PHENOMENAL WOMEN SERIES
The San Diego Union-Tribune and the Women’s Museum of California are celebrating a century of female achievement in San Diego to mark the 100th year of women’s suffrage in America.
By JOHN WILKENS, PAM KRAGEN, KAREN KUCHER, LAUREN J. MAPP
Laura Rodriguez
The bulldozer was no match for Laura Rodriguez. It arrived in April 1970 to scrape the ground for a new California Highway Patrol station at the eastern end of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, where a community park had long been promised. Rodriguez, who was 60, stood in front of it. Others joined the protest, and Chicano Park was born. Several months later, she was at it again, occupying a building until officials agreed to turn it into what would become the Logan Heights Family Health Center. After she died in 1994, then-City Councilman Juan Vargas said, “We’ve lost a terrific warrior with a heart.” A year later, a mural with her likeness went up in the park she’d helped create. “This is her shrine,” muralist Mario Torero said. In 2007 came another honor: the opening in Logan Heights of Laura G. Rodriguez Elementary School.
