Mexican Litchfield Park: A Forgotten Colonia of the Salt River Valley

MEXICAN LITCHFIELD PARKA Forgotten Colonia of the

Salt River Valley

by Daniel D. Arreola, D. Drew Lucio,

and Christopher Lukinbeal

Today, metropolitan Phoenix is one of the fastest growing Latino urban areas in the United States. Many of its communi-

ties have Mexican roots, yet like other southwestern cities, including Santa Fe, San Antonio, and Los Angeles, that have wrestled with their Spanish and Mexican pasts, the towns surrounding Phoenix are only now beginning to contemplate their Mexican heritage.1

Mexican labor was crucial to the development of the Salt River Valley, as farmers sought to improve their economic standing. The completion of Roosevelt Dam in 1911 enabled them to expand the labor-intensive agriculture they already practiced far beyond the flood plain. The result was the establishment of numerous colonias, suburban Mexican settlements scattered throughout the urban fringe of the Salt River Valley. The founding of these early Phoenix suburbs resembled similar processes in the Los Angeles basin, where mineral and agricultural commodity extraction took root on the city’s periphery and led to the development of Mexican communities on the urban fringe.2

Urban colonias in the Salt River Valley were formed in one of three ways: 1) as real estate promotion settlements, often located in environmentally marginal areas or on unproductive lands; 2)

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This article is the result of a research project conducted by members of the Ari-zona State University School of Geographical Sciences. Lead author Daniel D. Arreola is professor of geography specializing in the historical geography of the U.S.-Mexico border and the cultural geography of Mexican American populations in the Southwest. D. Drew Lucio is an M.A. graduate of Arizona State University and independent scholar working in Washington, D.C. Christopher Lukinbeal is assistant professor specializing in urban and cultural geography.

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in residential succession, as Mexicans relocated to working-class neighborhoods on the city’s fringe; or 3) as company-sponsored development schemes. The first process, real estate promotion, accounts for the majority of urban colonias established in the Salt River Valley, most of which were settlements on the periphery of existing Anglo towns.3 The second process, residential succession, characterizes Phoenix’s southern fringe, where Mexicans occupied neighborhoods abandoned by Anglos after the disastrous flood of 1891.4 The third process, the company town, was introduced with the advent of commercialized agriculture (particularly cotton), which saw Mexicans in the Salt River Valley become more extensively suburbanized than ever before.

In this essay, we explore the roots of Litchfield Park’s Mexican community, an early west-side suburb created as a colonia to serve the interest of industrialized cotton agriculture. Its story represents a forgotten chapter in the cultural history of the Salt River Valley, and this recounting of its early years contributes to a fuller appreciation of the Mexican role in the settlement of greater Phoenix.

A Suburb Created by Cotton

The City of Litchfield Park, 20 miles west of downtown Phoe-nix, is a classic American suburb. Predominately residential, middle-class, and white, it reflects the quintessential suburban landscape, with large landscaped front yards and boulevards lined with tall palms interspersed with decorative citrus trees. The city’s 209 residents of Mexican ancestry, representing a mere 5 percent of Litchfield Park’s total population in 2000, shadows a rich history of Mexican contributions to Salt River Valley development. Without Mexicans, it is unlikely that Litchfield Park would have matured into today’s prosperous community.

Founded by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1917, Litchfield Park is one of several towns created at the dawn of the cotton boom that forever altered the agricultural landscape of the Salt River Valley. The introduction of cotton coincided with the construction of Roosevelt Dam that stabilized the valley water supply. Initially, the U.S. Department of Agriculture urged local farmers to limit cotton planting to two- to five-acre sections that could be harvested by the available labor force. Farmers, however, increased their acreage over the decade, as the profitability of cotton grew.

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Mexican Litchfield Park

Producers formed grower associations to recruit labor and assemble the necessary capital to construct gins for processing the fibrous material. Production was spurred, in part, by the growing demand for cotton in the manufacture of automobile tires. Soon operators were unable to meet the needs of tire manufacturers in general, and of Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company in particular. A Goodyear vice president sent to investigate conditions in Arizona concluded that small farmers in the Salt River Valley lacked sufficient capital to engage in large-scale cotton production.5

At this point, Paul Weeks Litchfield appeared on the scene. Born in Boston in 1875, Litchfield had been exposed early to rapid technological advances in transportation, which pushed him to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating with a degree in chemical engineering in 1896, he went on to work in the rubber industry. Four years later, Frank A. Seiberling, founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, tapped Litchfield to head factory production. At Goodyear, Litchfield pioneered many new advances in tire tech-nology; his most enduring legacy was the invention of the cord tire, using cotton to strengthen the tire’s overall durability. The government underlined the cord tire’s popularity by adopting it for military use in 1917. Tire cord was prepared from long-staple cotton that by this time was in short supply. With approval from Goodyear’s board of directors to enter cotton production, Litchfield hired a group of lawyers to draw up documents to form a farming subsidiary—the Southwest Cotton Company (SWCC). Officially adopted on January 30, 1917, the articles of incorporation included language that went beyond the basic activities for turning virgin desert into productive farm land—the bill of particulars included marketing and colonization as well.6

