{"id":30336,"date":"2025-10-30T15:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/30336\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:51:11","slug":"inside-evergreen-cemetery-with-boyle-heights-resident-historian-the-barrio-boychik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/30336\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Evergreen Cemetery with Boyle Heights’ resident historian, the Barrio Boychik"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A tour in Los Angeles usually entails riding around the city in an open-air vehicle, as a tour guide<\/a> points out celebrity homes, scenic photo-ops and iconic movie locations. <\/p>\n

But in Boyle Heights, local historian and tour guide Shmuel Gonzales takes a more personal approach. The community organizer, who goes by the name \u201cBarrio Boychik,\u201d tells the lesser-known stories of the historically multicultural neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want our history told correctly, and for it to represent the stories of the working-class immigrants who live here. We needed someone from the community to be able to do it,\u201d said Gonzales, who sat by the main gates of the Evergreen Cemetery, ready to begin his walking tour. \u201cI had to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n

It was a cloudy Sunday morning, and the cemetery was uncharacteristically green, following L.A.\u2019s recent spout of rain.<\/a> A small group of 10 visitors gathered around Gonzales, eager to begin the history lesson. With slicked-back hair and a thick binder in hand, he kept an eye out for potential stragglers. Roughly a week before D\u00eda de los Muertos, Gonzales focused the tour on the significance of the Evergreen Cemetery in L.A. and its role in the city\u2019s first-ever D\u00eda de los Muertos event.<\/p>\n

With endless rows of moss-ridden, uneven headstones and towering post-mortem monuments, the Evergreen Cemetery isn\u2019t hard to miss. Most Boyle Heights residents encounter it daily, as it\u2019s bordered by several of the neighborhood\u2019s main streets: Cesar Chavez Avenue, Lorena Street, Evergreen Avenue and 1st Street.<\/p>\n

\"Graves <\/p>\n

In Evergreen Cemetery, the headstones are dated anywhere between the 1800s and present-day, as people can still be buried here.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Founded in 1877, it\u2019s both the first privately owned and non-segregated cemetery in Los Angeles, as well as the oldest. At the time, the developers thought its location was optimal, because the surrounding area wasn\u2019t very populated and there was a belief that settlement wouldn\u2019t go so far east. Today, it\u2019s situated in the middle of the neighborhood between Los Cinco Puntos (of \u201cBlood In Blood Out\u201d fame<\/a>) and El Mercado, the landmark shopping center for Mexican goods of all kinds. There\u2019s also a popular jogging trail that circles the cemetery\u2019s perimeter, where runners outpace each other and dog walkers exchange greetings.<\/p>\n

Along the outskirts of cemetery grounds, there were a few patches of more recent graves, decorated with brightly colored marigolds. Several families gathered around in folding chairs and under shady canopies to spend time with deceased loved ones. Some headstones were adorned with Halloween decorations, while others embodied the D\u00eda De Los Muertos spirit with decorated calaveras and scattered marigold petals.<\/p>\n

Gonzales points out all of the dispersed families throughout the ghastly field and said that Los Angeles has been publicly celebrating the holiday for over 50 years. It started out as a part of the Chicano Movement. Sister Karen Boccalero, the founder of community art center Self Help Graphics and Art, noticed morale in the neighborhood was low, given the number of deaths within the community from the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was one of the few people who believed that the civil rights movement needed to move forward. She was a Franciscan nun who wouldn\u2019t wear a habit and would chain smoke. She was the type of nun who got things done,\u201d said Gonzales.<\/p>\n

\"Many <\/p>\n

Many families gather at the graves of their loved ones ahead of the Dia de los Muertos holiday.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Boccalero had the idea to help invigorate the community by celebrating Dia de Los Muertos in the neighborhood. In 1973, she and other Chicano artists had organized a parade of handmade floats to honor those the community was mourning. The parade started at Evergreen Cemetery and continued down Cesar Chavez Avenue. Over half a century later, the tradition still continues at the art nonprofit. This year\u2019s parade<\/a> will take place on Nov 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe holiday was uniquely revived in an American, Mexican and Chicano perspective for a purpose. So here in our community, it\u2019s forever intertwined with all of those you know, men and women who gave their lives in an unjust war,\u201d said Gonzales.<\/p>\n

