Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery present 'The Spirits of Barrio Del Chivo'
El Barrio del Chivo or “Goat Valley” may only be familiar to those who lived in the east Stockton neighborhood before it disappeared from the maps and the Crosstown Freeway took over.
But the Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery's new exhibition "The Spirits of Barrio Del Chivo" hopes to bring those memories and stories to the rest of the community.
“The exhibition is a historical exhibition," Gracie Madrid, president of the Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery said. "In the late 50s, early 60s, the government was giving the cities money … what they call urban redevelopment grants … they identified this area as a slum area, and that's why it was selected.”
From maps, letters from the community to photographs, videos and narratives, the exhibition explores the forgotten community.
The reception will start at 5 p.m. on Friday, at the Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery with live goats. The exhibition will run through July 28, and is located at 111 S. Sutter St., Stockton.
El Barrio del Chivo
The east Stockton neighborhood was tight-knit where families and friends all knew each other, Memories of El Barrio del Chivo event organizers previously told The Record. Memories of El Barrio del Chivo was a free event put on by The Chicano Research Center in 2017.
The neighborhood existed from the 1930s to the 1960s. Around that same time segregation was happening and the civil rights movement began.
It was a predominantly Mexican and African American neighborhood that ran from Filbert Street east to the diverting canal and Marsh Street south to the Western Pacific Railroad tracks. Day laborers, cannery workers, and military veterans were just some of the occupations of the Goat Valley residents.
The people who lived there referred to it as "Barrio del Chivo" because they raised goats, Madrid added.
The Barrio del Chivo families were eventually uprooted because of the Crosstown Freeway construction. People had to sell their homes and move away.
The people of Goat Valley
As a little boy, Bob Granados said he could stand in front of his house on Myrtle Street and see Roosevelt Elementary School. The school he would attend from kindergarten through sixth grade, a Record clip reported.
Granados and his family lived in Goat Valley.
He was born and raised during the Depression and World War II years. He remembered being poor, he told the Stockton Record in 2017.
Granados then shared he thinks his father was one of the first people to have a home in the area.
Carmen Galvez Fernandez a founding member of the Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery passed away on April 25. Her family were also residents of El Barrio del Chivo.
Laura Frausto said there were many lovely things about the neighborhood, but it also was rife with poverty. Her father would talk about how it was “a ghetto” with homes built on stilts and mud everywhere, Frausto told The Record in 2019.
“Still, no matter how poor, it was still rich with love and unity,” Frausto said.
In 2019, the community celebrated its 40th reunion.
The reunion was started by a group of men from the barrio who started to meet at the park. Over time, the men would invite their wives, turning into a potluck and later to a committee.
While annual reunions have taken place, this is the first exhibition of its kind.
“We expect the people to come and make themselves aware and brings back their memories," Madrid said. "We do have a video with 10 people speaking, two of the people in the video have passed away. The others are still alive, and they will be here."
Former residents and family members attending the exhibition are encouraged to share memories by writing a note on the squared white paper with a goat and adding it to the memory tree.
“I hope that next year it will become bigger and better to tell you the truth and add more information so that people will really know of what happened to their neighborhood,” Madrid said.
For more information on El Barrio Del Chivo visit: facebook.com/ELBARRIODELCHIVO/
Record reporter Angelaydet Rocha covers community news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at arocha@recordnet.com or on Twitter @AngelaydetRocha. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: 'The Spirits of Barrio Del Chivo': Mexican Heritage Center & Gallery presents new exhibition