SWCC purchased its first 8,000 acres from Dr. A. J. Chandler. Goodyear had been attracted to the southeast Salt River Valley by the large marketing network that advertised Chandler’s ranch land and touted the area as perfectly suited to cotton cultivation. Upon this parcel, Southwest Cotton built the Salt River Valley’s first cotton town—Goodyear. Shortly after, the company purchased land in the west valley, west of the Agua Fria River just above its confluence with the Gila, where former Riverside, California, citrus farmer William G. Kriegbaum had laid claim to land that

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would develop into Southwest Cotton’s second company town—Litchfield Park.7

Disillusionment among the first homesteaders in the west Salt River Valley was at an all-time high in late 1916, when SWCC agents approached many of them about selling their land. Kriegbaum and his neighbors jumped at the opportunity, and the company wasted no time in plowing their new ranch. Beginning on Christmas Day 1916, workers utilized half a dozen tractors pulling 40-foot-long steel rails to clear the land of brush, cactus, and mesquite. Next, more than 2,500 men, assisted by 1,200 mules, went to work preparing the ground for cultivation. Because the operation was too large to draw sufficient water from the Salt River Project, the company set about drilling wells. By the end of 1917, Southwest Cotton had acquired a total of 14,000 acres on the west side of the valley.8

Development of a town site named in honor of Paul W. Litch-field proceeded in similar fashion to the earlier founding of Good-

The Southwest Cotton Company’s billboard outside Litchfield Park, Arizona, ca. 1930. Courtesy McLaughlin Brothers Photographs, Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin Collection (CP MCLMB-A836), Arizona Collection, Arizona State University Libraries, Tempe.

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year. The overall design of Litchfield Park fell upon the shoulders of Litchfield himself, who saw urban planning as an extension of his concepts regarding beneficial labor-management relations. These ideas were sparked by a bitter strike organized by the Industrial Workers of the World that had shut down production at a factory he managed in Ohio in 1913. To return production to its previ-ous levels, Litchfield had initiated radical new policies, including a shortened work week, paid vacations, and a company pension, designed to keep employees happy and productive. In this regard, he was borrowing a page from Henry Ford, who had created similar policies in order to cultivate a paternalistic relationship with his labor force. The Goodyear company applied Litchfield’s concepts to both the workforce and the built environment that would become Litchfield Park.9

Although Paul Litchfield wished to create a social environment that lessened traditional class antagonisms, cotton farming remained labor-intensive, with most workers engaged in plowing, irrigating, picking, and ginning. In recruiting his workforce, Litchfield turned to Arizona’s Mexican population. The general plan for Litchfield Park reflected the position of Mexicans in early twentieth-century society, segregating them from the Anglo community. The Good-year company provided its Mexican laborers and their families with houses that were generally modest and considerably smaller than those given to its white workers.10

Mexicans to LitchfieldThe urgent need to prepare the Litchfield area for large-scale

industrial farming coincided with the arrival of Mexican immigrants to the Salt River Valley. Paul Litchfield recounted how Mexicans who came to town immediately threw up brushwood and adobe struc-tures. In September 1918, SWCC hired Jésus M. Corralez and others to manufacture 1,000 adobe bricks for use in flue construction. Pay was set at $25 per 1,000 bricks, with Southwest Cotton providing the tools and water. Earlier, in June, Southwest Cotton had hired Severiano García to chop cottonwood trees for stove wood along the Tolleson transmission line right-of-way at $3.50 per cord. In July, E. W. Hudson filed an addendum transferring the contract to A. López. Hudson explained that García had purportedly vanished and that López, his partner, was completing the work.11 Mexican

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immigrant labor was fluid even then and workers might return home or depart for another location as circumstances evolved.

The labor-intensive nature of cotton production required a workforce sufficiently larger than what could be acquired locally. Cotton growers in the Salt River Valley had previously benefited from Mexicans crossing the border to escape the destruction caused by the Mexican Revolution during the early 1910s, but this source had dried up as the United States mobilized for World War I. The federal government came to the assistance of cotton growers by

Litchfield Park general plan, 1918. Courtesy Litchfield Park Collection (MS MSS 17, box 71, folder 7), Architecture Library, Arizona State University, Tempe.

