Monica Muñoz Martinez, Public Historian | 2021 MacArthur Fellow

So happy for, and proud of, my colleague and University of Texas History professor, Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez who just won the MacArthur genius grant. Her work helps rescue the memories from an earlier time of vicious lynchings of Mexicans that she accurately regards as "state-sanctioned racial terror against Mexicans in the early 20th century."

This award is so important at a time when our Texas State Legislature wants to keep our students from knowing the uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about the past. This award and recognition, in effect, "talks back" to this white supremacist racial project that intends to keep our K-12 youth from knowing the truths of history.

As per my earlier post this morning, Dr. Muñoz Martinez' work sheds light on racial logics undergirding current violence we are witnessing against our community today. 

Thank you for your life-saving work and a big c

ongratulations for your hard-earned efforts

! What an outstanding honor!

Congratulations!!! Felicidades!!!

-Angela Valenzuela

Racial Violence Historian Awarded ‘Genius Grant’ by MacArthur Foundation

Monica Muñoz Martinez, Public Historian, 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Austin, TX. Photo by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

USTIN, Texas — Monica Muñoz Martinez, a historian at The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship, often referred to as the “genius grant.” The award recognizes her work to recover untold histories of racial violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Martinez is one of 25 individuals selected for the five-year fellowship — a no-strings-attached, $625,000 “investment in a person’s originality, insight and potential.” Recipients are nominated based on proven talent and extraordinary originality and dedication to their creative pursuits.

Martinez’s research and public history projects bring long-obscured cases of racial violence along the Texas-Mexico border to the forefront so communities can reckon with their past and work toward racial healing. Her work combines traditional archival research with oral histories and memorabilia from victims’ descendants to piece together a fuller picture of the past and transform modern narratives.

“People have a right to learn truthful accounts of history in schools, museums, the news and popular culture, even when those histories are troubling,” said Martinez, an associate professor in the Department of History. “This is especially important when lessons of the past can help inspire a more inclusive and equitable future.”

To amplify her research, Martinez wrote an award-winning book, “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” in which she recounts a period of state-sanctioned racial terror against Mexicans in the early 20th century. She co-founded the public history nonprofit Refusing to Forget to increase public awareness of these events through museum exhibits and curricular materials and by placing historical markers in areas where such killings took place.

Her current project builds on her previous work by establishing the first national record of racist violence to recount lesser-known lynchings, homicides, policing shootings, bombings, physical assault and community banishment.

“Dr. Martinez’s work as a scholar and public historian is a shining example of rigorous, engaged scholarship in the humanities,” said Ann Huff Stevens, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “Her careful research into the history of racial and ethnic violence comes at a time when society continues to wrestle with the past and work toward a better future. Her brilliance, engagement with the community, and the accessibility of her work are all tributes to Dr. Martinez and to the role of public research institutions.”

Martinez is one of nine UT Austin faculty members to have been awarded MacArthur Foundation fellowships: Livia Schiavinator Eberlin (Chemistry, 2018), Jacqueline Jones (History, 1999), David Hillis (Integrative Biology, 1999), Nancy Moran (Integrative Biology, 1997), Nora C. England (Linguistics, 1993), Philip Uri Treisman (Mathematics, 1992), Thomas G. Palaima (Classics, 1985) and Karen K. Uhlenbeck (Mathematics, 1983).

 

Latinos are disproportionately killed by police but often left out of the debate about brutality, some advocates say

The agencies that maintain police statistics often fail to include "Hispanic" as an ethnic category, according to a 2016 report by the Urban Institute. Plus, they leave these determinations of ethnicity to individual police officers. I want to highlight an authoritative report cited herein conducted by LatinosUS titled, "Special Advance Fact Sheet: Deaths of People of Color By Law Enforcement Are Severely Under-Counted."

While not resolving the matter entirely, the report addresses the undercounts of Latinos and other people of color killed while in police custody. Given high rates of intermarriage, Spanish surname is a poor proxy since many "Hispanics" have Anglo surnames and no standard reporting metric or process across locales is in place.

As addressed in prior blog posts, if we zoom out and widen the lens to include lives lost in the context of governmental policy surrounding immigration and border crossings, the number of Latina/o/x deaths grows astronomically.

