Esperanza's World
Logline
When the city of Los Angeles threatens to bulldoze her home to make way for Dodger Stadium, iconoclastic nobody, Esperanza Trejo, must find the resolve to fight back.
Synopsis
The pilot episode revolves around one of the barrio’s residents, Esperanza Trejo. Dual stories unfold, in which we see a middle aged Esperanza fight to save her home and barrio in Chavez Ravine in the 1950s. In the second storyline, we see a young Esperanza, becomes entangled in the “Bath Riots” at the El Paso and Juarez border in 1917 — all seen via Esperanza’s fantastical way of thinking.
To put this in context, whereas the real life horrors of the bath riots and the fight to save Chavez Ravine loom large, through the power of Esperanza's mind, we see dreary tasks turned into musical numbers, rioters morphed into Aztec warriors, and Esperanza becoming the catalyst for resistance, and then the unlikely champion, she never imagined she could be.
Supporting Characters
ANDERS NILSSON, 30s, thin, blonde, wears a grey fedora, and glasses. An envoy of the City Housing Authority, Anders is inquisitive, persuasive, and the nemesis of Esperanza.
CATALINA URREA, 19. Cat is a fair skinned, free spirited, jazz singer. She has the ravishing good looks of the starlet she aspires to be. Presently, she is filled with self doubt, and is spending time with her aunt, Esperanza.
CARMELITA TORRES, 17, red haired and tall. A young maid, and natural leader, she is strongly opposed to indignities posed on Mexican women at the border.
MAYOR TOM LEA, 30. Clean cut, well spoken, a germaphobe with an elevated fear typhus. Lea possesses the type of America first charisma, that appeals to the type “good ol’ boys”, who agree with his paranoia fueled, xenophobic rhetoric.
FERNANDO URREA, 40s, the Urrea patriarch. A shop owner and pharmacist.
Interweaving Fiction & Reality
Esperanza's World blends fictional characters with historic events and reality — at times via a fantastical lens.
These are immigrant stories which unfold in the mid-twentieth century, in the wake of McCarthyism, the Red Scare and a push for urban renewal. They center around the “Mexican villages” in the heart of Los Angeles, in Chavez Ravine, in the years leading up to their demolition to make way for Dodgers stadium.
To be clear, this is not a historical account focused solely on the events that occurred in Chavez Ravine, but rather there is a web of fictional stories, inspired by the people who lived in the villages of La Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde, in the heart of Los Angeles. These stories are anchored in the mid-20th Century, but also branch into other timelines.
Esperanza Trejo | Protagonist
We see two incarnation of Esperanza Trejo in this story. The first is as a 54 year old, independent woman, quick witted, stubborn, single, with a fantastical mind, which she uses to infuse magic (real or imagined) to challenge obstacles in the real world.
Esperanza's second incarnation is as a 21 year old waitress/ maid in El Paso. She unwittingly is drawn into the drama leading to the Bath Riots, ironically by living her own life and trying to turn a blind eye to the maltreatment of female workers, leading to said drama — until she can't anymore.
Neither story line is about winning the fight. Rather they are both about drawing a moral line, and knowing what is worth fighting for.