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allowing southwestern businessmen to contract labor from Mexico. Southwest Cotton Company had representatives in Mexico, and the first shipment of Mexican workers, obtained under a six-month bond granted by the U.S. Immigration Service, arrived sometime in 1917.12

Mexican wages, determined locally, ranged from $1.00 to $2.50 per 100 pounds of picked cotton. As cotton production at Litchfield increased, SWCC recruited additional Mexican laborers from the Arizona Cotton Growers Association (ACGA). In return, the association levied a fee of 8/10ths of one cent per pound for each pound of lint cotton processed at the Southwest Cotton Com-pany’s Salt River Valley gins. By 1920, SWCC operated eleven gins scattered throughout the valley.13

The stories of the Mexicans who arrived in Litchfield Park around 1917 reflect the general economic and political conditions in their native country. John López’s father experienced civil war first hand growing up in Mexico during the 1910s. The turmoil drove him to the United States. Arriving via El Paso in 1917, he moved across the Southwest until he finally settled in Litchfield Park around 1918. Other Litchfield Park residents, like Mary Ann Soto Eckstrom, were born in Arizona. Eckstrom’s parents immigrated in the late nineteenth century, eventually arriving in Litchfield Park in the 1930s.14

Armida Vizzera’s story demonstrates the economic tenuous-ness of migratory labor in the early twentieth century. Armida’s father was a gold miner in Mexico whose Anglo boss brought the family to Bisbee, Arizona, when the mine closed. Her father passed when Armida was six years old, leaving the oldest son to assume responsibility as head of the family. Unable to find work in the mines, he moved his mother and siblings north to pick cotton in the Salt and Gila river valleys. When Armida’s brother fell ill, friends brought the family to Litchfield Park in 1933. Similarly, Lupe Romo López’s father had worked at ranches throughout the west valley, moving the family from job to job until finally settling at Litchfield Park sometime in the 1930s.15

Because SWCC diversified its production, the 1921 cotton bust did not affect the company as severely as it did other valley growers. Although insulated from the more disastrous impact on other Mexican laborers, SWCC cotton workers suffered nonetheless.

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Francisco Chico, a Mexican immigrant contracted to the Litchfield Ranch around this time, recalled how “wages dropped to 1 cent a pound.” This placed individuals like Chico in a precarious position. Like all cotton companies, SWCC paid its farm labor through the company store, Litchfield Mercantile, which tendered groceries in lieu of cash payment. Left to support his three younger siblings after the death of his parents, Chico moved the family to California. We can only surmise from Chico’s story that those workers who could left to seek opportunities elsewhere.16

Southwest Cotton’s agricultural enterprise evolved during the 1920s, moving from full-scale agricultural production into new ventures centered on mechanized farming. Feed surpluses in the Salt River Valley grew as tractors replaced draft animals. SWCC exploited this windfall by constructing feeder pens for fattening cattle. In 1928, the company decided to move its entire operation

Mexicans loading cotton sacks at Litchfield, 1920s. Courtesy Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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to the Litchfield Ranch. This included moving the company’s head-quarters from downtown Phoenix to Litchfield Park and leasing out its operations at Goodyear and Marinette to the California-based J. G. Boswell and Company. Marinette was a 10,000-acre section in the northwest valley, near where the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad crossed the Agua Fria River, that SWCC purchased in 1920. The land had originally been claimed by R. P. Davie, a homesteader who named the area for his home town of Marinette, Wisconsin. Southwest Cotton’s Marinette Ranch would grow to include a tiny settlement named Sarival (a contraction of Salt River Valley) that contained warehouses and a railroad loading platform. Unlike the Litchfield and Goodyear ranches, Sarival lacked company housing. Consequently, its Mexican laborers were forced to rent housing at Marinette, Salsipuedes, and other nearby cotton towns.17

Camp HousingLitchfield Park’s earliest general plan shows Mexican farm

laborers segregated at a camp on the north end of town, between the farm shops and the Air Line Canal built by the original home-steaders. The houses were arranged in the California-style court configuration popular in that state after 1910 for housing Mexican migrant laborers and their families. The original plan called for twelve wood-frame structures, each containing two to four rooms 11' 6" x 12' 6" in dimension, with 3' x 5' screened openings and canvas flaps to allow proper air circulation. The structures eventu-ally built were a mix of wood and adobe that varied in size from three hundred to around five hundred square feet.18

Southwest Cotton’s decision to move its farm operations brought an influx of Mexican workers to Litchfield Park. Some were former employees from the company’s Goodyear and Marinette ranches. The chief reason they came to Litchfield was to take advan-tage of the company-provided free housing. Ramon Soto was one such Mexican laborer who worked at the Marinette Ranch during the 1920s. He and his wife had rented a home in the cotton camp of Salsipuedes, near Marinette, where their first child, Belen, was born. Ramon’s decision to apply for the job of irrigation foreman at Litchfield Ranch was prompted by the high rent in Marinette versus the prospect of free housing at Litchfield. Gloria Rivera Aguilar’s father, Lucio Rivera, was similarly prompted to move to

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Litchfield. Gloria’s parents had come to the Salt River Valley from Mexico during the Revolution and settled in the Marinette area. The high rent was extremely taxing on her father, a simple farm laborer who had to provide for his large family. When Lucio heard that the Southwest Cotton Company was providing free housing, he moved the family to Litchfield Park. Rivera worked at the ranch’s cotton gin until Anglo managers discovered his skill at cement work. He laid some of the first sidewalks in town, specifically around the commercial district. Gloria remembers that her father sometimes

Plan for Mexican housing at Litchfield Park, 1918. Courtesy Litchfield Park Collection (MS MSS 17, box 71, folder 7), Architecture Library, Arizona State University, Tempe.