The Real Death Valley: The Untold Story of Mass Graves and Migrant Deaths in South Texas

 

Death in the desert: Migrants face harsh conditions in West Texas by Dudley Althaus June 26, 2021

All of this makes me shudder, as well as deeply concerned about the regular violence committed against poor and desperate people—poised to contribute positively and enormously to our country—that gets justified as "keeping our borders safe." 

The point here is that these aren't idiosyncratic events but reflect patterned violence against our communities instead. Latinas/os must therefore commit to not solely addressing state and local police enforcement policies, but federal immigration ones, as well. Doing so stands to benefit all groups entering our country from other places besides Mexico like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Haiti, Brazil, and so on.

Clearly, the African American community has done a much better job than the Latino community in stepping up to the plate on police violence against their own community. Awareness is a good first step. Working in solidarity on such matters with the African American, Asian American, and Native American communities is essential, as well. Beginning with standard reporting processes, substantive policy remedies must follow.

I thank Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, himself a victim of police brutality, for bringing the LatinosUS report to my attention, and for sharing the La Raza Killings data base with much more information and resources on killings of people in our communities.

-Angela Valenzuela

@Larazakillings

#endpolicebrutality

#BrownLivesMatter

#BlackLivesMatter

#NoMoreBorderDeaths

Latinos are disproportionately killed by police but often left out of the debate about brutality, some advocates say

Maria Lowrie with a photo of her son, Ernie Serrano, who died at 33 while in police custody. (Amanda Lopez for The Washington Post)

By 

Silvia Foster-Frau

 

June 2, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. CDT

Maria Lowrie has watched videos of her son’s death in police custody over and over again.

Sometimes she watches the images from an officer’s body camera. Sometimes she watches a bystander’s recording. She has watched them so many times that she can pinpoint the moment when her son, Ernie Serrano, took his final breath, she says.

“I don’t wish this for any mother, for any human being, to go through that. Something has got to be done so it doesn’t happen as often as it’s happening,” the Los Angeles woman said.

She doesn’t believe that her son, if he had been White, would have died Dec. 15 when sheriff’s deputies were called to a Riverside County grocery store for a disturbance.

Serrano, a 33-year-old Mexican American, was at a Stater Bros. market picking up snacks that night when the sheriff’s office received a report about a man — later identified as Serrano — wandering in and out of the store. Another 911 call reported him tussling with a security guard. Video from a bystander shows sheriff’s deputies beating Serrano with batons and using a Taser on him before wrestling him facedown onto a checkout counter.

Serrano is heard pleading “Let me go, please” several times in a body camera video, at one point saying “I can’t breathe” and “You’re using excessive force” in between cries of pain. Several minutes later, an officer notices that the man is not breathing. The officers place him on the floor and try to resuscitate him. He is pronounced dead at a hospital.

According to Sheriff Chad Bianco, the preliminary autopsy report suggests that Serrano died of a methamphetamine overdose; attorneys for the family, which has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit, say he died of asphyxiation.

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Serrano’s death did not get much attention beyond the local news, but a review of databases that track police killings shows that while their cases have largely gone untold in the national discussion of police violence, Latinos are killed by police at nearly double the rate of White Americans. And while the national debate on police killings has focused on Black Americans, whose deaths at the hands of law enforcement have been high-profile and outnumber those of other people of color, some activists say the situation for the Latino community has become critical.

“It’s a crisis, in the same manner as it’s a crisis in the Black community. . . . Chances are, if anybody is going to be getting killed, they’re going to be Black or Brown,” said Roberto Rodriguez, an associate professor at the University of Arizona who researches police brutality and was a victim himself in the late 1970s.

Some Latinos say the phrase ‘Latinos for Black Lives Matter’ makes no sense

The Latino population in Texas is driving demographic growth in our state, representing 95% of total growth. Maps reflecting white voting majorities in half of all proposed congressional districts simply disenfranchise this community. The problem here, of course, is that greater concern for whites plays out in every arena of public policy, impacting the well-being of our state, as a whole.

-Angela Valenzuela

Analysis: Texas government won’t represent the state’s population unless its political maps do

The Texas Legislature is drawing new political maps to reflect the growth of the state recorded in the 2020 census. But their initial proposals don't look like the state demographically or politically.

