Historia en Vivo | Living History: The Mission to Market Walking Tour

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Recently, The Western History Association had a conference in San Antonio, Texas. It was of no surprise to me that the participants of the conference were very interested in the history of San Antonio and the past of a city reborn.

As part of a course at St. Mary’s University, Dr. Teresa Van Hoy gathered a group of her brightest minds as well as a grad student (that would be me). Dr. Van Hoy engaged these students in research at the level of a graduate

Photo of Casa Navarro courtesy of Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, Texas

student’s course. These students learned about everything from the battle of The Alamo, the historic Market Square, Casa Navarro, as well as La Villita and The Arneson Theatre. History of these past lives for the places that we were treading upon for the sake of history is important. The major history of the west was highly influenced by the past of Texas and the past of the Spanish settlers of the time.

Pierre, the undergraduate history major, explains The Alamo and the history captured in the historic shrine. Photo courtesy of Gateway Photography

The Alamo is probably one of the most mentioned historical sights of the city in terms of tourism and engagement but the truth of the matter is that there are so many places that are filled with love, hate, energy, and resentment. These places are the true places that affect lifestyles and changes in culture and security and these were those places that the students were talking about.

La Villita, for instance, was a very familiar sight for a local leader, Anthony Delgado, this sight was was more than an artists’ grounds or NIOSA fiesta sight. This compound is holy ground for Anthony. “La Villita” was the land previously owned by his ancestors and Anthony ensured that his history and his family’s past have stayed alive. As the previous president of the organization, “Los Bexarenos,” Anthony knows what it means to be a direct descendant of a people of strength and resilience. Throughout Anthony’s talk, the somber feelings of disbelief and wartime angst began to fill the audience with feelings that some could say only a San Antonian could know.

Photo of Anthony Delgado (former leader of Los Bexarenos organization) presenting the La Villita Historic sights to conferences goers of the WHA conference.

The tour continued and different important topics were discussed and thrown in along the way. There was color-commentary from the beginning until the end and some of those fun-facts just grabbed the attention of the audience. The interesting part of this living history was that history was being created just in the activity itself. Each participant was some sort of scholar of history or fan of the city and learned something new that they had not yet heard before. Up until that day I had not heard of Los Bexarenos. The knowledge was highly appreciated and the “tour in the rain” seemed to be the best part of any scholar’s visits to The Alamo City.

By no surprise, the students, including myself, were introduced to many scholars and writers. These people have continued to keep interest in the students and the leaders of the tour. Recently while sorting through emails, I found correspondence about visits to museums, programs, and schools nationwide as a result of this great tour opportunity.

The Mission to Market Walking Tour was a great opportunity, to say the least. The connections built, the memories made, and the history learned was worth the trot through the pouring rain.

Students from the Texas history course at St. Mary’s University, taught by Dr. Van Hoy huddle together to talk about Henry B. Gonzalez, an influential San Antonio leader. Photo courtesy of Gateway Photography.

Public history is a program at St. Mary’s University, but it is more than that. Public history students are able to take part in these types of programs due to the efforts of the program and the leadership guiding it. The students that are growing due to this program are more than the average graduate and undergraduate student. This cohort is learning to work with and engage the community. In my time as a student (5 years now), I have not felt so empowered until now. I can see the work that is being done, as well as the influence it has on local perception.

The walking tour sure was an opportunity of a lifetime. The walking tour was more than just an opportunity, but a necessary component for the careers of many students and conference-goers. The memory is now an internal archive of a project that became part of a class and a group of students’ journey.

 

Pushing Back at Gentrification: A Tale of Two Cities

Change, it is the one constant in the story of human history.  Nothing stays the same, attempting to fight change is an exercise in futility.  To survive the change of time all things must adapt and adjust to a new paradigm.  Failure to change means death, whether we are discussing dinosaurs or giant corporations.  Sometimes change can be beneficial, things shift in a positive direction and people’s lives improve.  Other times changes are not so good, life becomes more difficult or important knowledge is lost.  One of the byproducts of change is gentrification.  Some argue that gentrification is good because it revitalizes blighted neighborhoods; contrarily it’s a force of destruction of personal history and economically disadvantaged people.  How can a historic neighborhood hold on to its history and benefit the people who currently live there?

