When Los Angeles officials were considering renaming a major Eastside thoroughfare to honor labor rights icon César Chávez in 1993, one 20-year-old resident said she appreciated what he’d done for Latinos — but she hoped the city would find a memorial somewhere else.
“Brooklyn Avenue is Boyle Heights,” Zorina Castanon told the LA Times at the time. “You just can’t change that.”
The city and LA County did go on to rename Brooklyn Avenue, as well as stretches of Macy Street and Sunset Boulevard that ran from downtown Los Angeles through Boyle Heights to East LA, to Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Today, businesses along the commercial corridor in Boyle Heights bear Chávez’s name, and murals honor his legacy as an emblematic figure of the Chicano Movement…