BY ROSS RAMSEY SEPT. 30, 2021

Crowds march through Austin in celebration of Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 20, 2020. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune

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In a state where more than 60% of the residents are people of color, the Texas Legislature is proposing maps where white people have voting majorities in 50% of the congressional districts.

That’s not representative.

Texas grew 15.9% over the last decade, according to the 2020 census. There are just about 4 million more people in the state now than there were 10 years ago, and 95% of that growth is attributable to people of color.

White people now account for 39.8% of the state population. Hispanic people are just about as numerous — 39.3% — and demographers expect that part of the population to be the largest part within a year or two. Black Texans, Asian Texans and others make up the remaining fifth of the population.

There is no majority, in other words, and the plurality is about to flip to Hispanics.

You wouldn’t be able to prove any of that by looking at the political maps the Texas Legislature is drawing right now.

A Senate committee has already approved (on a straight party-line vote) a new map that has 12 districts with white majorities and another four where the majority of the voting age population — adults — are white people. The Hispanic population is about the same size in the state, but not in the plans of the Texas Senate; the map has seven seats where Hispanic residents make up the majority.

Four more districts in that new Senate map have majorities of people of color if you add their Black residents and their Hispanic residents together.

The remaining four districts don’t have white majorities, Hispanic majorities or Hispanic-plus-Black majorities. They don’t look exactly like the state of Texas, but they’re more like the rest of the state than the other 27 districts.

The Senate map is just an example; all of the new maps revealed so far were designed with similar disparities between the makeup of the population and the cartographic and political machinations of the state’s officeholders.

It’s not just demography. The Texas Legislative Council — a state agency that draws maps, drafts bills and does other legal work for the Legislature, generates reports on how each district would have voted in the 2020 election.

That doesn’t look like Texas, either.

Overall, Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden 52% to 45.5%. Trump would have won in 19 of the proposed Senate districts, or 61.3%. Biden would have won in 12, or 38.7%.

That’s not representative.

Sometime during the Legislature’s ongoing special session on redistricting, someone will compare the proposed maps to the current maps — either in a way that makes the new maps look more fair, or in a way that makes them look like a step backward. Remember, though, that the current maps were contested for many of the same reasons.

This time, 95% of the state’s growth was attributed to people of color. Ten years ago, the U.S. census attributed 89% of the state’s growth to people of color. Both times, the increase in Hispanic population in Texas was the main driver. Texas has been growing rapidly for a long time; the 2010 census revealed the population increased 20.6%; the 2020 census found 15.9%.

The Legislature that convened in 2011 had the same goals, more or less, that this year’s Legislature has: Draw new political districts that reflect the overall growth of the state and the geographic changes in the population. But they had the same biases, too. The Republican majorities wanted to preserve their hold on state government, which is, after all, what political majorities do. And they were more interested in communities and districts of Republicans than they were in communities of color.

They were focused, then as now, on winning, and not on that other word — the one that indicates every Texan is fairly accounted for and has the same political power.

Representation.

This is a really good report by John Fensterwald in EdSource. Research evidence points strongly to the positive impact of Ethnic Studies curricula over the long term with respect to key outcomes about which we should care—when taught, of course, by well-prepared teachers. 

Although it most certainly is a movement unto itself, support for Ethnic Studies is evidence-based and shouldn't at all get caught up under today's "culture war" frame that opposes the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Why, when Ethnic studies is the antidote to to student alienation from school contexts that are often sterile, unfriendly, or even hostile to children of color? Why, when, as Stanford researcher Thomas Dee states, such classrooms create "spaces where they [students] feel a sense of belongingness and engagement?" The short answer is that with changing demographics, many leaders in power do not want to empower these youth with either the precious knowledge or uplift that ethnic studies classrooms provide.

Regardless of the intention behind those shrill voices making the case against Critical Race Theory—which is but one methodological orientation—among many utilized by our Ethnic Studies teachers, the benefits that accrue to ALL, including white, children merit mention. 

These courses simply make school more interesting because they speak to students' lived experiences while opening the creative door to personal or individual expression—and freedom of expression is everybody's inalienable right in a democracy.

Someday, I trust, what we know today as "Ethnic Studies" will simply be called "a good and virtuous education."

