Santa Maria Sun
Monday, May 8, 2006
BY: Craig Shafer
Meet the Mexican migrant-turned-millionaire whose passionate twenty-year struggle to build a ‘Mexican Disneyland’ in California ultimately, painfully, and bitterly failed in a collision of bureaucracy, lawsuits and Mexican/American culture clashes.
He did, however, succeed in creating and leaving behind a monumental folk art masterpiece that stands tribute to his cultural heritage and audacious dream, and which embodies his Horatio Alger-esque belief: ‘In life, you have to think big!’
Now 65 and back in his hometown in Zacatecas, he still yearns to complete his dream village. He envisions Americans and Mexicans enjoying it together and learning more about Latino cultures. No matter its future, those who see his abandoned wonderland are amazed and inspired knowing ‘it was done by a Mexican who came to wash dishes.’
Jose Luis Bonilla, one of a million Zacatecan migrants to the United States, had a one-in-a-million dream that compelled him to work two decades trying to make it come true. He wanted to build his very own ’Mexican Disneyland’ right in the heart of California.
And he almost did it. Rising out of nowhere in the New Cuyama Valley between Santa Maria and Bakersfield, Bonilla’s idealized Mexican village has been compared to Hearst Castle and the Watts Towers. Así Es Mi Tierra (My Homeland is Like This) been called a ’folk art masterpiece’ and ’the most beautiful set of buildings in Santa Barbara County.’
His stunning, hand-made re-creation of a Mexican village features a 3,000-seat rodeo arena considered one of the finest in the world, a marketplace, artificial lake with fountain, gazebo, plaza, stage and bandstand. All built by Bonilla, his family, and teams of Mexican immigrants from local stones and scrap pipes from abandoned oil fields.
Intended as a bridge between Mexicans and Californians, a showcase for Mexican culture, and a home-away-from-home for local Mexicans, there is a problem. Así Es Mi Tierra now sadly lies unfinished and unused. Bonilla has given up.
But just a few years ago, events there drew thousands of attendees and the village throbbed with the excitement of charrerias and the live music of superstars Juan Gabriel and Chello. Now the main sounds are the wind through the Italian poplars and the lonely clip-clop of Andulusian horses on the village’s hand-laid cobblestones.
In 2001, embittered at what he feels were bureaucratic obstacles and legal disputes that forced him to abandon his vision, he stopped building. ‘Have to have permit for this, permit for that,’ Bonilla says. "There always was a problem.’
Bonilla, who first came to California in the 1950’s as a child, and later washed dishes at the Disneyland Hotel, has now returned to Mexico. ‘The worst thing is to stop,’ he says. ‘It's like cutting off your arms.’
Steve DeCamp, spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Building and Development Department, says the county is working on a conditional-use permit to allow the property's improvements. ’It kind of emerged out of the wilderness and it looked pretty fantastic when you looked at it,’ DeCamp says. ‘Now we're just trying to find a way to make the whole thing legitimate.’
Bonilla is frustrated. ‘In Santa Barbara, they demand Hispanic architecture,’ he says. ‘The most beautiful Hispanic place in Santa Barbara County is Así Es Mi Tierra, which sadly is half-finished.’ Bonilla has returned to his hometown in Mexico.
His California-born and raised children, however, still live at the ranch. Tending to the family’s local grocery stores, delicatessen and tortilla factory during the week, on weekends they dress in traditional Mexican outfits to ride, rope, sing and carry on their father’s beloved traditions.
They and their own children successfully straddle our country’s cultural divides. The younger Bonilla’s lifestyles and identities--a 21st century blend of Mexican heritage and California contemporary--pay tribute to and help realize their absent father’s vision of bi-cultural appreciation, understanding and acceptance.
Meanwhile, back at his ranch in Zacatecas where he raises fighting bulls, Bonilla seems restless and claims he'd return in a moment if the county invited him back. He's fit, 65, and can build more. ‘Just let them give me a hand and not so many obstacles,’ he says. ‘Let me finish the project, so that people can admire it and know that a Mexican who came to wash dishes was the one who did it.’
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