Memories and monuments honor the past of Tucson's historic downtown barrios

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Traces of the old Tucson barrios circle the convention center downtown.

KGUN9's archives show journalists have tracked the city's plan back in the 1960s, when leaders rolled out the Urban Renewal plan and eventually built the venue.

A consequence of this project was hundreds of displaced men, women and children had to find new places to live. Generations later, people like historian Pedro Gonzalez still carry that scar.

But on the corner of Granada and Cushing, across the street from the TCC, there's a testament to a bitter-sweet story that's party of the community's fabric.

A closer look at the statue will reveal small details that mean the world to Gonzalez. "You have the grandmother pointing where it was, the homes stood, and she has a tear. She's crying...See how we have it bare footed? Because we're rooted (here)," he said.

Old newspaper articles give a sense of the scale of the Urban Renewal project, but it's the look in the woman's eyes that Gonzalez will never forget. He is the boy holding her hand.

"She was my dad's mom, my Nana Luz. She wound up living in El Presidio," he said. "(She and her friends) used to stand over there by El Minuto restaurant, they would see their house being demolished, just to build that white elephant, that cemetery right there," he said, pointing to the Tucson Arena.

Gonzalez was part of a committee to build this memorial years ago. His friend, artist Luis Mena, sculpted the story. Meanwhile, other committee members interviewed neighbors and priests to etch out their stories and the blueprints of the barrios.

Last year, Good Morning Tucson talked to Gonzales and Mena about celebrating what once was and what still is here in some places like the Five Points barrios. "Without history, you don't have a heart and a soul. How are you going to know how you exist if you don't know where you're coming from, in the present, to go into the future?"

Back on Granada and Cushing in Barrio El Hoyo, Gonzalez says he'd asked the city to revamp the corner and help solve the draining problem that was here. When the Tucson Fire Department was looking to move to a bigger headquarters, Gonzalez said he was grateful to find a few partners in city leaders.

"They were the ones that actually worked with us to get this done," he said. "Chief Dan Newburn wanted to be our neighbor; the fire department wanted to be our neighbors... We added the greenway, we added a placita, a kiosko on simpson, and we also got a mural."

For Gonzalez, it's now also a treasure his grandchildren can cherish. "I know that they will," he said. "If I'm never here again, if i leave this earth, they're just going to make sure people don't forget what happened."