-Angela Valenzuela

Research finds ethnic studies in San Francisco had enduring impact

Ninth grade course engaged and motivated students who hadn't shown prior success in school 

by John Fensterwald | September 7, 2021 | EdSource.org

Research released Monday found that the benefits for San Francisco Unified students who took an ethnic studies course in ninth grade lasted throughout high school, resulting in higher attendance, higher graduation rates and increased enrollment in college, compared with similarly matched students who didn’t take the course.

The update of an often-cited 2017 study provides the first quantitative evidence of the longer-run academic impact of ethnic studies. Not only did the strikingly large benefits from the course not fade after ninth grade, but the course produced “compelling and causally credible evidence” of the power to “change learning trajectories” of the students targeted for the study — those with below-average grades in eighth grade, said Thomas Dee, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and co-author of the research.

Those historically underserved students “experience school environments as unwelcoming, or even hostile,” Dee said. The course appeared to succeed in changing their expectations at an important time, when students are deciding if they belong in high school. San Francisco Unified succeeded by engaging students “critically in an honest discussion of U.S. history and creating classroom spaces where they feel a sense of belongingness and engagement,” Dee said.

The peer-reviewed study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dee’s co-authors are Emily Penner, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Sade Bonilla, a former Stanford Graduate School of Education doctoral student who is now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Its publication coincides with a final vote later this week in the California Legislature on a bill that would require all students to take a semester course in ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement, starting with the class of 2030. High schools would have to start offering ethnic studies by 2025-26. Assembly Bill 101, authored by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, is expected to pass easily. Gov. Gavin Newsom will have a month to decide whether to sign it.

Dee and the co-researchers caution, however, not to generalize the results of a study of 1,405 ninth-graders, only 13% of whom — about 180 students — took the ethnic studies course. The study was designed to measure the effect on at-risk students by comparing the results of students with grades of C or slightly below in eighth grade, who were assigned ethnic studies by default, to students with average grades of C or slightly above.

Whether the positive impact would apply to all students, especially those already thriving academically, is “an important, open question,” Dee said. Another caveat, the study noted, is that in San Francisco Unified, the ethnic studies course, developed over several years, was taught by well-trained teachers.

“It’s exciting because it’s a proof point about what this type of pedagogy can do for students, but the fact that it was a smaller-scale pilot should create some agnosticism about our capacity to replicate and scale this up,” Dee said.

The initial study, which measured the course’s impact on students in ninth grade, produced surprisingly positive results. Attendance of the students who took the course improved 21%; grade point average grew 1.4 out of 4 points, and credits earned improved 23 credits, out of 60 possible credits.

The impact continued throughout high school with impressive effects. The ethnic studies students’ graduation rates were 16 to 19 percentage points greater than similar students who didn’t take the course. Ethnic studies takers neared the district’s 220 credit requirement for graduation; the non-takers had 20 fewer credits. By between 10 and 16 percentage points, more ethnic studies takers enrolled in college within a year or two of graduation.

The demographics of students in the study and San Francisco Unified significantly differ from that of the state and the nation; 60% were Asian, 23% Latino, 6% Black and 5% white. Asian and Latino students showed significant gains in graduation; the numbers of white and Black students in the study were too small for reliable comparisons, the study said.

San Francisco Unified was one of the first districts to develop an ethnic studies curriculum; the study covered students who took the course between 2011-12 and 2013-14.

The state’s model ethnic studies curriculum, approved in March after two years, with multiple drafts and heated debates over what it should include, is optional; districts can pick and choose elements they like — or choose none of them. Assembly Bill 101 would not prescribe the content, although a district must offer a course that the University of California approved as meeting A-G admission criteria.

In a letter to the State Board of Education in January, three dozen professors from across the nation argued there was insufficient evidence to support assertions in the proposed model curriculum that research had found extensive benefits from ethnic studies. The evidence was overstated or unfounded, it said, and should be removed from the document.

Most of the 10-page letter was directed at the writing of Christine Sleeter, an author and emerita professor at California State University, Monterey Bay, and a strong advocate of ethnic studies. But in a section about the San Francisco Unified study, the writers criticized Dee and Penner for not including low-performing students who declined to take the ethnic studies course in their comparison. They also said the authors had glided over data showing that taking ethnic studies did not lead to improvement of students with a higher or lower GPA than the students at the center of the study.

