The Journey Continues: Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos
I have heard “old men die, and young men forget.” In the pursuit of preserving cultures and heritage, it is often the intangible elements such as memories, traditions and skills that receive the least attention and are forgotten. The challenge is how does one keep these elements alive for our children?
Enter Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, which opened their doors on Sept. 18, 2010. With the mission of serving as a community beacon for the “preservation, development, promotion and celebration of the Hispanic arts, culture, heritage and values.”
Among the need for preservation is the story of thousands of locals who made the trek to west Texas to perform the backbreaking tasks of stoop labor; the economy of west Texas was carried on their backs. Death by death, the cultural and heritage of the area migrant workers from the San Marcos-Martindale-Maxwell-Reedville-Staples-Fentress Corridor who followed the harvest of cotton across Texas is being lost. For example, if a person were born in 1950, they would be 70 years old now in 2020; and when harvest by hand was replaced by mechanical harvesting around 1960, they would have been ten years old.
I recently met with the Centro’s Executive Director, Dr. Ricardo Espinoza, who as a young man assisted his family in migrant farm work in the state of Illinois. He shared his vision to capture and preserve the local migrant story using personal recollections and theme-specific artifacts. I mentioned the Austin exhibit “Taking to the Road: The Austin Migrant Farmworkers Connection” at the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) Community Gallery. Included were artifacts and the following oral recollection from a San Marcos family member:
“When Adelaida ‘Lala’ Martinez Garza was two weeks old in September 1950, her parents, Fidel and Teodora Martinez Garza, took their 12 children (six boys and six girls of various ages) from San Marcos to west Texas to pick cotton. Packing only the necessary items in several galvanized tubs, they traveled with another truck to their destination at the Spence Bevers farm near Post, Texas. They continued working on the same farm for 14 years, harvesting cotton until reluctantly Mr. Bevers had to start using a cotton stripper in his fields.
“While at the Bever’s farm, they lived in the two-room outbuilding that had been the second of three farmhouses the Bever’s built over the years. It was a board-and-batten structure, well-weathered and never painted, which stood next to the cistern. Inside was a wood-burning cookstove, table and chairs. Music was always a part of the Garza family. Their father Fidel, an accomplished accordionist, would often entertain his children by playing and telling them the story of how he met their mother.
“Education while on the farm, in keeping with the mandatory school board rules, saw the eligible children join the Bevers’ son, Sonny, on the school bus. When they came home after the school day, the children went to the fields to finish out the day. When the weather gets cold or snow started falling, the family knew it was time to return to San Marcos.”
Adelaida, ‘Lala’, said she has “nothing but fond memories of working as a migrant child — enjoying the moments with new friends she met and enjoying the closeness of her family.” At present, Adelaida Garza and her daughter, Rosie Garza Sanchez, live nearby in Austin and Buda. Fortunately, the Martinez Garza family have preserved numerous artifacts from their migrant journey.