Walking through the cemetery, Gonzales stops by the graves of some of the city\u2019s earliest developers \u2014 many of whom areas and streets are named after, like the Lankershims, the Van Nuys, the Hollenbecks and the Bigsbys. Beyond the more recognizable names, he pays homage to all the different groups of people buried there and explains in detail how they ended up in Evergreen \u2014 such as the displaced Chinese cemetery<\/a> and the memorial to the Japanese American World War II veterans.<\/p>\n

Despite his ability to speak for upwards of four hours, Gonzales didn\u2019t set out with the dream of being a local tour guide. It\u2019s something that came to him naturally.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy being a local within the community and hanging around on the weekends, people would come by start asking questions like, \u2018Why is this here?\u2019 or \u2018What is this building?\u2019\u201d said Gonzales, who knew the answers based on his own research and various oral traditions passed down from his family. \u201cPeople started to figure out that I would be by the Sixth Street bridge in the evening… They would regularly come by and want me to tell them about something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzales can trace his family roots in Los Angeles, specifically East L.A., back by six generations. They first emigrated from Mexico in the 1830s and settled in the area. Raised mostly by his grandparents, a lot of his childhood memories are connected to stories he wasn\u2019t supposed to hear. Often, he was one of the only kids who was able to listen, as he said his ADHD required him to be supervised closely and his family couldn\u2019t send him outside to play with the others. He also had the advantage of being able to speak Spanish, so he understood the tales entirely.<\/p>\n

\"Gonzales <\/p>\n

Gonzales says that the Evergreen Cemetery is also a way to understand how headstone trends have changed over the years. He\u2019s pictured pointing at a headstone that includes a picture of the deceased.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you become an adult and you get into academia with history, you\u2019re mostly trying to debunk the history you\u2019ve already been taught. Over the years, the stories have been simplified and littered with urban legends and prejudices of the time,\u201d said Gonzales, who describes the stories as \u201ccuentas exacerbados.\u201d \u201cAs I was researching them, I realized that they just had scratched the surface in the storytelling. There\u2019s actually more than a kernel of truth in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around a decade ago, he said he noticed gentrification starting to creep in and that he needed to take his calling more seriously, so he began giving formalized tours. Today, he hosts over 20 variations of tours around East L.A., featuring anything from the most haunted spots in Boyle Heights to retracing the landmarks of the once-vibrant Jewish community in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

With the revenue from ticket sales, he also founded the Boyle Heights History Studios, a community cultural center, in 2018. After COVID-19, he had to give up his physical museum space and now focuses on cultivating community online and through pop-up events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many things that we\u2019ve learned in school, but none of it is the stuff that Shmuel shares. It\u2019s all such new information,\u201d said Susana Betancourt, a retired teacher and Boyle Heights resident who has been coming to Gonzales\u2019 tours for around five years. \u201cI always try to invite new people to come and learn. It\u2019s important that more of us learn this information so that we, too, can continue to pass it all down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing from over two centuries of family knowledge, Gonzales said that sharing his blend of family stories and untold histories is a way to fight for the preservation of L.A.\u2019s history, like the Evergreen Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to keep telling these stories so that the ancestors live through us,\u201d said Gonzales. \u201cBut also so that we can hopefully keep this cemetery going on for another century and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tour in Los Angeles usually entails riding around the city in an open-air vehicle, as a tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[22336,22368,22342,9038,22338,1431,22367,11030,418,2303,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,22366,3044,18652,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-30336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-boyle-heights","9":"tag-century","10":"tag-community-organizer","11":"tag-dia-de-los-muertos","12":"tag-evergreen-cemetery","13":"tag-family","14":"tag-few-people","15":"tag-gonzales","16":"tag-history","17":"tag-l-a","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-la-headlines","20":"tag-la-news","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","23":"tag-los-angeles-news","24":"tag-los-angeles-times","25":"tag-multicultural-neighborhood","26":"tag-story","27":"tag-tour","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}