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grumbled about the low pay, but then he would remember the free housing that enabled him to give his family a better life.19

Curiously, Mexicans who moved to Litchfield Park during the 1930s did not reside at the original housing set aside for farm laborers at the north end of town. Although company records do not explicitly address the relocation of the Mexican community to a network of camps outside town circa 1929, it is likely that the

Litchfield Park and vicinity, ca. 1953. Compiled by D. Drew Lucio after map of Litchfield Ranch, October 1953. Courtesy Litchfield Park Collection (MS MSS 17, pocket C, folder 2), Architecture Library, Arizona State University, Tempe.

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decision was spurred by the opening of the company’s winter resort, known as the Wigwam. The Wigwam was inspired by the San Marcos Hotel, designed to promote A. J. Chandler’s manufactured, amenity-rich community. The San Marcos impressed Goodyear representa-tives, none more than company president Frank A. Seiberling, who attended a barbecue at the resort as spring planting began at the Goodyear Ranch in March 1917.20

The company almost immediately made plans to build its own hotel at Litchfield Park. The original intention was to lodge Goodyear executives on visits from company headquarters at Akron, Ohio. Although a mere 20 miles separated Litchfield Park from downtown Phoenix, the desert and the Agua Fria River physically isolated the budding community. The popularity of the Company House, as the Wigwam was first called, grew as employees brought their families with them to Arizona during the mild desert winters. The venture’s success in its first season prompted management to enlarge and remodel the grounds, including the construction of several cottages and a nine-hole golf course. Goodyear executives certainly perceived the proximity of the Mexican section as a liability to promoting the public resort. As a result, camps to house Mexican workers were erected around the periphery of Litchfield Park.21

Eventually, the company moved its Mexican workforce into one of five camps—numbered 50-54, designating their location in the ranch’s overall crop-planting strategy—distributed across the ranch property. Southwest Cotton moved homes from Goodyear to accommodate the increased population that came with the company’s decision to concentrate its operations at Litchfield. These were extremely simple wood-frame structures in one of two sizes—10' x 12' and 20' x 14'. They were transported in typical Old-World fashion, placed on wagons pulled by mules and hauled the roughly 50 miles to their new location.22

José Leyba, whose family later departed to California, spent his early years at Camp 52, located on the west side of Litchfield Road, just below the Roosevelt Irrigation District Canal. The Leybas resided in one of several barracks built at the camp to hold mul-tiple families. Their living area consisted of a front room, middle room, bathroom, and kitchen at the back, all separated by simple partitions. The structure was constructed on piers, causing José’s mother to complain of cold air coming in through the floorboards

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during the winter. She thought the lack of insulation was the big-gest reason her children were always sick. But, because the house had running water and electricity, the family was relatively content. According to José, their living situation was much better than that of Mexican workers in similar circumstances elsewhere in the Salt River Valley.23

Most families accepted their meager living conditions and some even turned the inequity of their position into an advantage. For instance, the Rivera family lived in Camp 50, built to house workers temporarily when farming operations first began at the Litchfield Ranch in the late teens. To accommodate his six girls and one boy, Lucio Rivera used his building skills to add additional rooms, as well as a bathroom, onto the original structure. The same was true of John López’s parents, who also were among Litchfield’s earliest residents, arriving in 1918. John’s father started out pick-ing cotton, and eventually became a cowboy. The family ultimately moved into Camp 51, the second of the original camps. Years later, the company gave López the house next door. The spacious seven-

Moreno family home in Camp 54. Courtesy Belen Soto Moreno and Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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room structure most likely had been the home of one of the early Anglo foreman. López modified the house, adding windows and other amenities to make it more comfortable. Because the house was situated at a higher elevation than the surrounding homes, it served as a place of refuge for neighbors during floods.24

In providing homes for its laborers, SWCC was resurrecting the paternalistic policies of Mexican hacendados adapted to an industrial-scale agricultural economy.25 Worker housing was the truest expression of industrial paternalism, meant to protect Good-year’s greatest asset—labor. The fact that most former Litchfield residents have no memory of feeling exploited suggests that Good-year managers succeeded in their endeavor. The company not only provided homes but common space that the community imprinted with meaning to create a place where they could celebrate their cultural heritage without confronting prejudice.

