San Jose could combine two options to rename downtown plaza

A nearly 250-year-old gathering place in downtown San Jose could soon have a new name, combining two of the top-ranked choices from the city’s monthslong renaming process.

The San Jose Parks and Recreation Commission voted Wednesday to recommend renaming Plaza de César Chávez to Plaza del Pueblo de San Jose, a name proposed by Commissioner Daisy Barocio during the meeting. The City Council will make a final decision on the name at a later date.

Barocio said the city should not lose sight of the Latino history behind the plaza’s original name. Chávez and the farmworker movement remain important to many Latino residents, she said, particularly because relatively few public spaces are named in honor of Mexican people.

But Barocio said the new name does not necessarily need to honor an individual. She initially felt Plaza de San Jose did not fully capture the history behind the plaza’s 1993 naming or create a sense of belonging for the broader community.

“It honors the people who wanted the Plaza de San Jose,” Barocio told San José Spotlight. “It also does include the new component … it’s a pueblo. And San Jose started as a pueblo.”

The commission’s recommendation differs from city staff’s proposed name, Plaza de San Jose, which received the most suggestions during the city’s initial naming process. Plaza del Pueblo was the third-most suggested name, while Farmworkers Plaza ranked second.

The result is the latest in San Jose’s effort to rename the plaza following community listening sessions and a suggested name submission period.

Councilmembers voted earlier this year to begin removing Chávez’s name from city-owned sites, following allegations that the late labor leader sexually abused women and children. Chávez called San Jose home at various points in his life and has long been celebrated in the city.

The city received 610 name suggestions during its first survey, eliminating 178 that did not meet its naming criteria and consolidating the remaining suggestions into 88 categories. A second ranked-choice survey drew 10,506 responses, with Plaza de San Jose receiving the highest weighted score.

But some residents who spoke during Wednesday’s commission meeting wanted a name that more explicitly reflected San Jose’s Mexican and Indigenous history.

Israel Mendoza urged commissioners to choose Plaza de Quetzalcoatl, another finalist in the naming process. Quetzalcoatl, known as the “Feathered Serpent,” is a Mesoamerican god associated with wind, learning and creation. There is a statue of his image at the plaza, called “Plumed Serpent.”

“Don’t take the easy way out and put this place as San Jose Plaza,” Mendoza said at the meeting. “That’s the easy way out. You gotta call it something different, something unique. We can teach the kids our ancestry.”

Rosendo Contreras, a high school Spanish teacher in Fremont who has lived in San Jose for five years, suggested a compromise during public comment: Give the plaza a formal name while allowing residents to use an everyday name.

“San Jose has a really deep Hispanic history, but it’s not the only voice in San Jose,” he said. “So with this two-name solution, we get a little bit more happiness, a little more of a compromise.”

Contact Maryanne Casas-Perez at [email protected] or @CasasPerezRed on X.