How Mexican Americans Created the 1968 San Antonio Hemisfair
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Texas at El Paso ScholarWorks@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2020-01-01 Mi Feria Es Su Feria: How Mexican Americans Created the 1968 San Antonio HemisFair Gene Thomas Morales University of Texas at El Paso Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Chicana/o Studies Commons, History Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Morales, Gene Thomas, "Mi Feria Es Su Feria: How Mexican Americans Created the 1968 San Antonio HemisFair" (2020). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 3008. https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/3008 This is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MI FERIA ES SU FERIA: HOW MEXICAN AMERICANS CREATED THE 1968 SAN ANTONIO HEMISFAIR GENE THOMAS MORALES Doctoral Program in Borderlands History APPROVED: Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Ph.D., Chair Jeffrey Shepherd, Ph.D. Ignacio Martínez, Ph.D. Guillermina G. Núñez-Mchiri, Ph.D. Robert González, Ph.D. Stephen L. Crites, Jr., Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Gene Thomas Morales 2020 Dedication This project is dedicated to my loving wife, Jennifer Urban-Flores, and all my family in El Paso and San Antonio, that supported me throughout this process. This project is also dedicated to the displaced residents of the HemisFair site and to my grandmother Janie Gutierrez, who passed away in 2019. MI FERIA ES SU FERIA: HOW MEXICAN AMERICANS CREATED THE 1968 SAN ANTONIO HEMISFAIR by GENE THOMAS MORALES, MA DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2020 Acknowledgements Throughout my academic career, certain people have supported me along the way. I want to acknowledge here all the people that have taken this journey with me. It was their support that guided me through the trenches of academia, work, and personal wellbeing. Thank you, this Ph.D. is yours as it is mine. First, I am thankful for the support of my dissertation committee that helped me conceptualize my topic and supported the completion of this project. This project first came about in Jeffrey Shepherd's research seminar that allowed me to explore this topic and, with his guidance, has directed me throughout my academic journey. Ignacio Martínez's guidance upon his arrival at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) gave my fellow graduate students and me the support to continue our work and succeed. Guillermina G. Núñez-Mchiri's discussions and talks gave me the confidence to address my identity formation journey and focus on it within this project. Robert González's kind words and scholarship gave me a foundation to build from and discuss critical issues of the built environment. Finally, without the comments, advice, constant support, and direction from Yolanda Leyva, this project would cease to exist. For all this, I thankful for my committee members. I am also thankful for the support I received from UTEP’s Department of History and UTEP’s Graduate School. I want to thank the faculty and staff at the UTEP Department of History, which include Brad Cartwright, Charles Martin, Ernesto Chávez, Charles Ambler, Selfa Chew, Sandy McGee Deutsch, Paul Edison, Michael Topp, Larisa Veloz, and Gary Kieffner. Also, thanks to the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, the UTEP Graduate School Dodson Research Grant and Graduate Education Fellowship for its financial support that allowed me to complete and research this topic. v In addition to the scholars above, thank you to my fellow graduate students and friends that have helped me along the way of completing my dissertation. David Robles, Maria Vallejo, Shawn Warswick, Ian Lee, Kris Klien, Mike Bess, Daniel Santana, Jaime Ruiz, Kevin Guay, Carolina Monsivais, Jessica DeJohn Bergen, Cecilia Gutierrez Venable, Dennis J. Aguirre, Joanna Camacho Escobar, Jecoa Ross, and Cynthia Renteria, all members of the UTEP History Ph.D. program and friends that influenced my thinking and research in some way. Without their support, I would not have been able to get through coursework, the writing process, and historically conceptualizing this project. I would especially like to thank Aurelio Saldaña, Juan Carlos Varela, Angelina Martinez, Tito Gonzalez, ReAnn Swanson, Sam Evans, Raúl Muñoz, and Ana Salazar, whose support and friendship I hold dear. I cherish the in-depth discussions we had while eating burritos, tacos, drinking spirts, and listening to Selena in El Paso, San Antonio, Iowa, and at various conferences. They all kept me moving forward throughout graduate school and comforted me in my time of need. I would be remiss not to name the friends that have been with me since my time growing up in San Antonio, as an undergraduate at Palo Alto College (PAC), as a transfer student at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), and in El Paso. These include Adam Mendez, Mandy Mendez, Eric Porto, Richard Montanez, Celeste Lee, Robert Ramirez, Jerry Dominguez, and my cousin Matt Gutierrez who have been with me since our time at South San Antonio High School. Thank you, Mike Perez, who became a big brother to me at UNI and kept on encouraging me to do better. Thank you, Alicia Ford and Joel Ford, for giving me a sense of family in Iowa and allowing me to stay with you in Austin to conduct my research. A special thanks go to Michael Dominguez and Elsa Trevino, whose enduring friendship helped me succeed not only in academia but in life. This mention is not enough to show how gracious I am for everything you have done for my family. I vi also like to thank the phenomenal staff at PAC and UNI, which include Charlie Garcia, Juanita Wright, Rita and Roland Carrillo. Who without their educational guidance, I would not have been able to attend UNI for my undergraduate degree or UTEP for graduate school. In addition, I am very thankful for my fellow high school teachers Robin Lerma and Israel Gallegos that kept encouraging me to complete my Ph.D. Finally, a very special and deep-felt thank you to Thomas Connors, my friend and mentor, who took a chance on a young student from San Antonio and gave me the guidance I needed to succeed as a student and historian. Your friendship continues to guide me as a scholar today. I want to also thank all the special collections and archival depositories that helped me bring this story of HemisFair and San Antonio together. These archives include the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Library Special Collections, University of North Texas Libraries, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the TCU Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral History Project, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Special Collections and Archives, San Antonio Municipal Archives and Records, San Antonio Conservation Society, LBJ Presidential Library, and the National Security Archives. Finally, thank you to my family, who has been the most supportive group throughout my academic career and during this project. In El Paso, I must thank the Urban Family and Padilla Family for giving me the support and opening your home to me to complete my project. In San Antonio, thank you to the Morales Family and Gutierrez Family, who always gave me great material and helped me learn about our families' history as a young boy in San Antonio. The story of HemisFair is as much a part of my family's journey in the twentieth century as it is part of San Antonio's history. As the youngest son of eight children, I owe a debt to my older siblings, and vii their partners that prayed for me, protected me, and helped me succeed throughout my life. Thank you to my brothers, sister, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, and their families: Greg, Gabriel, and Marissa Morales, Geoffrey Morales and Jackie Sevier, Gerard and Shelly Morales, Mary Ann and Paul Mallin, Gary and Mari Morales, and Gilbert Morales and Sarah London. A special thank you to my parents Calestro and Sylvia Morales, who gave me the love, guidance, prayers, and spirit to move on with this project. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Jennifer Urban-Flores, for loving me and helping me in graduate school every step of the way. She saw this project develop while at UTEP when it was just a paper, and I am happy to share this moment with her now that it is complete. Without your love, emotional support, and intellectual guidance, this project would not have been possible, thank you. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Fantasy Heritage of San Antonio’s Confluence of Cultures .................................25 San Antonio before the United States ...................................................................................26