“Chavez Ravine is where Dodger Stadium is located.
Geographic names change over the years, as properties are developed and change character. Map makers keep up with those changes. “Chavez Ravine” was the former name of the property, not its widely accepted (except for some Mexican nationalists and some anti-Dodgers baseball fans) current name.”
I am a white guy from Orange County, who watched games at the Coliseum, remember going to new Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine.
I’m no Mexican nationalist, and certainly not anti-Dodgers.
My wife’s Italian immigrant grandparents lived east of that area, around 1920 once they met in San Francisco and then moved to LA.
Now of course it isn’t a great area. There’s nothing political about calling it Chavez Ravine.
Chavez is named after a 19th century LA councilman, not Caesar Chavez.
Yes, I knew that the name "Chavez Ravine" went quite a way back, and therefore it was obviously named for a Chavez earlier than Cesar Chavez.
The reasons for Mexican nationalist ramifications of the name "Chavez Ravine" do not relate to Cesar Chavez of the agricultural workers union. They relate to accusations of several Mexican-Americans living in the area who were allegedly evicted from their homes by city officials using eminent domain to acquire the land necessary to build Dodger Stadium, during the late 50s or early 60s. That's still a sore spot with some Mexican nationalist radicals and their leftist sympathizers in the media who use the former name "Chavez Ravine" to evoke the history of Mexican-Americans in the area and this still controversial episode, and to emphasize their position that the property was unjustly taken from the Mexican-Americans by the "Anglo" community at large. (There was a TV documentary about this a few years ago.)
I'm challenging you to show me any maps of Los Angeles since shortly after Dodger Stadium was opened in 1962 on which "Chavez Ravine" was used. In the early years of Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers made a conscious PR effort to avoid the use of "Chavez Ravine" (a "ravine" was just a huge hole in the ground and did not reflect favorably on the state-of-the-art new stadium they had built), while their American League tenants from 1962 to 1964, the newly created Los Angeles Angels, would use the name "Chavez Ravine" to irk the Dodgers. So the name of the place was a divisive issue between the two clubs and the two leagues in that time frame. Since then, "Chavez Ravine" has pretty much faded into the dustbin of history and, as I said, off local maps. It should only be used now in historical references.