Burg savvy

A quiet revolution
All this rain and green
this is someone else’s spring
strange, but I’ll take it
My dad, a native New Yorker, who lived in California for 40 years, never ate an avocado. He mistrusted Mexican food in general, and never made its acquaintance. Even after my sister married a man who was a native of Michoacan, he resisted the cuisine.
When I say resisted, I mean he knew he didn’t like it, and consequently he never tried it. His seven children, on the other hand, are all aficionados.
The 14th anniversary of my father’s death was last weekend, merging ironically with Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Americans and Mexicans are inextricably linked on this holiday. Napolean III, friendly to the Confederacy during our Civil War, decided to march on Mexico City, and to create a Confederate-friendly country on our southern border. In Puebla, on Cinco de Mayo, the lesser equipped Mexican army held back France. This news energized Mexicans living in Alta California who were worried about a Confederate victory and slavery becoming the law of the land in the United States. Mexicans living in the north sent money south to reinforce the efforts of the Mexican Army.
If we were retelling local history from a female perspective, we might have to concede that Josefa Carillo, the wife of Henry Delano Fitch, was responsible for the Sotoyome Rancho land grant, on which we Healdsburgers now live. Josefa was the sister of General Vallejo’s wife, and the general’s intercession was key to having the initial eight square miles of Healdsburg, including the Alexander Valley, granted to a non-Mexican. In the list of land grantees, Fitch’s name is one of a conspicuous few that was not Hispanic.
Then as now, many Mexican nationals lived here, finding themselves at home, but in  the blink of an eye, in a foreign country after the Mexican-American War, which historians readily admit was a thinly veiled land grab. Our government moved the border to include all of Alta California to be within the United States. Today, about 40 percent of our population are Mexicans who call Healdsburg home, some newcomers, and some who can trace their lineage back to that Sotoyome land grant, or before.
When people buy homes here and ask about the Mexican people who frequent the plaza, I tell them that they belong here, that they were here before we were. Only the indigenous people of this area can claim a lineage here that is longer. And our wonderful plaza, our unifying field, was designed to replicate plazas all over Mexico, the heart of every town south of the border.
I cannot imagine Healdsburg without its vibrant Mexican influence, or who I would be, for that matter. I have two nieces and two nephews who are the product of my sister Jennifer’s marriage to her husband, Ignacio. They are beautiful, intelligent, compassionate people, who fully embrace their diverse heritage.
I want to thank every Mexican business person, cook, lawyer, mechanic, winery worker, farmer, housekeeper, beautician, nurse, doctor, landscaper, painter, artist, field worker, contractor, mother and father, daughter and son who live in our town. I have been enriched by my intersection with your culture, your music, your colorful take on life.
My father, despite his food embargos, changed the course of my life on my first day of high school. I had elected to take French, so thrilled to be able to choose my own curriculum. Dad said “We share a border with the largest Spanish speaking population in the world. You’re going to take Spanish.” I learned the language, and doors have opened for me that never would have otherwise. Especially hearts. Many many hearts.
Penelope La Montagne is a former Literary Laureate of Healdsburg, and is a Realtor at a local real estate brokerage. She can be reached at

on*********@co*****.net











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