In May 1991, a female police officer shot and wounded a young immigrant from El Salvador in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Washington DC in the United States.

It sparked several days of disturbances in the largely Hispanic area, as the population vented its frustrations at years of feeling sidelined by city officials.

Shops were burnt down, cars overturned, and dozens of people were arrested before the police took back control of the streets. But for the first time, it gave visibility to a community that had been largely ignored.

Mike Lanchin hears from musician and former resident of Mount Pleasant, Victor ‘Lilo’ Gonzalez.

A CTVC production.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Marchers fill the streets in Mount Pleasant in Washington DC in 1991. Credit: Reuters)

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