San Francisco course’s anti-racism focus

The study summarized the themes of San Francisco’s course as “social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, and social movements led by people of color from U.S. history spanning the late eighteenth century until the 1970s.” It stressed ties to the Third World Liberation Front, the coalition of Black, Latino and Asian student groups whose 1968 strike at San Francisco State University led to the nation’s first ethnic studies courses. The learning objectives of the course included “student knowledge of and ability to combat racism and other forms of oppression, increased student commitment to social justice, and improvement of student pride in their own identities and communities.”

Districts outside the Bay Area might steer clear of the course that promotes activism, comes across as ideological and could alienate some parents, ethnic groups and students in the class.

The study itself draws no conclusion about whether the particular course content contributed to the positive results.

What’s more essential, Dee said, is “culturally relevant” instruction that motivates and engages students. “So it’s not clear to me those mediating mechanisms require really doctrinaire, inflammatory content,” he said.

“There’s something I found impoverishing about the public debate over ethnic studies and, more recently, critical race theory,” he said. “And it’s because it has a cultural war frame” instead of focusing on “what’s going on with teaching and learning and student motivation and engagement.”

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.

"Becoming Mexican American," by Ricardo Romo, Ph.D.

Such a beautiful reflection on what it meant to become "Mexican American" in San Antonio by former University of Texas San Antonio President Ricardo Romo.  It demonstrates a shift in understanding of "Mexican," as a national-origin  identifier to one of "Mexican American," as an ethnic identifier. It is a process. For first-generation immigrants, theirs is an experience of understanding what "Mexicanidad" (or Mexican-ness) means in a U.S. context. In short, although the same term, "Mexican" or "Mexicana/o" gets used, but they mean different things.

Dr. Romo's mention that "Mexican" was a term that entered from outside the lexicon of his community attests to not only the fact that people were primarily Spanish speaking but also that this term was imposed. This brought to mind a statement made by a newly-arrived Mexican student who expressed being troubled about having come to the U.S. to "learn" that "Mexican" is a dirty word.

I shared with her and the rest of the class that there is a long history to this and that the term—even as it represents a source of pride—is nevertheless inflected by vexed Anglo-Mexican relations in the Southwest. 

One sees, for example, people avoiding it altogether, opting for "Hispanic," "Latino," or "Latinx," because the word, "Mexican"—especially when accompanied by pejorative adjectives like "dumb," "greasy," or "dirty"—was intended as a slur. What may further reside at the subterranean, civilizational level, is a negation of Mexico itself, compounded by the fact that the term is of Indigenous origins. That is, the "Mexica" (pronounced me-SHEE-ca) are the Aztec, Nahuatl-speaking people whose very existence threatens the Eurocentric myths of both countries. 

-Angela Valenzuela 

Becoming Mexican American

By Ricardo Romo, Ph.D. | Nov. 1, 2020

The United States seemed far away to the families living in the farming communities of Union, Sabinas, and Agujita in northern Coahuila during the early 1900s. Those wishing to make a new life in the United States had to make a 80 mile trip to Eagle Pass, Texas.

There were no automobiles in any of the surrounding Mexican communities and the railroad tracks had not yet reached the rural areas. Coming to the United States meant walking or riding the entire distance in a horse carriage. Prior to the Mexican Revolution, most of the small farmers from these communities considered this to be too dramatic a step.

Francisco “Pancho” Saenz bought his business in 1937--at the height of the Great Depression. Francisco Saenz [on the right]: Auto Parts store on El Paso Street. 1940s. [Romo Family Photo]

Mexicans came to the United States because profound “push” forces dominated their daily lives. The “push” factors of the early 20th century were a result of civil unrest, war, and political oppression in Mexico. A long and harsh dictatorship in Mexico eventually led to a revolution, which resulted in the exodus of thousands of Mexican between the years 1910-1930. In the 1920s thousands from the Central states of Mexico also left because of religious persecution.

I often wondered why my grandparents came to the United States. My conversations with them revealed the obvious: like many other migrants of that time in Mexico, they left a homeland plagued by violence and with hopes of finding work elsewhere. It is not all that clear that they were seeking a new life elsewhere or in pursuit of the American Dream. They were undecided initially about their future. Unlike the immigrants from Europe and Asia,

Mexicans were close enough to the homeland that if work did not materialize or became unsteady, they were prepared to return. Many actually came to the United States thinking they would earn money and then return to Mexico after the armed conflict ended to buy a small property or start a business.