San Antonio:  The Historic West Side

Walking along the streets of the historic west side of San Antonio the surrounding history is palatable, however so is the destruction of that history.  Land speculators are leaving lots empty in hopes of a big payday sometime in the future while razing older properties and replacing them with buildings that are more modern.  This leads to the destruction of the community’s history and forces the people who live there to move due to rising rents and other economic hardships.  The Esperanza Center has been pushing back against these speculators in an attempt to hold on to the history and culture of the neighborhood for the people that live there.  Their approach is to acquire properties and restore them for new tenants or re-purpose them so that they will avoid being torn down.  This is a good approach but the speculators impede the process by leaving lots empty lots or even worse, hampering the attempts to improve the neighborhood by placing fences on their properties in inconvenient places.  Their approach is direct but requires large financial backing and cooperation from local politicians.  This brings up another roadblock for the Center’s mission; the politicians are not invested in saving old buildings.  The people in charge are going to take their directions from their political donors, and those donors want to make money developing the neighborhood.  Current political climates favors the people who drive gentrification.  There are opportunities to make money that do not include saving the history of old neighborhoods; revitalization in the name of progress is the fuel of gentrification.  It is a tough uphill battle; however, the people of the Roxbury section of Boston tried a more radical approach.

“Faces of Dudley” mural in Boston. (Greg Cook)

Boston:  Roxbury

Gentrification happens when the local people do not have direct control over their neighborhood.  The blog Black Perspectives talks about the events in the Roxbury district of Boston, MA.  During the 1980’s in Boston, a couple of men tried to stand up and improve their neighborhood by taking the neighborhood away from the city.  Curtis Davis and Andrew Jones formed a group called The Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project (GRIP) with the goal being leaving Boston proper and forming a new incorporated city that the local people would control.  Even though Boston was the idealistic center of the American Revolution, its city planners were not so forward thinking over the years.  Boston became the most segregated city in the Northern US, making it very susceptible to the forces of gentrification.  In forming a new city out of the old neighborhoods, the people could stop this process and revitalize the area for its residents.  By spending resources on attracting economic opportunities that would not drive out the economically disadvantaged residents, the city would stop the process of gentrification.  Ultimately, GRIP did not achieve its master goal of independence, however it did succeed it getting reforms into government that would eventually aid the area and make improvements to benefit the people there.

Two Paths, One Goal

The Esperanza Center and GRIP are just two examples of people trying to control the destinies of their local neighborhoods and deter the process of gentrification.  I hope that they will succeed in protecting the history that the people in city hall easily neglect.  It is easy to order a building toppled when it is just numbers on a budget sheet, but to the people who live there those building mean so much more.  They are touchstones to loved ones who are no longer with them.  Preserving the buildings is to preserve the memories of those who came before us and made us into what we are today.

Back For More

Hello, everyone! I’m tremendously excited to be a part of the new Public History program at St. Mary’s University, and to have the opportunity to work once again with many of my former professors, as well as meet new and interesting people, many of whom share my interests.

First, i’ll share a bit about myself. I’m originally from Washington, D.C, but have lived in roughly twenty different states during my life and even more homes. My family traveled quite a bit, so I became accustomed to adapting to the world around me. I’ve always been quite an avid reader, and my house generally has more bookcases than anything else. I love stories and storytelling and a wide array of arts. I’ve always wanted to learn more artistic skills, but for the meantime I do calligraphy, and play the piano and the guitar. While nearly everything else I do is generally grounded in reality, I love chaotic and imaginative shows like Doctor Who.

My primary goal as an aspiring historian is to help tell the stories of cultures that have long been overlooked, or whose stories have been generally omitted from the historical record. I’m particularly fascinated and respectful of cultures that have had to struggle to maintain their cultural identity against larger, more aggressive or more influential neighbors. Some of the foremost examples that come to mind are the Korean, Armenian and Tibetan cultures.

