In Mexican culture, “cabalgatas,” or horse parades, are often celebrations.
On Saturday, July 13, a different kind of cabalgata took place in Bloomington.
Friends of Felipe Ortiz gathered on horseback to raise money for his family, which must leave its 2-acre rental property to make way for warehouses that are transforming the unincorporated working class Latino community of 23,000 in San Bernardino County.
“He feels so happy (about the “cabalgata”) because he didn’t really think so many in the community would come out and help him,” 15-year-old Fatima Ortiz, Felipe Ortiz’s daughter, said Friday, July 12, as she translated questions for her Spanish-speaking father.
The family’s quandary upsets Samuel Brown-Vázquez, an equestrian and family friend who helped organize the event.
“You cannot just pick up somewhere and start a new equestrian community,” said Brown-Vázquez, a Los Angeles County resident who is the San Gabriel Valley coordinator for Unión de Ranchos, which fights for equestrian interests.
“We’re the canary in the coal mine,” he said. “We are the barometer of whether you could have a small family farm in the Inland Empire.”
In an emailed statement, Mike Tunney, vice president of development for the project’s Orange-based developer, Howard Industrial Partners, said Felipe Ortiz on June 12 signed an agreement to vacate the property by early August.
“Despite having no contractual obligation to do so, we provided Mr. Ortiz with $15,000 to assist with relocation, and those funds were paid to his attorney,” Tunney said.
Brown-Vázquez said Ortiz, 42, only got $13,500 of the $15,000, “which is why we’re doing the ‘cabalgata’ and fundraiser.”
Tunney said Ortiz “may not have been informed of the sale of the property; disclosing that information was the duty of the previous property owner. It was not disclosed to us that there were occupants renting the property.”
The Ortiz home is slated for demolition as part of the Bloomington Business Park project.
Approved by San Bernardino County supervisors in 2022, the 213-acre project will add three warehouses totaling 2.1 million square feet in the heart of the Inland Empire’s sprawling logistics hub.
Once it’s built, the project will demolish more than 100 homes. In exchange, a zoning change at a nearby 72-acre site will allow 480 apartments or condominiums to be built on land that had previously been zoned for 52 single-family homes.
Howard also agreed to pay $39 million for street infrastructure improvements, $30 million for flood control measures and $1.1 million a year into a fund to bolster police coverage in Bloomington, according to San Bernardino County.
The project also is expected to create more than 3,200 permanent local jobs and more than 5,400 construction jobs, county figures show. The developer also will spend $45 million to rebuild Zimmerman Elementary School in a new location. The current school will be demolished.
Bloomington is 88% Latino, census figures show. The community nestled between Colton and Fontana also has a lower per capita income and a higher percentage of impoverished people compared to its neighbors, census data show.
With nearby rolling hills and a horse-friendly culture, Bloomington was an ideal setting for horseback riding, Brown-Vázquez said.
Today, large warehouses of several hundred thousand square feet or larger loom over Bloomington’s homes, a number of which have been razed as homeowners took offers to sell and left.
Signs of change surround the Ortiz home.
On Friday morning, an excavator pummeled rubble next to a pile of debris next door. Orange road signs warned of construction ahead.
Fatima Ortiz remembers one morning when a nearby home was being torn down.
“I woke up and I came running” because she thought her house was being demolished, she said.
Brown-Vázquez said driving through Bloomington today is “eerie … The life of the community has been completely sucked out. There’s semis just up and down the streets … There isn’t the same friendliness amongst the neighbors.”
Before, it wasn’t uncommon to see six or seven horseback riders on Bloomington streets, Brown-Vázquez said.
“Even in the winter you would see just throngs of people — a lot of youth, a lot of (teenagers) riding together amongst each other,” he said. “That’s gone.”
The Ortizes have rented their single-story Bloomington home for 10 years. A native of the Mexican state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, Ortiz, his wife and their four children — ages 6 to 15 — care for six horses and other animals.
“He likes it here because he would go out with the horses, go up the hills, be with the community,” Fatima Ortiz said. “It was really nice.”
Ortiz’s children are well-versed in “floreo de reata,” or trick roping, Brown-Vázquez said, adding the children are often invited to perform at events.
“His kids are cowboys through and through and you could see the quality of the parenting (in them),” Brown-Vázquez said.
Ortiz is a “community leader” who organizes horseback rides of 50 to 100 people to raise money for families who lost loved ones, Brown-Vázquez said.
“We’d get about $5,000 and we would give it straight to the grieving family, no questions asked,” he added.
Brown-Vázquez said the Ortizes’ troubles began in January, when the family received a 60-day eviction notice.
A couple days later, Ortiz said someone put a padlock on his property and he had to call someone to help break it.
In February, he said he rushed home after a horse trainer called to report an excavator tearing up his fence and uprooting palm trees. Brown-Vázquez said Ortiz drove his car in front of his house so the excavator wouldn’t tear it down.
Two of his children “were inside the house and he thought they were going to destroy (the house) with them in it,” Fatima Ortiz said.
The excavator incident “was inadvertent as the operator was scheduled to work at a nearby site and confused the addresses,” Tunney said.
“No work was planned for that property nor was any work done on the site that day. No one was locked inside a building and any trees that were removed were not on that property.”
Felipe Ortiz said it’s been very difficult finding a new home.
“There’s places that require … so much information,” Fatima Ortiz said. “We don’t have all that paperwork … and there’s some places that don’t want animals.”
Brown-Vázquez said he wouldn’t put so much time into helping the Ortizes “had it not been for the person that Felipe is (and) the very lovely family that he has.”
He added: “Felipe is a community leader. It’s hard to be a community leader when there’s no community to rally.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct errors. The Bloomington Business Park’s developer, Howard Industrial Partners, is spending $39 million for street infrastructure, $30 million on flood control measures, $1.1 million a year into a fund to improve police coverage in Bloomington and $45 million to rebuild Zimmerman Elementary School. The project is expected to create more than 3,200 permanent local jobs and more than 5,400 construction jobs.