Culture and CommunityThe camp landscape of Litchfield Park shaped the lives of

the children who called this place home. Mary Ann Soto Eckstrom

Mexican children playing marbles at the original Mexican camp built in Litchfield, 1920s. Courtesy Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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and Connie Mesquita, who both grew up in Camp 52, remember nostalgically the freedom of childhood, reinforced by the visibility of the rising and setting of the sun on the horizons, dirt roads, and endless fields surrounding the community. The poverty of the Mexican families in the camp forced kids to create their own fun. They played tag and baseball in the fields, or fashioned games from whatever was lying around, from an old bucket to a bicycle tire rim. Gilbert Soto recalls children gambling their marble collec-tions on the outcome of a game. Some children swam in the nearby irrigation canals. Despite their mothers’ protests, it provided much enjoyment, especially in the high heat of the Arizona summer. At night, women in the camp fancied children’s imaginations with stories. For Lupe Romo López, the story of La Lloróna, a woman who wanders the earth in search of the children she drowned in a fit of jealous rage, was both frightening and intriguing.26

For early residents, Mexican culture was never far away, mani-fested through the fragrance of heated tortillas and boiling beans that wafted throughout the camp. Lupe Romo López and Sallie Villa Romo remember that no one ever was without food. In spite of the low wages parents earned working for Goodyear, families always had enough to eat. In addition to the smells of food, music could often be heard in the camps. Belen Soto Moreno remembers melodious male voices echoing at night from a barrack at Camp 54 that residents referred to as bachelor row. Nor was music solely the preserve of single men. Belen’s father, Ramon, played bass with his brother and other men living in Camp 54. José Leyba recalls his father and his uncle describing men in the camps playing music and drinking at the end of a hard day’s work; one foreman was said to have received complaints from insomniac Anglos over this nightly ritual.27

Celebrations of life further reinforced Mexican culture in camp. First and foremost was adherence to Roman Catholic ritual that provided the spiritual glue of daily life. John López remem-bers climbing into the family car on a rainy Sunday for the trip to church, only to have his father tell him that they were going to walk because “God didn’t have no [sic] car.” As soon as the town was established, Paul Litchfield donated land on the east end on which to build a Mexican church. Many subsequent stories overempha-size Litchfield’s role, and that of the Southwest Cotton Company,

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in the construction of Saint Thomas Aquinas Church. In fact, it was Mexican men and women living at Litchfield Park who saw the project to completion. According to John López, the residents formed a fraternal organization, Cruz Verde, to raise construction funds. López’s father invested many hours making and setting adobe bricks for the little church, while Connie Mesquita’s father created the wooden pews.28

In the collective memory of camp children, the church was the focal point of the community. Their religious upbringing, from baptism to first communion to matrimony, was charted inside its earthen walls. For Marie López Rogers, the little church was an outlet for the celebration of what was quintessentially an expression of Mexican culture. Although work and the removal of the Mexican community to camps outside Litchfield Park weakened regular attendance, the impact varied from camp to camp. Parishioners in

Ramon Soto (far right) in Camp 54 band, 1930s. Courtesy Belen Soto Moreno and Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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Camps 50 and 52 (the closest to town) attended church on a regular basis, as compared to residents of more distant Camps 51, 53, and 54. Parents, however, ensured that distance did not affect their children’s religious education. According to Belen Soto Moreno, a woman in each camp taught catechism to the kids. Children from the different camps assembled together at Saint Thomas Aquinas in Litchfield Park to celebrate first communions and other major milestones in their spiritual lives.29

In spite of the strong social networks and the transformation of their houses that provided some control to their lives, Mexicans relied on the paternal benevolence of the Southwest Cotton Company. In addition to providing homes, Southwest Cotton also furnished rec-reational activities and communal space to Litchfield Park’s Mexican residents. Foremost among these was the plaza, known as El Centro, that Goodyear built at the original camp. In keeping with the overall

St. Thomas Aquinas Church in the 1920s. Courtesy Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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architectural design of Litchfield Park, the Mexican plaza incorpo-rated many of the design elements built into the early landscape. El Centro was demolished when the Wigwam opened to the public in 1929, forcing community-wide celebrations into the camps. In the early 1940s, the company resurrected this space when it constructed a new plaza at the center of town. Former camp residents remember it as la placita. The company also built a community center, where movies were shown and dances were held.

The camps also hosted weddings, funerals, and cultural cel-ebrations that were important to Mexican heritage. The largest celebration of the year was dieciséis de Septiembre, the holiday marking Mexico’s declaration of independence from Spain on September 16, 1810. Mariano Acuña remembers that a man by the name of Felix Gonzáles was in charge of fund raising for the event. Gonzáles traveled from door-to-door throughout the camps asking for dona-tions. Apparently, he was quite successful as there was always a good band playing at the annual celebration. Other men in the com-munity recruited Mexican baseball teams to play against the local

Celebrating communion at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, 1930s. Courtesy Belen Soto Moreno and Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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camp team, Los Diablos (The Devils), during the dieciséis de Septiembre festivities. Goodyear Farms, the paternal benefactor, championed these activities by donating beef and equipping the baseball team. The men spent time grilling the meat, all the while trading gossip and telling wild stories.30

Design for Mexican plaza at Litchfield Park, 1919. Courtesy Litchfield Park Collection (MS MSS 17, box 71, folder 7), Architecture Library, Arizona State University, Tempe.

