From the 19th Century, a Look at City’s Past Latino Mayors

Although Antonio Villaraigosa won election Tuesday as the city’s first Latino mayor in more than a century, three other Latinos have held the office since California became a state in 1850.

Antonio Franco Coronel

1853-1854

A stalwart in civic service and in support of fellow Latinos, Coronel was 35 when he was elected to a one-year term.

He established the Department of Public Works and encouraged residents to gather in the public plaza at the sound of a gong and vote on city matters by a show of hands.

He tirelessly promoted civic beautification and supported the pueblo’s horticultural and historical societies, a museum and the restoration of the missions. He and his wife, Mariana, helped Helen Hunt Jackson write the romantic novel “Ramona,” which alerted the nation to the plight of Native Americans. She acknowledged Coronel’s help and advice in making the book possible.

Coronel was respected for his courtly manners. Coronel next served 12 years as a city councilman, and was state treasurer for four years. During his political career, he held other elected posts, including county assessor.

By 1873, Coronel had built a home surrounded by vineyards and orange groves on the banks of the Los Angeles River near 7th and Alameda streets. At the home, El Recreo, the Mexican American community gathered for civic celebrations and for Coronel’s funeral in 1894, when he died at the age of 77.

Manuel Requena

1856 (Sept. 22-Oct. 4)

A former county supervisor and city councilman, Requena does not appear on some listings of Los Angeles mayors because he served only 13 days -- by appointment after Mayor Stephen Clark Foster briefly resigned to join a lynch mob.

Requena, then in his 50s, was a talented horticulturist and man of great influence. He lived on the east side of Los Angeles Street, where he owned a vineyard and fruit orchard.

When Chinese miners and laborers brought pomelos to California during the Gold Rush, Requena began growing them in 1858. Proud of his California fruit and wine, he had a friend hand-deliver his prized products to President James Buchanan.

Requena died in 1876 at the age of 74.

Cristobal Aguilar

1866-1868, 1870-1872

Aguilar, a former county supervisor and city councilman, was born in Los Angeles in the early 1820s and watched the construction of the city’s first municipal water system, which included a 40-foot waterwheel that lifted water from the main ditch to a storage tank in the plaza.

Elaborate improvements, including wooden and iron pipes, were made. But after a flood in 1868 wiped out most of those improvements, a frustrated City Council offered the rights to the water system to the highest bidder. Aguilar defied the council and vetoed the sale. His move would eventually lead to creation of the city’s Department of Water and Power.

His action made him a hero to voters. But he knew that the most important public office in Los Angeles was not the mayor. He wanted the prestige of being the zanjero, the water czar, who had power and a salary 50% higher than the mayor’s. So, for several months after his second one-year term ended, he was hired as zanjero, watching for water thieves who would cut into the ditch at night and seal it up before dawn.

He was again elected mayor in 1870, this time for a two-year term, at a time when Latino voter registration was about 22%.

The blot on Aguilar’s years as mayor was the notorious Chinese Massacre. In October 1871, as violence broke out in the town’s Chinese quarter, Aguilar rode up quietly on his horse, surveyed the turbulent scene of murder and looting, and just as quietly departed.

The rioting that raged through the town left at least 18 Chinese immigrants dead and led East Coast newspapers to label the city a “bloodstained Eden.”

When Aguilar ran in 1872 for a fourth term as mayor, he lost. But two years later, he was back in government, again as water czar. He died in 1886.