles Fruehling Springwood and C. Richard King, “Race, Ritual, and Remembrance Embodied: Manifest Destiny and the Symbolic Sacrifice of ‘Chief Illiniwek,” in Exercising Power: The Making and Remaking of the Body, ed. Cheryl Cole, John Loy, and Michael Messner (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002); Ellen J. Staurowsky, “An Act of Honor or Exploitation? The Cleveland Indians’ Use of the Louis Francis Sockalexis Story,” Sociology of Sport Journal 15(4): 299– 316 (1998); Raymond William Steedman, Shadows of the Indian: Stereotypes in American Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982); Heather Vanderford, “What’s in a Name? Heritage or Hatred: The School Mascot Controversy,” Journal of Law and Education 25: 381– 88 (1996). 257 “charged” the field of battle. The Chargers' original emblem included a profile of a horse's head along with the blue and yellow lightning bolts seen today. Originally from Los Angeles, the team moved to San Diego in 1961 as part of the newly formed American Football League. Once in San Diego, the name took on new significance. Not only did the Charger signify an important part of conquest—the horses that bore the conquistadors into battle—but also, the region was by this time known for its military presence and the supercharger was a new and important mechanical component of automotive engines used for both military and later commercial vehicles. The Chargers thus became an emblem of the future of the region as well as a tribute to the past. Further, the team represents a kind of white masculinity connected to working class automotive industries and military valor that is different from the Padres baseball team’s idealizations of national identity and colonial pasts. In 1969, as part of the bicentennial celebration, the city of San Diego launched a new team playing baseball—“America's pastime.” A quote from the bicentennial committee minutes states their objective was to “harness [the] local military culture” the region was famous for into “the orderly ethos of the baseball diamond.” 350 The fact that this was called the “Padres,” however, illustrates the extent to which colonial fantasies were closely intertwined with modern sport. Since the predominantly Anglo team pranced on to the field in 1969, wearing the long brown robes of Spanish colonial padres—missionaries who first “civilized” the area—they have changed their uniforms 350 Hugh A. Hall, bicentennial committee meeting minutes. May 16, 1968. California Room, San Diego Public Library. 258 and mascot multiple times. Depending on the “threats to our homeland,” the team has also worn armbands, yellow ribbons, and even fatigues, or special dust-colored camouflage uniforms in honor of the military. The Padres frequently and enthusiastically demonstrate the connections between the military and sports industrial complexes in San Diego. While the Padres and Chargers represent white masculinity and “honorary” whiteness in a colonial context, debates over the San Diego State University (SDSU) Aztec mascot reveal another way in which race and gender are configured through San Diego’s sports traditions. In 2000, SDSU joined a national debate over whether it was racially trivializing to indigenous peoples to feature them as sports mascots. It wasn’t long before the University decided to eliminate its long-time (50 years), red-faced cartoonish mascot, “Monty Montezuma.” 351 However, a long and bitter on and off- campus fight over the decision ensued. Curiously, many people felt pride in the Aztec name because it was an “extinct civilization of warriors” and not a currently living tribe of people. In 2003, eighty-three percent of students and alumni elected what they believed was a “historically accurate” Aztec Warrior mascot to cheer on their Aztec athletes. 352 The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that many believed the new 351 Lisa Petrillo, “SDSU has its mascot: the Aztec Warrior,” San Diego Union-Tribune 12 December 2003. 352 Ibid. 259 representation of the Aztec mascot was not racist because of its historical accuracy. 353 The controversy continues, however, as San Diego’s white (supremacist) population continues to dismiss Native American agency while ascribing to the Aztec mascot a stereotypical set of ‘noble savage’ characteristics, steeped in militaristic imagery with allusions to Manifest Destiny and conquest. These current and historic constructions of racialized masculinity—particularly in relation to the military conquest of Alta California—holds an important place in this system of representation across the sports teams and in the general tourist economy of the city. The tourist representations covered in this dissertation, and particularly the city’s sports team mascots, have played out a script of conquest that seemed to change little from venue to venue and decade to decade. In the case of the Aztec mascots, Indians appear as a vanished but noble race; the Spanish Padres are a romantic interlude and represent a kind of an honorary whiteness in that they are European; both await the “charge” of the triumphant Americans who arrive as a glorious military ready to chauffeur us into the future. The teleology of this narrative makes conquest predestined. Would such nostalgia for the Spanish and Indian past exist if the military conquest had failed? Would the region need such representations to continue cultural conquest if the U.S. armies had been defeated? Though these may be impractical questions, it is meaningful that there has been no alternative retelling supported by boosters, developers, 353 Samuel Autman, “SDSU to debut its updated mascot” San Diego Union-Tribune 23 January 2002; “Aztec Warrior Created As Unofficial Mascot By New San Diego State University Support Group,” Business Wire 13 September 2002. 260 and city officials. Both fantasies—the Spanish fantasy past and Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary—have had no room for varied outcomes because alternate endings would leave room for doubt about the U.S. right to the lands in the Pacific Rim. Propagating new histories and cultural representations is part of the spreading and maintenance of empire. According to these fantasy promoters, conquest was absolute in the American Southwest in the nineteenth century and in the Pacific Rim in the twentieth century. What threads the Spanish fantasy past together with the Pan-Pacific tropical imaginary is not only the geo-political location in which these representations proliferated, but also the fact that fantasy promoters felt entitled in both cases to ignore historical contingencies and moral consequences for their cultural conquest. At the center of these representations, then, is an insidious lapse that permits a continued contradictory view of the region. The Pacific Rim is a divergent space marked by both pleasure and pain—that is to say, the exploitation of natural resources and people of color for the pleasure of only a few. Further, the region is marked by Spanish colonial architecture on one hand and blighted by Mexican immigration on the other. It is marked by notions of Pan-Pacific tropical pleasure at the same time as fear of communist China. In recent years, discourse about illegal immigrants—iterations of conquest—uses national identity to split the region in two. Like the Spanish and Pacific fantasies, these discursive formations absolve the regional power structure of any responsibility in the creation of migratory labor, poverty, and racial discrimination. The dichotomous space separated by fantasies for touristic pleasure, but also fantasies that cause pain; anti-immigrant assertions imagine new forms and reuse old 261 visions of a bifurcated public space and regional identity based on the separateness of the two nations. Thus, the supposed threat of Mexican migration has sparked new imaginings—fantasies of conquest all over again—with new anti-immigrant laws, inhumane border patrol policies, and physical barriers separating the U.S. from Mexico. The border wall, constructed of old military waste is frighteningly reminiscent of another fantasy: the military waste used to construct Shelter Island. 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Creator Salazar, Margaret Nicole (author)

Core Title Representational conquest: tourism, display, and public memory in “America’s finest city”

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Degree Conferral Date 2010-08

Publication Date 07/11/2010

Defense Date 05/18/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag California,conquest,national identity,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pacific Rim,representation,Southwest,tourism

Place Name California (states), Old Town (city or populated place), San Diego (city or populated place), Shelter Island (city or populated place)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Banet-Weiser, Sarah (committee chair), Sanchez, George J. (committee chair), Iwamura, Jane Naomi (committee member), Kun, Joshua (committee member), Tongson, Karen (committee member)

Creator Email mnsalazar1@sbcglobal.net,msalazar@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3187

Unique identifier UC1225364

Identifier etd-Salazar-3787 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-356743 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3187 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Salazar-3787.pdf

Dmrecord 356743

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Salazar, Margaret Nicole

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu