As I was doing research for this post, a response by Helena Maria Viramontes during an interview with La Bloga really stuck with me:
“I realized that the structure of the novel began to resemble the freeway intersections … And like the freeways upheld by pillars, I realized I had four pillars in four characters of which most other characters orbited around.”
The freeways that intersect and break up Los Angeles were in construction in the 1948. As many families and communities were being uprooted, separating people that have been together for years, scattering them across the city. In a sense, the city was separated into its own even smaller communities, thus isolating them from one another just how the characters in Their Dogs Came With Them are. Nevertheless, despite this isolation, just as the quote states, there are still these intersections that these girls have the opportunity to meet one another on. However, the intersections are brief and even if they are meaningful, they are back onto their own road once again, very much like a freeway. Going back to the actual boroughs, though, the isolation that the characters feel are only reinforced in the way they are seen in pictures. Nathan Master’s article “They Moved Mountains (and People) to Build L.A’s Freeways” uses pictures to show the construction. In a few, one can see the areas that were previously directly connected through streets and homes, now separated by a cement road. This distance reflects the distance that the characters feel with their families–the way that blood is supposed to be their connector, but at the end of the day it does not matter for a wall is built between them. The barren roads that are portrayed mi-construction also reflect the emotional nakedness that Viramontes displays in her characters.
Furthermore, the freeways also represent the political circumstances that were experienced during the 1960s. As it was a time a Civil Movements, Chicano pride, and white supremacy, the fact that the communities of Boyle Heights and East LA were not able to save their streets through protest while those Beverly Hills got what they wanted, only shows the power of race.
Works Cited:
Masters, Nathan. “They Moved Mountains (And People) To Build L.A.’s Freeways.”
Southland. N.p., 17 Mar. 2014. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
Soto, Kate. “Their Dogs Came With Them.” PopMatters. N.p., 8 July 2007. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
I think that this post has touched on something really important about the geographical landscape of East Los Angeles. As you mentioned, the freeway construction in 1948 disrupted already marginalized communities and neighborhoods. Before the freeway construction, because of restrictive covenants that limited where minorities could live, there was some sense of community in places like East La and Boyle Heights. As someone else mentioned, the dense of displacement is evident when Tranquelina’s mother is trying to navigate their neighborhood, only to find that the freeways rendered familiar neighborhoods unrecognizable. The sense of isolation is woven throughout the book. Your observation is acute when you wrote that much like the freeways, the characters meet then go in their own road, much as one does on a freeway. I have a feeling as the novel goes on, though, these characters may be more interconnected than we anticipate.