Image of ceremonial dancers participating in the Lurol festival in Tibet.
Participants in the Lurol festival seek protection from evil, and perform both ceremonial and festive rites derived from native, Buddhist and Bon traditions.

My favorite subject, and what I aspire to write about in the future would be the religiously driven fanaticism driven relentlessly into a fever pitch that tore central Europe apart during the 17th century. The period of the Thirty Years War and the Wars of Religion in France have been a focus of my reading for years, and shall continue to be.

I was so glad to meet all of my fellow graduate students in the St. Mary’s University Public History program, and look forward to working with all of you and learning more about your own interests!

Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage – Smithsonian Institute

Me Siento Muy…Excited!

Hello everyone! My name is Sara Ramirez and I am super excited to be part of the inaugural year of the Public History graduate program at St. Mary’s University. I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor’s of Science and Arts in Biology and have since spent my professional career in informal education. I’ve worked as an educator at the San Antonio Zoo and the Doseum, the Children’s Museum of San Antonio. Presently, I am a Library Assistant with the San Antonio Public Library. I am also a member of the 2018 class of the  Alexander Briseño Leadership Development Program.

 

I believe the Public History graduate program will help to integrate my different interests and passions including history, environmental science, sustainability, digital inclusion, and allow for community engagement and collaboration. This is a truly unique and amazing program. I am eager to begin working on different projects and get to know my professors and classmates better!

Hello Public History!

 

An Introduction

Greetings, welcome to the first of many posts in this blog.  My name is Scott, and I have been teaching history for the past 18 years.  This year I am taking on the challenge of graduate school.  I am excited to be here.  The program seems wonderful, and I am working with a great group of professors and students.

My Mission

My main goal as a teacher is to try and make the world a better place, both for my individual students and society at large.  I try to give my students the tools they need to improve their lives and have the maximum opportunities to create the best future for themselves.  By helping the student achieve their potential they go forth into the community and make it a better place.  They become examples to the friends and families and show them that improvement is possible.   Their success in turn improves their neighborhoods and by extension, the community improves.  Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I’m not so successful, but I do my best and keep trying to get through to the students.

Final Thoughts

I am excited at the opportunities that this graduate program will provide for me.  The opportunity to use my education experience to  reach more people has an appeal to me.  I have loved going to museums all my life; having the chance to work in a place like that and helping to develop the exhibits and the displays would be an amazing path for my career.   I am looking forward to making the most of this opportunity.

Back to the future…or the past?

Greetings friends, classmates and anyone and everyone who stumbles upon my humble first blog post!  This photo below serves as a great example of my pursuit of the study of history.  At this point, I bet you are wondering how that photo got taken.  Before you start lecturing, no, I did not take this while driving!  The story is much more interesting and fun!

Road to the past or the future?
Speeding into the past…or the future?

It all started with a trip back home from Port Aransas. My wife and I were returning from a relaxing beach trip in 2013 on Labor Day weekend.  As we were leaving Port A ready for the long drive home, my attention was drawn to a Delorean gassing up at the convenience store.  For anyone who is a fan of the Back to the Future movie trilogy, you know how rare it is to see an actual Delorean with the doors up and parked.   The driver had a smile from ear to ear and was taking pictures with a couple with the doors wide open.  I leaned over to my wife and asked her to pull over so we could get gas and also maybe get a picture with the Delorean.

Missed opportunities and second chances

Now my wife was not feeling well and was ready to get home so she declined to stop and we continued on down the road. We have all had an experience where we were really excited about something and then in the blink of an eye you miss an opportunity. With my study of history, it has mostly been walking into a book store and finding the perfect book to read and then reluctantly setting it down before exiting the store promising to come back later and buy the book.

As we continued to drive into the distance toward home all I could think was that I would never get an opportunity like that again. How often do you see a great opportunity and let it pass by or in this case drive right past it?  For the next hour or so, I wondered how many years it would be before I got another opportunity to see a Delorean.

