Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 2017

When the Pan American National Bank opened its doors in April of 1966, 12,000 people showed up. That’s an awful lot of people wanting to check out a small community bank, even if the opening ceremonies did include a performance by Ballet Folklorico, and TV and radio star Lupita Moran as the emcee. But for the largely Mexican-American enclave of East LA in the ‘60s, Pan American was more than just a new business. It represented the first time that a financial institution in the area was set up to cater specifically to Chicanos and Chicano-owned small businesses. 

The demographics of East LA had shifted quickly after WWII, and by the 1960s the area was majority Latino (it still is today). The Bracero Program had opened up new economic opportunities for Mexican laborers; Chicano veterans could take advantage of the GI Bill, and helped many of them break into the middle class in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Still, Chicanos in LA earned comparatively low wages, and discriminatory banking practices prevented many Chicanos from receiving small business loans. Homeownership levels were low too, due to the same racist redlining practices that kept Blacks and Asian Angelenos out of LA’s more desirable neighborhoods. 

Pan American Bank was the first bank in California to offer bilingual services in English and Spanish. It emphasized financial literacy for its clientele, and took a chance on the underserved Chicano community of LA when very few other banks would. Its success helped East LA evolve economically, and led to the creation of more impactful community development organizations, like The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU), which is still around today. 

From Tortillas to Home Loans

Pan American Bank might not have got off the ground were it not for Romana Acosta Bañuelos, the only woman on the bank’s original 12-person board. Bañuelos founded a small tortilleria in 1949, and by the ‘70s, she was running the largest Mexican food wholesale vendor in America. Her business acumen was vital to the bank’s early success – she helped secure its charter in 1964, solicited investments, and advised Latino groups in other cities about setting up financial institutions in their communities. 

Bañuelos made history when, in December of 1971, she became the first Latina to serve as Treasurer of the United States, under Richard Nixon. Her confirmation wasn’t without hiccups (just after Nixon nominated her, the INS raided her food processing plant and founded 36 undocumented Mexican workers), but she served as the highest-ranking Mexican American in US government from 1971 until her resignation in 1974. Afterwards she returned to Pan American until the ‘90s. 

The Building & The Mural

The bank was designed by Raymond Stockdale in the “new formalism” style that was gaining steam in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, a sort of institutional, modern version of classical Greek/Roman design. Elements of the style that you can see at the Pan American Bank: its monumentality (its facade emphasizes verticality, though the entrance itself is tiny), callbacks to classical design tropes (the five arches that dominate the entrance), and the modern touches like its smooth walls and toned down use of ornamentation. In their front page article from April 14, 1966, the Eastside Sun reports “chandeliers, hand made in Aztec design” on the interior, and that “the Mexican theme is carried through with the onyx treatment at each teller’s window, by the terrazzo floor, the Mexican hand-carved chairs, the seat coverings and tapestries which were imported from Mexico.”

The arches make for a super striking facade, in stark contrast to the boxy buildings that line this humble stretch of 1st Street. But it’s the mosaic murals underneath the arches that really elevate this thing beyond just a cool building. Called “Our Past, Our Present and Our Future,” the murals were designed by Mexican artist José Reyes Meza. He incorporated the pre-Columbian gods Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl into his designs, along with mesoamerican symbols, and a scene of an indigenous fighter in combat with a Spanish conquistador (plus a stylized “PA,” an acronym for “Pan American”). 

The 1950s found a lot of banks commissioning murals for their exteriors and interiors – think of Millard Sheets’s work for Home Savings Bank (now Chase Bank) branches all over the city. What made Meza’s work for Pan American Bank so powerful was the connection it drew between the Mexican community living in the United States and their ancestors from before the Europeans arrived. 

Details of “Our past, our present, and our future,” Boyle Heights, 1966.

