Multifaceted Juan Bandini

Mexican California: Scene of a fandango (dance party) in a private home

He was a cattle baron, a politician, a solid citizen—and a sometime revolutionary.  Admired for his gracious demeanor, elegant dress, refined manners; and for his superb dancing at the extravagant, week-long fandangos he hosted in his San Diego home, he exemplified the best of the Mexican California culture.

Juan Lorenzo Bandini was, in fact, one of the most prominent men of his time. Born in Lima, Peru, in 1800, he grew up there, and was educated. The exact date of his arrival in California is unknown, but quite possibly he accompanied his father José Bandini, a sea captain, when José visited Monterey in 1819 and 1821. The son must have stayed on while the father sailed back to San Blas, because on November 20, 1822, Juan married Maria Dolores Estudillo. The bride, some five years his senior, was the daughter of Captain José Estudillo, commander of the San Diego Presidio. The couple had five children together, one of whom died in childhood.

In 1829 he built a home for his family, on the east corner of the treeless San Diego town plaza, near his father-in-law’s Casa de Estudillo on the southeast side. Juan’s own Casa de Bandini was a large, U-shaped, one-story adobe structure with 12 rooms. In the style of the times, none of the adobe homes around the dusty square had stucco exteriors.

Casa de Bandini quickly became the social, political and cultural center of San Diego. Richard Henry Dana Jr., who witnessed Mexican California firsthand while performing his duties as a deck hand aboard an American merchant ship, was present more than once at Bandini’s celebrated fandangos. Dana’s descriptions, recorded in his memoir titled Two Years Before the Mast, vividly portrays Juan’s appearance and considerable talents on the dance floor:

“He moved gracefully, spoke the best of Castilian, and had throughout the bearing of a man of high birth and figure. Bandini gave us the most graceful dancing that I had ever seen. His slight and graceful figure was dressed in white pantaloons, a short jacket of dark silk gaily figured; white stockings and thin Morocco slippers upon his small feet. He was loudly and repeatedly applauded, the old men and women jumping out of their seats in admiration, and the young people waving their hats and handkerchiefs.”

While still in his twenties, Bandini began his decades-long involvement in public service, first as a member of the local assembly in 1827-1828, then four more years as a deputy commissioner of revenues. Evidently dissatisfied with the government in his adopted country, Bandini took a leading part in the successful revolt against Mexico-City appointed Governor Manuel Victoria, in 1831. Two years later he went to Mexico as a member of the Congress of the Union of the United Mexican States, representing Alta California. He returned in 1834 as a vice-president of the ambitious Hijar-Padres colonization expedition, a position that accorded him the function as inspector of customs in California. However, formidable opposition in the province led to the plan’s failure, which Bandini considered the most significant failure of his public career.

Too, he had just lost his wife Maria Dolores, who was only 28 when she died in November, 1833. His second wife—again, from an influential family—was Refugia Argüello, seventeen years his junior. The date of their marriage is unknown, but the couple’s oldest child, the first of five children together, was born in 1836.

Nevertheless, his domestic affairs did not prevent him from being a leader of the opposition to the governorship of Juan B. Alvarado in 1836-38, an unwise stand from which, more than once, he barely managed to escape arrest. Perhaps expeditiously, in 1836 he moved his family to his Rancho Tecate land grant, a 4,439-acre property in a remote region near the Baja border, where he established a cattle ranch. Within a year they were forced to abandon it when bands of renegades raided the rancho, stole the livestock, and burned the ranch house to the ground.

But then, things got better. In 1838 Bandini was appointed administrator of the now-secularized Mission San Gabriel, and relocated to Los Angeles. That same year, he was granted the Rancho Jurupa, originally a 31,000-acre parcel perfect for cattle grazing, which straddled present-day Riverside and San Bernadino Counties. In 1839 he was granted apx. 4,400 acres of timberland at Rancho Cajon de Muscupiabe, adjacent to the Cajon Pass. Around the same time, he received some land at San Juan Capistrano. Juan used much of this property for raising thousands of cattle. So long as cattle hides and tallow were the backbone of California’s economy, he became wealthy.

Remarkably, given his inclinations, Bandini seems to have played no active part in the successful revolt against Governor Manuel Micheltorena in 1845. Pio Pico, a native Californian, took over as governor; moved the California capital to Los Angeles, and appointed Juan Bandini his Secretary of State.

Only—the turbulent events of 1846 changed everything for Californians when the United States brought the Mexican-American War to California soil. Juan Bandini actively supported the American cause. After the war, he continued serving on San Diego’s civic councils, having been granted, like hundreds of others, American citizenship by proclamation of the United States government. Later he became critical of the American government, in particular because its Land Act of 1851 allowed Mexican land grants to be challenged, when the treaty that ended the war had promised those grants would be honored by the US.

By early 1850 he was keeping a store in San Diego, and spending a great deal of his capital, to build the large Gila House Hotel. Later that year, Bandini removed to his Rancho Guadalupe in Baja—acquired some years earlier—where he established another cattle ranch, and reactivated his Mexican citizenship. Once again taking sides in local politics, he backed controversial activist Antonio Meléndrez, whose June 1855 execution forced Bandini to quit Mexico. Four years later, his health failing, he sold his beloved San Diego home to pay off some debts. 

Juan Bandini died on November 4, 1859, at Los Angeles.

His political leanings notwithstanding, Juan was known to his contemporaries as a charming gentleman of fine character, whose high-roller lifestyle and generous hospitality often caused him financial difficulties. Despite his own misadventures, he surely took pride in the fact that all of his children became successful, respected citizens; and his daughters were considered the most beautiful women in California.

His renovated and enlarged Casa de Bandini, now the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant in Old Town San Diego, is a registered national historic landmark.