Talamantez is a proud Chicana/Yaqui who is board chair of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, vice chair of the Barrio Logan Association/Maintenance Assessment District, recent past secretary of the Barrio Logan Planning Group, Chicano Park Steering Committee and is a member of the Royal Chicano Air Force. She lives in Barrio Logan.

When journalist and producer Maria Velasquez approached me to take part in the San Diego Latino Legacy project, I was willing to participate because of its focus — the history of local Chicanos and other Latinos — but also because it provided an unprecedented, invaluable opportunity to illuminate a rich, complex and largely unknown history of a community that has refused to become victims and struggled to demonstrate its self-determination.

On April 22, 1970, the Chicano community of Logan Heights, along with others, stood up and blocked the city of San Diego and the state of California from placing a California Highway Patrol station in the center of what was left of our community and demanded a place of our own to build Chicano Park, now recognized as a national landmark. The Logan Heights community lost three-fourths of its residents (declining from 20,000 to 5,000) through eminent domain policies that were used to build Interstate 5 and State Route 75 (the San Diego-Coronado Bridge) without public input.