(Robin Dunitz Slides of Los Angeles Murals, 1925-2002 / University of Southern California)

Meza was working at a time of growing political radicalism and self-determinism within the Mexican-American community in LA. Within a few years of the mural’s installation, all eyes would be on East LA as it hosted a series of Chicano Moratorium marches (see visit #119), protesting the disproportionate number of Chicanos dying in Vietnam. 

As one of the earliest murals in East LA, Meza’s mosaic helped to catalyze a politically-charged Chicano mural movement that blossomed in the 1960s and ‘70s. Prominent Chicano muralists Johnny González, David Botello and Robert Arenivar were inspired enough by Meza’s work that they designed an “extension” of “Our Past, Our Present and Our Future” in 1974. You can still see it on the front of the First Street Store, right across the street from the Pan American Bank. 

Meza’s designs were brilliantly carried out by Byzantine Studios, a mosaic specialist headed up by Alfonso Pardiñas. Byzantine was based out of San Francisco, and carried out major projects in the Bay Area for banks, cathedrals, BART Stations and airports. But they also worked in LA. Pardiñas’s daughter is in the process of verifying that Byzantine installed the gorgeous tilework in the tunnels in LAX, designed by Charles D. Kratka (she’s a professional publicist, so naturally there is a very helpful EPK devoted to her dad’s life and work).

Evolution of Pan American Bank

After its early successes, in 1972 Pan American Bank expanded into the building just west of it, a rather humdrum looking thing from the 1940s, with stucco and slit windows facing 1st Street.

It hung on until 2005, the last year it was profitable. By 2014 Pan American had just 22 employees and $41 million in assets, barely enough to make loans, and it was teetering on the edge of seizure by regulators. That’s when a consortium of 17 larger community and regional banks stepped in to bail it out with $6.3 million, in exchange for minority shareholder positions (the family of Romana Bañuelos still maintained the greatest shareholder stake). The group was led by Finance and Thrift Co., a Porterville bank that was established in the ’20s by ranchers and farmers to give small loans to their employees in the San Joaquin Valley. Finance and Thrift moved its headquarters to East LA and adopted the Pan American name. They planned to offer small loans for used cars and furniture, in addition to business loans for small mom-and-pop shops that couldn’t qualify for the Small Business Administration loans previously offered by Pan American.

Just a year after the purchase, Pan American was acquired by Beneficial State Bank, an Oakland-based bank that claims it “pursues economic justice and environmental sustainability by focusing on change-makers that need loan capital, such as…Businesses and nonprofits that are owned by people from under-served and historically oppressed groups.” Two years later Beneficial’s holding company became the first bank company to convert to a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation – a unique legal structure that requires businesses to balance profitability with a commitment to social/environmental justice. So even though Pan American is no longer, at least on the surface, it would appear that its new owner shares a lot of its ideals. 

PS: Remember the building’s west wing, the one they expanded to in 1972? That’s now occupied by a podiatrist. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Chiland, Elijah: “East LA bank building wins national historic designation” (Curbed LA, April 9, 2017)

+ “Community Invited to Attend Pan-Am Bank Opening” (Eastside Sun, April 14, 1966 – reprinted in NRHP nomination form)

+ Dominguez, Laura: Pan American Bank’s NRHP nomination form

+ FLY PR: “ALFONSO PARDINAS: Byzantine Mosaics”

+ Gonzalez, Johnny & Irma Nuñez, Interview with Karen Mary Davalos (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Oral Histories Series No. 7, November 2013)

+ Gregory, John: “Mexican-American Bank Offers Hope, Aura of Pride” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1971 – via ProQuest)

+ “History: What Led Us to Today” (Beneficial State Bank)

+ Paonessa, Laurie & Clio Admin: “Pan American National Bank of East Los Angeles” (Clio: Your Guide to History, July 30, 2023)

+ Reckard, E. Scott: “East L.A.’s Pan American Bank gets $6-million bailout from other banks” (Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2014)

+ Reckard, E. Scott: “Finance and Thrift Co. to buy Pan American Bank in East L.A.” (Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2015)