Lupe in Happy Valley: 2022: 2019:1971

Michael Sedano

I owe myself a visit to Lupe of Happy Valley. I did not grow up in Los Angeles, so when my first job after the U.S. Army sent me driving around LA County, I took every opportunity to explore, get to know the big city, and take photographs. 

The first puro LA experience I had was the time i was photographing a set of murals in an out-of-the-way corner of Los Angeles when the residents of the home came to check out the guy with the camera. I'd sure love to give these kids a copy of the fotos. I heard via the Face that one or both of the young men have died. qepd.

Today's column re-runs one from March 2019. It's been that long that I saw Lupe in Happy Valley. Ahi voy!

Lupe of Happy Valley 2019 Update

I’ve been watching Happy Valley Lupe since serendipity led me to her wall marking the border where Lincoln Heights meets El Sereno and Montecito Heights. She’s hanging in there in 2019.

Back in 1971, just out of the Army, I found a job going around Southern California to low-SES schools doing reading and math testing for a national study. 

Lincoln High School was on my assignment list and I was excited to see for myself. Only four years before, kids walking out of Lincoln helped launch the movimiento. I planned to get there early enough to cruise the area.



Finding the school was easy from the Santa Ana Freeway. Exit Broadway, head away from downtown, pass Las Cuatro Milpas, El Tepeyac, a couple of markets, and there’s the school on the left. 

I cruised past and pointed my wheels toward the streets behind the school.




At first, I didn’t see Lupe, struck by the mourning Ixta and Popo painted across a retaining wall. Above them next door, a couple of kids played against a rickety wooden fence keeping them from falling ten feet to the sidewalk. Below them on the wall guarding their home against sliding into the street, the Virgin of Happy Valley. A cobra to Lupe's left marked her barrio.

I parked and took out my camera. While I looked for angles--Ektachrome rationed the exposures--a couple of kids walked down the steps and took positions at the street sign to watch me.

I walked over and we had a great conversation, I took their foto but never shared it with them. Now they're all gone.

That moment stayed like that for thirty years.

Thirty years later, in 2014, I drove from Our Lady of Guadalupe church on Mercury and Huntington Drive toward Happy Valley. Cresting the hill, Happy Valley remains a cozy hamlet up against the now-tony Montecito Heights. 

Coming down the steep grade, there's a modern elementary school but still lots of open land on the heights.

Popo and Ixta disappeared into a white expanse. Lupe stands but the house where the kids played is now a vine-covered lot. The hillside is moving, iron straps hold the retaining wall together where it splits at the seam.

Alfredo Lascano stands where those kids were

Last weekend, expecting to see a new apartment building where Lupe held back the moving hillside, I crested Mercury Avenue and came downhill toward the school. There is Lupe, still holding her wall.

Lupe's face has been repainted, along with bright new colors. The Cobra was Christianized, but that's been overcome with healing vibes. 

Someone--an art critic, quien sabe?--gave Lupe a scar across her nose. Lastima, but now there's a reason to visit sooner rather than later, see who's guarding the spirit of this place, giving her a face?