“The Mexican Legacy of Texas”: A Public Humanities Program in Texas

This year Texas celebrates the sesqui­centennial of its independence from Mexico and the creation of the Republic of Texas, which enjoyed an indepen­dent existence for ten years. Although the events of 1836 separated Texas and Mexico politically, the two states remain linked by their 1,800-mile border and a host of reciprocal influences.

Three examples of this inter-relation­ship are evident for most Texans. First, the shared border has spawned a series of twin cities, straddling the Rio Grande River. Second, immigration (both legal and illegal) is a long tradition along the border. In the early nineteenth century it was typified by Anglo-Americans seeking land in Mexican Texas and now by Mexican nationals seeking employ­ment in Texas. Finally, there is the familial link, joining peoples on both sides of the border in powerful bonds of kinship, culture, and language.

It is increasingly clear that a resolu­tion of the political and economic issues confronting the two states is impossible unless, according to Professor Richard Sinkin of the University of Texas, these questions ” . . . are placed in a larger context of the cultural and intellectual environment within which they func­tion.” He adds: “In effect, there is a need to enhance each society’s under­standing of the other’s ‘cultural identi­ty,’ that complex of attitudes, values, and behavior that forms the basis of fundamental beliefs.”

The Texas Committee for the Hu­manities has decided to use the occasion of this one hundred and fiftieth anni­versary of the political separation of the two states to conduct a series of major public programs on the theme, “The Mexican Legacy of Texas.” In the course of this year, the Texas Commit­tee, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will sponsor a special program on the sub­ject at the annual meeting of the Texas State Historical Association, a November symposium on “The Mexican Lega­cy of Texas,” and a printed compilation of this scholarship to be produced by Texas A&M University Press.

Richard Sinkin is an associate profes­sor of Latin American history on the Austin campus of the University of Texas and currently serves as executive di­rector of the Latin American Studies Association. He played a key role in advising the Texas Committee for the Humanities on the issues they should explore in their programming plans for the 1986 series. In particular, he singled out three critical items: “The way in which language functions on both sides of the border; the effect of living with a border that divides and unites two high­ly divergent cultures; and the impact of population flows on the cultures of both societies.” These subjects will form the focus of the events scheduled by the Committee.

The programs will be inaugurated on March 8 in Austin at the annual meeting of the Texas State Historical Associa­tion, the state’s oldest learned society. For the third consecutive year, the Tex­as Committee for the Humanities has been accorded a special place on the Association’s agenda and this time it will introduce its portion of the proceedings with a keynote luncheon address on the “Mexican Legacy” theme by Professor Arnoldo DeLeón, a historian on the faculty of San Angelo State University. The author of a recent work on The Tejano Community, 1836-1900, Professor DeLeón will explore the basis of His­panic culture in Texas and asserts that “a dynamic Tejano community thrived in Anglo Texas all along and that Te­jano history neither starts with the mass migrations of the twentieth century . . . nor in the 1960s with Chicano activists.”

An afternoon panel, also sponsored by the TCH and open to the public, will continue the “Mexican  Legacy” theme. It will feature David J. Weber of the Southern Methodist University history department; anthropologist José Limon of the University of Texas at Austin; and Nicolás Kanellos, editor of the Re­ vista Chicano-Riqueña and professor of Hispanic literature at the University of Houston. As a backdrop to these learned discussions, the Committee is arranging to have on hand two traveling exhibits, which it originally funded. One is on the Mexican War and another on Hispanic theater of the Southwest, a project that has been viewed by audi­ences throughout the United States and in sites in Europe.

This fall the “Mexican Legacy” theme will be continued by the Texas Committee at its annual Texas Lecture and Symposium on the Humanities, now scheduled to take place in San Antonio on November 7 and 8. Setting the tone for the November 8 Symposium will be the annual lecture, sponsored by the TCH, on the previous evening. This year’s speaker will be Professor Miguel León-Portilla, director of the Institute of Historical Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mejico and chair of the Republic’s commission to commemorate the Quincentenary of Columbus’ 1492 voyage. A noted authority on Mexico’s pre-Columbian cultures, Professor León-Portilla has recently focused his attention on the northern regions of his homeland and has written on the borderlands as a distinctive feature of Mexican society. His address will be delivered at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, a structure that dates back to that city’s Spanish colonial history. Appropriately, the event will be cosponsored by the speaker’s home institution, which operates an extension service in the Texas city.

That extension center in San Antonio will then host the following day’s Sym­posium, again devoted to the “Mexican Legacy of Texas” theme. It will be an international event in more than its setting. Humanities scholars from both sides of the border will be featured on the day’s program that will be organized around the original three issues suggested by Professor Sinkin: language, the border, and population flow. The Symposium’s international design is so distinctive that it is Professor Sinkin’s hope that the program will be continued by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma later at its Mexico City campus.

At the conclusion of this year-long series of public events, the Texas Com­mittee for the Humanities has arranged to have the papers, organized as they will be around three central themes, collected, edited, and published by the Texas A&M University Press. In the midst of the host of celebrations of Texas’ independence from Mexico scheduled for 1986, it will be one of the enduring contributions of the Texas Committee for the Humanities to pro­duce this splendid reminder of the state’s origins in the Mexican experi­ence.