Maria Saenz Romo, sister of Francisco Saenz, and well known Midwife. Photo taken at her El Paso Street home only five houses away from Kerr Hill Auto Parts. [R.Romo family photos]

My four grandparents were born in Mexico. Two came from the Sabinas region of the northern state of Coahuila. Both of my parents grew up in the Westside of San Antonio, a Mexican barrio where everyone, it seemed, had a connection to Mexico. No one had a television, so our only music and news came from two local Spanish language radio stations.

Mexican barrios like ours and those in other U.S. cities were often called “Little Mexico.” In Dallas, for example, so many Mexican moved into the “Little Jerusalem,” a Jewish neighborhood, that after 1910 it soon became known as “Little Mexico.” But there was nothing little about our barrio in San Antonio, which the US Census estimated as the second largest Mexican American community in the United States after Los Angeles in 1960. Those from outside our barrio called us Mexican, and we referred to ourselves as “La Raza.”

There is much about what I saw and learned in my early years in San Antonio that reveals the extent of our Mexicanism. I grew up surrounded by a large extended family, and they influenced much of my early understanding of Latino culture and society. My “Tio Pancho” was one such influencer.

Kerr Hill Auto Parts owned by Francisco Saenz. 1940s. [R. Romo Family photos]

My uncle, [Tio] Francisco “Pancho” Saenz, came to the United States at the age of 18 with his sister, Maria Romo, and his brother in law, Benito Romo, from the Sabinas region of Coahuila. The three immigrated in 1913 crossing into the United States at the Eagle Pass international border.

Tio Pancho initially worked as a farm laborer, but found a job in a garage as a young man when the family moved to San Antonio. With his savings, Tio Pancho bought his own garage and auto parts store in 1937. Tio Pancho was a frequent “guest DJ” with KCOR. On the radio he told stories about serving in the Mexican Revolution, catching huge fish in the Gulf of Mexico, and knowing the latest juicy stories about Mexican movie stars and popular singers.

Tio Pancho--”El Gavilan Pescador,” loved fishing and hunting and enjoyed telling his fishing stories on the local Spanish-language radio. [R.Romo family photos]

“Tio Pancho” was a popular fellow in our Westside barrio. From the mid 1930s to the time of his death in 1965, he had one of the few Mexican-owned auto parts sales and repair shops in the city. He had radio time on the only Mexican station in town. His sister Maria was one of the most respected midwives in the barrio. His brother Cruz owned a popular night club “El Gaucho” across the street from Tio Pancho’s auto shop on El Paso Street and his younger brother Martin owned several fried chicken drive-inns.

If my grandmother and her brothers believed in the American Dream, they didn’t say. If the American Dream meant being financially successful, creating their own businesses, buying a home, and raising children who attended school, they more than lived this dream.

Although they gave up on returning to Mexico, they never gave up on their idea that family was the Mexican way. My grandmother and her two brothers helped bring my great grandmother, Estefana Cardenas, to the United States. She lived next door to her son’s auto parts store, five houses from her daughter’s home, and across the street from her younger son’s night club.

Today, the auto parts store, Kerr Hill Auto Parts, continues in its 83rd year with the help of Tio Pancho’s son Frank, his wife Vicki, and their son Frankie, They moved the store one block south to Guadalupe Street where they have a larger lot for the garage and auto repair business. These are tough times for small family businesses, and the fourth generation has no interest in keeping the business active after the son, wife and grandson of Tio Pancho retire.

Frank Saenz, Jr., [center] son of Francisco Saenz, with cousins Robert Romo, left— and Ricardo Romo [R] . [R.Romo family photos 2015]

Tio Pancho’s family story is one of many from this Westside barrio. This family did not have strong long-term ties to Mexico, but managed to bring some Mexicanism to San Antonio via their radio experience and interaction with other Mexican customers and family members. All continued to speak Spanish, and Maria Romo, the midwife, learned very little English as nearly all of her clients spoke Spanish.

Tio Pancho’s family contributed to the Mexican American experience, as did thousands of other first generation Mexicanos in the United States. They passed on Mexican values of strong family ties, a respect for hard work and entrepreneurship, an appreciation for being bilingual in Spanish and English, and the importance of higher education.