‘Hasta la Bahia!’: Ghosts of America’s Past in Chicano Park

Kilometres from one of the world’s most heavily-fortified borders, Chicano Park in San Diego reminds Americans of who was there first.

‘Déjenme decirles, a riesgo de parecer ridículo, que el revolucionario verdadero está guiado por grandes sentimientos de amor.’

‘Let me say, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love‘

— Che Guevara

I got into San Diego in the dying stages of a dull grey June afternoon. ‘May Grey, June Gloom’, locals call it. They’re all quick to tell you it’s normal this time of year. I had just spent 3 torturous days on the USA’s long-distance Greyhound buses, lurching from New Orleans to Houston, Houston to San Antonio, San Antonio to El Paso and through to San Diego.

Greyhounds are so bad because most of their passengers think they’re travelling through the Greatest Country In The World and that this is the best buses can possibly get. So, there’s not even an aspiration for a situation in which the buses don’t smell of piss, or the floors of station toilets aren’t coated in shit, or the buses don’t leave 6 hours late, because, you know, if things are bad in the USA then they…