Chicana/o/x Environmental Justice in Barrio Logan

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This paper examines oppositional social movements to industrial land use policies and zoning in the historic Mexican American neighborhood of Barrio Logan in San Diego, California to demonstrate how racialized urban spatial marginalization takes place. I present a social history of urban infrastructural intrusions in the neighborhood, such as the construction of the Interstate-Five Freeway (I-5) in 1955, the Coronado Bridge in 1967, and the failed attempt to build a Highway Patrol Substation in 1970, to highlight the legacy and resiliency of Chicana/o/x environmental justice in San Diego where activists, community members, and artists founded and have maintained the National Historic Landmark, Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Monumental Murals. I examine ethnographically the case of the 2014 “Yes on Propositions B and C” Campaign where Chicana/o/x artists and activists strategically utilized Indigenous and U.S.-Third World Mestizo/a/x cultural markers as forms of social and environmental justice activism. Propositions B and C where two measures to defend and support the 2013 Barrio Logan Community Plan, a community based zoning plan that would ultimately create a ‘buffer-zone’ between industrial maritime facilities and Barrio Logan’s residential urban core.

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