Human remains found during construction of La Plaza must be respected!

[sce56]

http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/9107

A gala dinner Saturday night will launch La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, a new center devoted to the history of the Mexicans and Mexican Americans who founded the city and helped define its culture. "We collect stories, not objects," says La Plaza CEO Miguel Angel Corzo. But something equally historic was collected during construction of the center's courtyard and garden. The skeletal remains of 118 of the city's early inhabitants were pulled out of the ground in an area just south of La Placita Church downtown. It was the site of a historic Catholic cemetery, where Native Americans, Mexicans, Europeans and others were buried until their remains were supposedly relocated in the mid-1800s.

Corzo and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the driving force behind the cultural center, say the finds were unexpected. They contend that all proper authorities were contacted and the fragile bones were removed meticulously. But they didn't immediately stop the excavation work. That decision got the project finished on time, but it prompted so much controversy and anger that it was as if the spirits of the dead themselves unleashed enough bad juju to keep Molina and La Plaza officials scrambling to do damage control for months if not years. Native Americans, descendants of the buried, some archaeologists and the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese have decried the removal of remains without extensive consultations with interested parties. Even the National Park Service has withheld some funding for the project until this is resolved.

The conflict among the living over what to do with the unearthed dead has played out on construction sites across the city in recent years. But this is not the Gold Line. La Plaza honors the settlers of Los Angeles. It should not disrespect the settlers found beneath its courtyard. For the time being, the area where remains were found will be fenced off and signage erected. The big challenge: What to do with the 300 bags and several buckets of remains stored at the county's Natural History Museum? They must be examined, reinterred — ideally at La Plaza — and memorialized.

I will at the protest tonight at La Placita, Olvera Street in Los Angeles, along with family members as we demand justice for our ancestors who were dug out of there perpetual sleep to honor them by stuffing there bones into trash bags!
A protest is organized to demonstrate against this desecration of the graves of the original settlers of Los Angeles

[movonne]

1. The people are worried about the dead...maybe we should be

worrying about the living...protest for the living...

[WatsonT]

3. No kidding

I get that the way we honor our dead is one thing that makes us unique, but why?

The amount of time and money we put in to what is essentially organic waste is mind boggling. We'll struggle to recover the bodies from disasters so they can get proper burials while living people are still suffering.

Priorities people!

[movonne]

5. I'm sorry if it sounded cruel...I didn't mean that way...I just think there

is so much going on in this country to worry about..I guess it is just what is important at the time...I am sorry...

[WatsonT]

8. I wasn't being sarcastic

I was genuinely agreeing with you.

It is largely a waste of money/resources/time that could be better spent elsewhere.

[jberryhill]

12. Case in point...

There was a really good documentary on PBS a few months back about the work that went into recovering and identifying human "remains" from the collapse of the world trade center.

I use the word in quotes because the sum total matched to many individuals would have plenty of room in a sandwich bag.

Nonetheless, a team of folks watched the waste stream coming in to Fish Kills, and would pick up little bits of bone or pieces of goo. Each piece would be packaged and sent for DNA analysis, and then sorted out to be given to the families.

Meanwhile, nobody could pay for respirators at the site, nor for the continuing health problems suffered by the first responders.

Our obsession with remains is ghoulish.

[jberryhill]

7. It's a fetish

Presumably, the poster of the OP would agree, going on about how long dead people have been somehow disturbed in their sleep, that societies which cremate the dead and spread their ashes are the most disrespectful ones around.

That said, dead people don't often stand up for their rights.

[WatsonT]

9. Only in Chicago!

:rofl:

[jberryhill]

10. In Chicago, dead people retain their voting rights!

[sce56]

14. Ok so they want to build a monument to celebrate George Washington's life but to do it they have to

remove his Tomb in the process they lose his remains and mix them up with other remains how would that feel to you?
The Project was building a cultural center museum to honor the founders of the City of Los Angeles so they destroyed the graves of those very same founders they were celebrating! Does that make any sense?

[ZombieHorde]

2. Why do you care about those bones?

How do they benefit you?

[xchrom]

4. Awesome. Recommend. Nt

[jberryhill]

6. And the brick mortar includes limestone made from our fossilized ancestors!

Where were any of these protesters paying their respects to the deceased before these remains were found?

But for this construction project, you wouldn't have even known, or given a damn, what was there.

[WatsonT]

11. My car runs on the remains

of some very distant cousins.

[bluedigger]

13. I've done this sort of work before.

I worked on a team that identified and disinterred over 4,000 human remains a few years ago. Before we removed them they had had highways, jails, and junk and dirty fill covering them. Trash bags sounds disrespectful, but it is an excellent and practical way to keep as much of the cultural material from individual graves separated, safe, and integral as possible. I have no knowledge of this particular project, but there are practical ($) limitations involved with mass historic exhumations.

[sce56]

15. My voice is sore from calling all of those fancy black tie Guests of Gloria Molina Grave Robbers!

[sce56]

16. Photos from last night in LA