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The Del Valle Family

and onto the Santa Clara River Valley. The next day Medal of Merit by the Liga Protectiva Latina for his
450 people lay dead, buried in the mud. Damage to services to the Mexican-American community. The
the land and structures approached 20 million dollars. Liga was in the vanguard of defending the rights of
Rancho Camulos, of course, lay in the path of the the Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles during this
flood. While not completely destroyed, the rancho period. 44
suffered damages to crops, trees and structures of On September 21, 1938 Reginaldo del Valle died of
well over 300,000 dollars. 40 Whole families, many of a heart attack, and the Los Angeles Times and La
them long time friends of the del Valles, perished. Opinion both carried laudatory accounts of his career.
The St. Francis Dam disaster must have been a The Times highlighted his political successes and
deeply personal tragedy to the del Valle family. noted that he had always disliked being called
"Spanish." 45 La Opinion's obituary mentioned his
daughter Lucretia's prominent role in McGroarty's
Mission Play and claimed that he had been the first to
conceive of the storage reservoir system for met-
ropolitan Los Angeles. 46 Reginaldo del Valle's life and
career was an example of how the upper class Mex-
icanos in California managed to survive and even
prosper during the early decades of the American era.
1:e Californios have frequently been accused of True, they exchanged a romanticized view of the past
isolating themselves from the Mexican immigrant for future political and economic power, and this is
community in Los Angeles. Considering themselves perhaps the most serious criticism of them. But after
"Spanish" they looked with scorn on the thousands all they were fighting to maintain their self respect in
of working class mestizo and Indian immigrants who difficult and changing times. Californios, like Re-
flooded Los Angeles in the decades after the Mexican ginaldo, really believed in the myth they were help-
Revolution of 1910. This was not the case with Regi- ing to create. Perhaps the prominence given to the
naldo del Valle. He maintained a close friendship few surviving Californios fulfilled the needs of the
with Mexican leaders he had met during his mission millions of rootless immigrants who migrated to
to Mexico, like Jose M. Maytorrena, a former gov- California after 1880. The Fantasy Heritage, after all,
ernor of Sonora who had moved to Los Angeles in gave these newcomers a ready made tradition with
the 1920s. He occasionally represented Spanish which they could identify. From the California point
speaking immigrants in the courts. 41 In 1912 he of view this same fantasy made it possible for Mex-
briefly represented General Caryl Ap Rhys Pryce, the icanos and Angle-Americans to coexist with some
former revolutionary leader in Baja California who degree of mutual respect.
had captured Tijuana for the Partido Liberal
Mexicano. 42 Reginaldo was also active in forming
the San Gabriel Spanish American League. While
middle class in composition, it represented an
influential body of the newly arrived Spanish speak- All of the photographs used throughout this article are courtesy
ing immigrants. 43 In 1925 del Valle was awarded a of the Ventura County Historical Society and Museum.

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