Mónica Perales - Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas

RECOVERING THE HISPANIC HISTORY OF TEXAS

Hispanic History of Texas Project

Roberto R. Caldern
University of North Texas

Antonia Castaeda
Independent Scholar

Monica Perales
University of Houston

Gerald Poyo
St. Marys University

Ral Ramos
University of Houston

Antonio Saborit
INAH Direccin de Estudios Histricos

Emilio Zamora
The University of Texas at Austin

Monica Perales and Ral A. Ramos, Editors

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage

Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas is made possible through grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Exemplar Program, a program of Americans for the Arts in collaboration with the LarsonAllen Public Services Group, funded by the Ford Foundation and by the Summerlee Foundation.

Recovering the past, creating the future

Arte Pblico Press
University of Houston
452 Cullen Performance Hall
Houston, Texas 77204-2004

Cover design by Pilar Espino

Recovering the Hispanic history of Texas / edited by Monica Perales and Ral A. Ramos.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-55885-591-5 (pbk: alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-1-55885-691-2 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Mexican AmericansTexasHistory. 2. Mexican AmericansTexasHistoriography. 3. Mexican American womenTexasHistory. 4. Mexican American womenTexasHistoriography. 5. Hispanic AmericansTexasHistory. 6. Hispanic AmericansTexasHistoriography. 7. TexasHistory. 8. TexasHistoriography. 9. TexasEthnic relations. 10. TexasSocial conditions. I. Perales, Monica. II. Ramos, Ral A.

F395.M5R43 2010

976.40046872dc22

2010000601
CIP

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

2010 by Arte Pblico Press
Printed in the United States of America

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Monica Perales and Ral A. Ramos

Francis X. Galn

Mark Allan Goldberg

Emilio Zamora

Virginia Raymond

Dennis J. Bixler-Mrquez

James E. Crisp

Norma A. Mouton

Donna M. Kabalen de Bichara

Building a Project to Expand Texas History

Monica Perales and Ral A. Ramos
The University of Houston

I N A STATE KNOWN FOR ITS SWELTERING SUMMERS, THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE generating a great deal of heat in Texas in the summer of 2009. The members of a panel of experts providing recommendations to the Texas Board of Education on its K-12 social studies curriculum standards engaged in a debate over what students in the states public schools should be learning about history. Some reviewers lamented that the experts paid insufficient attention to the nations founding fathers while they overemphasized what the reviewers deemed were less historically significant individuals, such as Thurgood Marshall and Csar Chvez. Others pointed to the need for an even greater focus on the multicultural origins of the nation and called for a more thorough understanding of the roles that ethnic minorities and women have played in the social, political, and economic life of the nation. Several members of the panel emphasized the need for students to engage primary documents and criticized the current state curriculum for spending too much time on interpretations of documents and what they believed to be an inordinate amount of emphasis on less factual historical productions including poetry, folktales, and art.

While these controversies could be written off simply as another battle in the culture wars, there was something more fundamental at stake. These two episodes raise some important questions about the politically charged nature of the historical enterprise in Texas and the extent to which history is deeply enmeshed in debates about national and state identity in the present day. They also tell us something about the nature of historical work, and, in a related fashion, the nature of the archival process. What is the purpose of history, and who gets to write it? More importantly, how does history get written, and whose historical text represents the authentic voice of the past that is thus worthy of preserving?

As one of the first collections of scholarship produced under the auspices of the Hispanic History of Texas Project, the essays in this volume seek to make an important intervention into these very questions. An extension of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, Hispanic History of Texass goal is not only to identify, preserve, and publish documents that uncover the myriad historical voices and experiences of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, but also to promote research that highlights the complex roles ethnic Mexican men and women have played in the shaping of the cultural, economic, and political fabric of the region. The essays in this bookby both established and up-and-coming scholarsare examples of the kinds of innovative work the Hispanic History Project seeks to inspire. By employing a wide range of historical sources and in the spirit of true interdisciplinarity, the authors seek to forge new ground and take the study of Mexicans, Texas, and the Borderlands into new and exciting terrain.

At its heart, this type of project is about more than simply recovering the voices of lost historical actors and simply adding to an existing story. The essays in this volume seek to reimagine the dominant narrative of Texas history and also to transform the very way in which the archival enterprise is viewed and knowledge is produced. Chicana/o scholars have theorized the importance of rethinking the meanings attached to historical artifacts and source materials. As historian Emma Prez explains, the archive is not a value-neutral repository of incontrovertible truth. Rather, it is a social and cultural product that presents a particular point of view and reifies a distinct narrative, often to the exclusion of other points of view that challenge, disprove, or otherwise upset that common story.often than not, archives contain the materials produced by the privileged and governing classes of society. They place emphasis on government documents, letters, books, and memoirs of political leaders or titans of industrymostly men, and even more often Euro-Americans. Finding Mexican-origin perspectives in the archives is not impossible, but the task is made all the more difficult by the lasting legacy of conquest and the failure to recognize both the potential and the limitations of existing resources. Chicana/o scholars, inspired by the new social history, have long understood the value of alternative sourcesoral histories, published and unpublished Spanish language writings and periodicals, folklore, photography, and other personal materials.