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By the late 1930s, Mexicans living at Litchfield Park were beginning to identify themselves as both Mexican and American, paralleling trends on the regional and national scene. The Ameri-canization of Mexicans had been set in motion during the late 1910s as part of the larger anti-immigrant feeling infecting the nation. Mexican independence day celebrations still saw fiesta queens dressed in Mexico’s national colors—red, white, and green. A photograph of the September 16, 1936 festivities at Camp 52, however, shows celebrants on the bed of a truck emblazoned with both Mexican and American flags. This acculturation impacted children the most, as they were assimilated into the charter society via the school system.31

Assimilation through SchoolTo accommodate its rapid growth, Litchfield Park formed a

school district and opened a schoolhouse to provide educational

Los Diablos baseball team, Litchfield, Arizona, 1942. Courtesy José Villela Photographs (MP SPC 313.1:72), Chicano Research Collection, Arizona State University Libraries, Tempe.

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instruction to the children of the town’s workforce. Public school systems in the Southwest at the time stressed cultural homogeneity. Since the early 1900s, Arizona had allowed individual school districts to separate Mexican and Anglo students, advocating this radical approach as beneficial to both groups. Educators—and Anglos in general—believed that since English was the official language for school instruction, separating children along ethnic/racial lines would allow both Anglos and Mexicans to succeed. Mexicans would receive the special instruction they needed to overcome what were thought to be linguistic, cultural, and genetic deficiencies, and Anglo kids would not be delayed in their studies. Although believed to be a benevolent policy, this segregationist approach reflected the racism of the period directed at Mexicans by Anglos.32

The new Litchfield School District built a small adobe class-room above the Air Line Canal strictly for Mexican school children. The facility remained in use until 1929, when the Mexican commu-nity was moved from El Centro to the new camps outside town. The following year, the district integrated its school. Mexican children

Celebrating Dieciséis de Septiembre at Camp 52, 1936. Courtesy Belen Soto Moreno and Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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were required to attend an Americanization class for one year to prepare them adequately for integration. The primary purpose of the class, held in an old company building on the school grounds, was to provide Mexican children with basic-level English instruc-tion. This was contrary to the practice in Glendale, Tolleson, and other nearby farming communities, where Mexicans were schooled in separate facilities well into the 1950s.33

Belen Soto Moreno recalls that Mexican kids dubbed the Americanization program at Litchfield Elementary School “baby class,” because they learned English from the popular Dick and Jane primer. Upon reflection, Moreno believes the program was impor-tant because, up to then, her knowledge of English was limited. Most educators in the 1930s believed that Mexicans’ scholarly deficien-cies stemmed from their culture and that acquiring English would unleash their full academic potential. There were two schools of

Lunch at Litchfield Elementary School, 1937. The picture reflects the integration of Anglo and Mexican children by the late 1930s. Courtesy Litchfield Park Historical Society.

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thought about the best method for accomplishing this feat: either positive reinforcement, or through negative consequences, such as spanking, ridicule, and standing in the corner. Litchfield teachers subscribed to the latter methodology. Sallie Villa Romo remembers suffering the consequences of being caught speaking Spanish at school. In some instances, her Mexican classmates tattled on her. “I got spanked a lot of times,” she relates. “Somebody would always tell on me, like, ‘Sallie was talking, speaking Spanish’. . . . One of them was my sister’s cousin but you know, that was what came out naturally, for us to speak Spanish. And we’d get spanked.”34

Sallie’s story of ridicule and shame is familiar to many Mexicans who attended the Litchfield Park school during this period. Belen Soto Moreno recalls congregating with other Mexican kids behind buildings, out of earshot and sight of teachers, and speaking Spanish to their hearts’ content. As a sign of the time, she remembers that the Mexican students preferred to eat their lunches separately from their Anglo classmates. In her opinion, this stemmed from embar-rassment for not having bread. A typical Mexican lunch consisted of burritos filled with chorizo, frijoles, or huevos. Not all teachers, however, inflicted punishment for speaking Spanish. Mary Rivera Mendez remembers that Mrs. Hamilton, her sixth- or seventh-grade teacher, loved for her girls to sing Cuando se Quieren Deberás (When Someone Really Loves You) on the bus, while traveling to nearby schools for sporting events.35

