“Spires and Towers Between Tangible, Intangible and Contested Transnational Culture Heritage”

The structures best known as the Watts Towers were known to Sabatino Rodia as “Nuestro Pueblo,” a provocative take on Los Angeles' original name, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se ñora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula.” By inscribing his Towers in Spanish, Rodia honored his Mexican neighbors, the pre-American history of Los Angeles, and claimed the Towers and the city for others than he alone. This chapter shows how Nuestro Pueblo acted as a galvanizing force for a politics grounded in cultural identity and loud claims to social equity. Nuestro Pueblo's towers have been both generative of community and symbols of community in political fights over funding and territory. Nuestro Pueblo also represents the penultimate modern city as it embodies premodern labor while holding the multitudinous meanings, multilingual names, and commercial promises of the postmodern world city.