You know the  point when you are making a long drive back home and all you can hear is radio station static? That’s the point at which I looked into the passenger side mirror to see a car coming in pretty fast. Yep, you guessed it. It was the Delorean. (I’ll tell you how fast it was going later…) At this point I knew this was my moment. As the Delorean sped up, I asked my wife to follow suit beside the car so I could get the perfect picture. I snapped about five photos from my phone, some were blurry but this one photo above captured it perfectly.

Now you are  probably wondering what this has to do with a public history blog. Surprise! I tricked you into reading about history in your spare time. (Muahaha!) When it comes to hearing or telling stories, I’ve often noticed that there are missed opportunities and second chances.  This blog will take the opportunity to share a few stories and online resources that just might spark your curiosity and give you a second chance at learning and loving history. I promise not to make you memorize any dates and there will not be a quiz! Yet…

Telling your story or writing your story? 

So often, I have heard friends tell me how they have thought history was boring but I’ve also noticed something else. If you ask enough good questions, you will find someone’s passion and realize what stories they are interested in. We all tell stories, we just don’t always realize which stories are most important to us and why.  What is your story? Do you know it? Do you actively write the story of your life or do you tend to let others write it for you? How will the story of your life be told by your grandchildren and future descendants?

For as long as I can remember I have always had a passion and interest in history. I’m sure there are points in your life where you can remember an opportunity that passed you by. This blog intends to capture some of those moments and tell or highlight some stories along the way that need telling. I hope that this blog challenges and engages you to think about history in a different way and find your interest whether it’s in a museum, a park, a book, an online resource or maybe even just a phone call to your abuela or meemaw.

Join the ride. Jump in the Delorean! 

Thank you for taking the time to read my first post and know that along the way it will be a wild ride with some ups and downs and maybe an occasional lead foot to catch you up to speed on some stories that you may have missed out on. I promise to try to make it fun and engaging.  I will spend some time sharing my critical thoughts on the past while occasionally using technology to share a new perspective on history.  Some of my favorite topics for potential future blog posts include, San Antonio history, Texas history, Marianist history, history podcasts and maybe even reviewing a book or two in the future.

Please leave a comment about your personal interest in history below and maybe that will help me find some fun topics to write about. If you could jump into a Delorean right now, what era and location of history would you go to and why?

Also, please share this first post on social media so I can get a few new readers and comments!

The Van Hoy Interlude

Photo of Dr. Teresa Van Hoy visiting the St. Mary’s University Public History program!

Having Dr. Van Hoy visit today was a great way to re-awaken an interest in history that has been dormant for a few years. She brought in a great perspective to the class by sharing some great stories and personal testimony about her time as a historian. Dr. Van Hoy helped bring together the history that we are making now with the history from the past. Danielle, a fellow student in the course, was a main source of interest for this visit.

Danielle Garza featured in the “Faces and Voices of History” article

Dr. Van Hoy spoke to us about her previous experience with the history department and how she was able to include her experiences from her history as a student to her future experiences as a future public historian. We ended our visit with Dr. Van Hoy by taking some shots that we can later include on our curriculum vitae and LinkedIn profile. Hopefully we can continue to bring these shared experiences into the classroom. I know they can definitely share some insight and theory to the history that we will be contributing to in regards to this program.

I’ve included some photos with this post. I plan on using my art of photography within this field as we progress into other areas of history. I think that using the areas of “expertise” in your favor is extremely important. “You will all bring something different table in this program,” Dr. Van Hoy stated, and I completely agree with this. Dr. Wieck has made it clear that her expertise that intersects history and technology shows in her work and we should be able to intertwine these trainings and previous works within out time in this program.

Discussing these topics and ways to loop into the public history we are learning was a great way to shed some light on the possibility of what work we can do on a local and state level as well as a national level.

Now let’s just stay on this with the same momentum and we’ll see what happens!

Stay tuned!!!

 

 

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