In some families, schooling was of secondary importance. Educators of the time believed that Mexicans saw conventional schooling as unnecessary and therefore did not encourage their children to attend regularly. In reality, school attendance reflected the overall financial health of the family. The children of salaried employees, like Belen Soto Moreno, were free to attend school without worry, while the children of hourly workers periodically had to help out their fathers due to the constant insecurity of wage labor. Rudy Moreno’s father, born and raised at Camp 52, was electrocuted when Rudy was five. At that point, the family had no income whatsoever, so Rudy’s oldest brother left school at age fourteen to become the breadwinner. Rudy’s oldest sister followed shortly thereafter. Miguel Bejarano only attended school off and on after he turned fourteen, when he and his brother often skipped classes to help their father in the fields and warehouses, picking

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and ginning cotton. Enforcement of mandatory school attendance, especially for Mexican children, was lax. For example, the Litchfield Park principal excused Mexican students every Wednesday to work as caddies on the Wigwam golf course.36

Compared to many other schools, Litchfield Park provided a good education to Anglos and Mexicans alike. José Leyba recalls that he felt much better prepared than most Mexican students when his family moved on to California. Belen Soto Moreno developed a real thirst for knowledge, inspired by her first teacher, Ms. Gómez. Belen wanted to be a teacher, but saw her dream fade as she got older and realized the cost of going to college. During Belen’s last year of school, her Spanish teacher, Ms. Ibarra, asked what she planned to do with her life. Belen mentioned becoming a secre-tary, but confided that her real passion was becoming a teacher. Ms. Ibarra sought out Belen’s parents, who gave their blessing for their daughter to attend college. Mr. Borg, the school’s typing teacher, pulled some strings with a friend at Arizona State College at Flagstaff (now Northern Arizona University) to get Belen an interview for a job that would pay her tuition. Belen Soto Moreno not only made it into college, she was the first Mexican student to be valedictorian at Litchfield, besting future Arizona State University president Lattie Coor. Goodyear president Paul Litchfield wrote a letter congratulating her on the auspicious occasion.37

ConclusionMexicans were a critical part of the founding and early success

of cotton farming in the Salt River Valley, and Litchfield Park was a model colonia settlement that both accommodated and nurtured several generations of its minority population. Although Mexican families were segregated in their living arrangements, Litchfield Park provided certain social spaces for its Mexican residents, nota-bly Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church and the town plaza. By 1930, its integrated school pioneered a socializing process that was ahead of other Mexican communities in the Salt River Valley.

Today, Litchfield Park has one of the smallest Mexican popula-tions among nearby west side towns. In 2000, Mexicans represented 21, 46, and 78 percent of the population of Goodyear, Avondale, and Tolleson, respectively, compared to only 5 percent in Litchfield.38 Nevertheless, Mexican Litchfield Park was a pioneer community—

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an early Salt River Valley colonia whose past is held dear by its surviv-ing residents and their descendants who call the place home.

NOTES

1. José María Burruel, Mexicans in Scottsdale (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2007); Frank M. Barrios, Mexicans in Phoenix (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2008); Alex P. Oberle and Daniel D. Arreola, “Resurgent Mexican Phoenix,” Geographical Review, vol. 98 (April 2008), pp. 171-96.2. Frank W. Viehe, “Black Gold Suburbs: The Influence of the Extractive Industry on the Suburbanization of Los Angeles, 1890-1930,” Journal of Urban History, vol. 8 (1981), pp. 3-26; Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); James R. Curtis, “Barrio Space and Place in Southeast Los Angeles, California,” in Daniel D. Arreola, ed., Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: Community and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary American (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).3. Mark C. Vinson, “Cultural Continuity and Change in a Mexican American Vernacular Landscape” (M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1991); Pete R. Dimas, Progress and a Mexican American Community’s Struggle for Existence: Phoenix’s Golden Gate Barrio (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999); John Harner, “The Mexican Community in Scottsdale, Ari-zona,” Conference of Latin American Geographers Yearbook, vol. 26, pp. 29-46; D. R. Dean and J. A. Reynolds, Hispanic Historic Property Survey: Final Report (Phoenix: Office of Historic Preservation, 2006).4. Michael J. Kotlanger, “Phoenix, Arizona: 1920-1940” (Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1983); Bradford Luckingham, Minorities in Phoenix: A Profile of Mexican American, Chinese American, and African American Communities (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994).5. Waldo B. Christy, “American Egyptian Long-Staple Cotton in Arizona” (Ph.D. disserta-tion, University of Chicago, 1920); Scott W. Solliday, “The Journey to Rio Salado: Hispanic Migrations to Tempe, Arizona” (M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1993); Nancy Hill, “The Imprint of Cotton Production on Arizona Landscapes” (Ph. D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 2007).6. Susan M. Smith, “Litchfield Park and Vicinity” (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1948), p. 22; Biographical Sketch of P. W. Litchfield, Chairman of the Board, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company [1950], MS MSS17, folder 4, box 124, Litchfield Park Collection, Arizona State University Library Department of Archives and Special Collections, Tempe; Hill, “Imprint of Cotton,” pp. 113-14.7. Larry Dean Simkins, “The Rise of the Southeast Salt River Valley: Tempe, Mesa, Chan-dler, Gilbert, 1870-1930” (Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1984), pp. 273-80.8. Smith, “Litchfield Park and Vicinity,” p. 21.9. “Cotton for Cactus,” pp. 5-8, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Records, 1898-1993, Regional History Collections, University of Akron, Ohio; John Brueggemann, “The Power and Collapse of Paternalism: The Ford Motor Company and Black Workers, 1937-1941,” Social Problems, vol. 47, pp. 220-40; Hill, “Imprint of Cotton,” pp. 126-27.10. Litchfield Annual Report 1924, MS MSS 17, box 115, Litchfield Park Collection; Luckingham, Minorities in Phoenix, p. 37; Hill, “Imprint of Cotton,” pp. 128-33; Smith, “Litchfield Park and Vicinity,” p. 68.11. W. H. Knox to E. F. Parker, April 5, 1918, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Records; Jésus M. Corralez contract with Southwest Cotton Company to manufacture adobe bricks at Litchfield Ranch, September 1918, MS MSS17, folder 48, box 7, Litchfield Park Collec-tion; Severiano García contract with Southwest Cotton Company, June 1918, ibid., folder 62.

