The Rotary Club of San Marcos purchased a four-sided Peace Pole that will be located near San Marcos Springs later this spring. It was dedicated at the Springs on March 22 as part of a Bi-National Rotary Conference in San Marcos.
Rotarians from Mexico and South-Central Texas co-sponsored the Conference to share information about service projects in the two countries. The conference included presentations as well as music performances by Salsa Del Rio, Mark Anthony Cruz from Texas State University and the San Marcos High School mariachi students.
More than 200,000 peace poles have been installed around the world. The first was planted in Ishikawa, Japan. The poles serve as a silent visual for peace to prevail on the planet. The new San Marcos peace pole includes three languages. In English it says, “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” That is translated into Spanish as “Que la Paz Prevalezca en la Tierra.” The third language is Coahuiltecan. Indigenous people have inhabited the San Marco area for 13,000 years and the peace pole pays tribute, in part, to the long history of human habitation in the area. The Coahuiltecan language has no word for peace so the phrase is translated on the pole as “May We Walk Well With Mother Earth,” or “Na-kāi manām yō Tāp Tāi.”
The pole will be installed permanently when a suitable site has been agreed to. Rotary District 5840, which serves 55 Rotary clubs in South Central Texas, planted a similar pole Sept. 21 of last year on World Peace Day at the San Antonio Peace Center, located at Northwest Vista Campus of Alamo Community College.
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