FollowVolume 9, Number 2
Tickle Your Taste buds Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring 2012) Download PDF Letter from Editor 2 Blue Bell: The Cream Rises to the Top by Naveen Inampudi and Debbie Z. Harwell 8 Sonny Look: A Humble Showman by Debbie Z. Harwell 14 Food for the Body, Food for the Spirit: Irma Galvan and Her […]
Volume 9, Number 1
Houston: Nuestra Historia Vol. 9, No. 1 (Fall 2011) Download PDF Letter from Guest Editor Natalie Garza 2 La Colonia Mexicana: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston by Jesus Jesse Esparza 9 Trailblazers in Houston’s East End: The Impact of Ripley House and the Settlement Association on Houston’s Hispanic Population by Thomas […]
Houston: Nuestra Historia, Letter from the Editor
This issue, Houston: Nuestra Historia, focuses on the history of Mexican Americans in Houston, an often neglected area of discussion. Because Houston was not established as a Spanish colonial city, its history as one of Texas’s Mexican American communities is overlooked.
La Colonia Mexicana: Mexican Americans in Houston
By Jesus Jesse Esparza In 1836 newcomers from the United States along with their Tejano (Texas Mexicans) allies, took up arms against the Mexican government and successfully seceded from that nation. Following the Battle of San Jacinto, which ended the Texas Revolution, Texians (Anglo Texans) ordered Mexican prisoners to clean the swampland on which Houston […]
Trailblazers in Houston’s East End: Ripley House and the Settlement Association
The turn of the twentieth century marked a period of accelerated population growth for Houston, and Houston’s Second Ward followed suit. The people who moved to Houston came from a wide array of countries and from other states. Many of these people settled into the aging housing stock located in the Second Ward.
The “Mother Church” of Mexican Catholicism in Houston
On August 18, 1912, a priest celebrated the first mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Houston’s Second Ward on the second floor of a two-story wood-frame structure located on the corner of what was then Marsh and Runnels Street. Three weeks later, on September 8, 1912, the school at Our Lady of […]
Lydia Mendoza: Houstonian and First Woman of Tejano Music
Lydia Mendoza was born in Houston Heights on May 21, 1916, to parents who had fled the Mexican Revolution. Rising to fame in the 1930s in the Southwest United States, Mendoza became known as the Queen of Tejano and the first icon of Mexican American pop culture. Despite her popularity at the time, discrimination against […]
The Chicano Movement in Houston and Texas: A Personal Memory
The Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was essentially a grassroots community insurrection and rebellion against a stifling racism and oppression that strangled the Latino and Black communities of Houston and Texas in that time, and a determination to fight and defeat it. We sought to bring the Mexican American out of second-class citizenship […]
House Special: Mexican Food & Houston Politics
By Mikaela Garza Selley From their beginnings, restaurants have served as more than just places to eat; people use restaurants as social centers and community landmarks. This is especially true in ethnic neighborhoods, where minority entrepreneurs have historically used their establishments to engage in civic activism. Doneraki Authentic Mexican Restaurant, Merida Mexican Café, Villa Arcos […]
Finding A Way: Developing the Center for Mexican American Studies at UH
The impetus for the Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Houston came from the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), a student group that began pressuring the University to establish Mexican American Studies in 1970. In the spring of 1971, a committee of faculty and MAYO representatives developed a proposal and the program became […]