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12. Smith, “Litchfield Park and Vicinity,” pp. 34-35. 13. C. J. Haltman contract specifying payment for Mexican labor supplied by the Arizona Cotton Growers Association (ACGA), 1920, MS MSS17, folder 11, box 7, Litchfield Park Collection.14. John López interview transcript, Voices from the Camps of Litchfield Park [DVD], produced by Gloria Holguín Cuádraz (Phoenix: Arizona Humanities Council and Arizona State University, 2006); Mary Ann Soto Eckstrom interview, ibid.15. Armida Vizzera and Lupe Romo López interviews, ibid. 16. Gonzalez, Labor and Community, p. 56; J. M. Boggess to J. W. Ross, August 22, 1919, and Ross to Boggess, August 30, 1919, MS MSS17, folder 11, box 7, Litchfield Park Col-lection. 17. Allen C. Reed, “Goodyear Farms: Laboratory in the Desert,” Arizona Highways, vol. 28, pp. 28-40; Belen Soto Moreno interview, Voices from the Camps; Hill, “Impact of Cotton,” p. 142.18. Litchfield Annual Report, 1924.19. Belen Soto Moreno interview with Drew Lucio, July 13, 2006, authors’ files; Soto Moreno and Gloria Rivera Aguilar interviews, Voices from the Camps.20. Celeste Crouch interview with Drew Lucio, August 8, 2006, authors’ files; Rudy Moreno interview, Voices from the Camps.21. Smith, “Litchfield Park and Vicinity,” p. 79; Hill, “Impact of Cotton,” pp.134-38.22. Crouch interview.23. José Leyba interview, Voices from the Camps. 24. López interview.25. William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexi-can Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 41-44; Gonzalez, Labor and Community, pp. 36-41. 26. Connie Mesquita, Josie María Alcantar, and Gilbert Soto interviews, Voices from the Camps; Romo López interview; Eckstrom interview; Leyba interview.27. Sallie Villa Romo interview, Voices from the Camps; Romo López interview; Soto Moreno interview; Leyba interview.28. López interview; Mesquita interview.29. Marie López Rogers interview with Drew Lucio, August 7, 2006, authors’ files; Leyba interview; Soto Moreno interview.30. Mariano Acuña and Rudy Moreno interviews, Voices from the Camps; Leyba interview; Mesquita interview; Soto Moreno interview. 31. Christine Marin, LULAC and Veterans Organize for Civil Rights in Tempe and Phoenix, 1940-1947 (Tucson: University of Arizona Mexican American Studies and Research Center, 2001); Blaine P. Lamb, “Historical Overview of Tempe, Arizona, 1870-1930,” 1981, FM MSM-69, Arizona Historical Foundation, Arizona State University; Mary Ruth Titcomb, “Americanization and Mexicans in the Southwest: A History of Phoenix’s Friendly House, 1920-1983” (M.A. thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1984).32. Gonzalez, Labor and Community, pp. 99-113; Luckingham, Minorities in Phoenix, p. 49.33. Barry Edward Lamb, “The Landmark Civil Rights Case in Arizona: Gonzales vs. Sheely,” 1981, MM CHSM-58, Chicana/o Research Collection, Arizona State University.34. Soto Moreno and Sallie Villa Romo interviews, Voices from the Camps.35. Soto Moreno interview; Mary Rivera Mendez interview, Voices from the Camps.36. Moreno interview; Miguel Bejarano interview, Voices from the Camps.37. Leyba interview; Soto Moreno interview.38. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000.

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Documents

Mexican Litchfield Park: A Forgotten Colonia of the Salt River Valley