“It doesn’t come out so much of just, but it comes out of so many of us Chicanos from the pipeline to school to prison,” says Baca. He says that the story of Blood In, Blood Out is a shared one.

“I was in Japan and these guys-they looked like sumo wrestlers, man-they walked up to me and they ripped open their shirt and there’s El Pino next to their heart, and they pounded their heart and went, ‘ Hey!’ It brought tears to my eyes.”īlood In, Blood Out is a film of sobering violence yet graceful redemption, and at its heart is El Pino.Īt the age of 20, Baca, the award-winning poet, and New Mexico native, was convicted on drug charges and learned to read and write while incarcerated for five years in a maximum-security prison in Arizona. They all got El Pino tattooed on them,” says Baca, laughing. “A lot of people that I’ve encountered on my tours as a poet, as a writer, a lot of people come up to me and raise their shirt and turn around so I can see their back. īlood In, Blood Out screenwriter and executive producer Jimmy Santiago Baca tells us that he’s seen images of El Pino as far away as Guam, India, and Japan. County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis.) The tree was even serenaded. (The petition was originally addressed to Mayor Eric Garcetti it has since been updated and is now addressed to L.A. An online petition to save the tree was started, and it continues to grow in virtual signatures despite the property owner stating that El Pino is not being chopped down. Prior to being reported as a bad joke, the community came out in droves to show their undying support for El Pino.

Just before New Year’s, there was some suspicion that El Pino was going to suffer an unconscionable demise at the end of a chainsaw blade.

Whether spiritually destined or fortuitous, El Pino is L.A.’s tree of life. But from a human perspective, the tree is a towering focal point deeply embedded in the soil of a microcosm that has been home to Japanese Americans, Jews, Latinos, Buddhists, Koreans, African Americans, and Armenians. Some may chalk it up to coincidence that El Pino, the southland’s most famous bunya pine tree, is located in what is, historically, one of the city’s most ethnically diverse areas, East L.A. Being connected to the earth, or finding a sense of identity through a tree’s roots are enduring metaphors that span multiple religions and cultures.

M ystical and figurative interpretations of the Tree of Life, or Etz Chayim in Hebrew, can be tied to the Garden of Eden, the Torah, fertility, immortality, family, and the search for spiritual enlightenment.

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