“This not only only belongs to me. It belongs to all of us,” Abel De Luna said to a crowd of hundreds.
Area residents, community leaders and a pioneering organizer of the labor movement gathered this weekend in Healdsburg to witness history — the dedication of a city building to a leader of Mexican heritage.
As of Sunday, the city’s community center will bear the name of Healdsburg’s first Latino mayor and influential leader, Abel De Luna.
“This not only only belong to me. It belongs to all of us,” De Luna said to a crowd of hundreds.
“I remember being a young person working in the fields, then being in business, helping the community, getting involved with the community, but I never expected something like this,” he said after to a Press Democrat reporter. “I’m really proud of me and my family and the whole Latino community. This is part of them.”
De Luna was elected mayor 47 years ago, and served for two years. Beyond politics, he has been an advocate for the arts, Spanish-language media and Latino festivals and has led several local businesses including grocery stores and a movie theater. He remains a big name in local entertainment — heading two Spanish-language radio stations, continuing music promotion after a hiatus, and leading Luna Music Label, which offers a vast digital catalog of Latino artists.
The hot air swirled with smells of meats cooking in food trucks such as Taqueria El Manteca and loud cheers and applause rang out from the crowd as De Luna spoke about how more Latino leaders are needed in the community.
“We’ve got to run for different positions. That’s where we make the laws,” De Luna said. “That is how we are going to help our community better. We have to do it ourselves.”
One of the crowd members and speakers at the event was Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers alongside César Chávez. Huerta and Chavez lead strikes and boycotts in the 1960s and ’70s that drew national attention and led to farmworkers achieving better wages, working conditions and union contracts. Alongside her work for farmworkers’ rights, Huerta is a lifelong advocate for racial justice and gender equality.
On Sunday, Huerta talked about how De Luna represents what Latino people can accomplish. She also called on the community to stand behind decisions to support marginalized communities in a time when the federal administration is trying to undoing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which directly affect Latino people.
“We have so much more work to do, especially in this time that we are in right now,” Huerta said. “We’re going to get through it because we are together. We’re united and whatever it takes, we are going to hang in there.”
She led the group, which gathered closely to hear her speak, on a series of chants including the famous rallying cry she created, “Sí se puede!” which means, “Yes, we can.”
Other speakers included Healdsburg Mayor Evelyn Mitchell, Sonoma County District 4 Supervisor James Gore and Ana Luisa Vallejo Barba, the consulate general of Mexico in San Francisco.
The event also featured performances from Banda Danza De Los Diablos De La Mixteca and Banda Los Lagos and tabling from organizations such as Corazón Healdsburg, which is a bilingual family resources center based in the now Abel De Luna Community Center.
Denali McCullough said she drove from San Jose to witness an important part of Latino history. She said the naming of government building after a Latino individual is especially essential as the federal administration attempts to erase pieces of important history by taking actions such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“It’s something that needs to be remembered,” McCullough said, adding that hopefully it will lead residents to learn more about De Luna and his life.
Longtime Santa Rosa resident Jesus Villanueva said during the event Sunday that having a building named after another Mexican American shows that you can achieve hard things through hard work.
“The next generations, they know they can aspire to great things,” Villanueva said. “And that is what he represents.”
Corazón Healdsburg Executive Director Marcy Flores also attended the event Sunday to receive a check for $500,000 from District 4 Supervisor James Gore to implement some community-crafted recommendations for renovations, classes and more for the now Abel De Luna Community Center.
“Through a year-long process of listening sessions with out most marginalized communities, we came up with 10 mandates from the community to invest in this space as a multicultural center,” she said to the crowd.
Oftentimes, Flores said, organizations reach out to the community and ask what they want and need, but those asks rarely come to fruition. So the money is a reflection of wanting to see the community center become something better for the people it serves.
You can reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at madison.smalstig@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.
