In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo

Innovators Are Using Digital Tools to Tell Stories of the City’s Black and Latinx History

In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there for Texas independence and that their sacrifice will never be forgotten. The didactics urge the public to observe this history with solemnity and reverie.

Yet the story is one-sided. While there were many root causes of the Alamo siege, one of the most important was that Texas Anglos were fighting Mexican soldiers to uphold slavery. In San Antonio, as in many …

The Struggle for a Latino Place in Chicago

Like Their Black Neighbors, Mexican Americans Fought for Decades to Access Restricted Housing and Urban Space

In June of 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference headed north to Chicago to lead the Chicago Freedom Movement in a series of marches …

My Brother, the Acclaimed Artist from the East L.A. Barrio

A Very Personal Chronicle of Painter Salomón Huerta’s Journey to the Whitney Biennial and Beyond

My brother, Salomón Huerta, is an internationally recognized visual artist. When I think about his rise in the art world, I can’t help but reflect on how far he came, …

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants

In Depression-Era San Antonio, Polarized Portraits of Mexicans Appealed to the Biases of Readers

In August 1930, an editorial writer for the largest newspaper chain on Earth proclaimed: “THE FARMER rids his barn of rats, his hen-house of weasels … the government of the …

Ritchie Valens, Selena, and Filming the American Dream

Producer Moctesuma Esparza and Writer-Director Luis Valdez Talk About How to Tell Stories that Reflect the Reality of America Today

How can a movie with a Mexican-American theme tell the story of all America? Why aren’t there more movies that reflect the increasingly complex racial and ethnic demography of our …

Movies’ Most Memorable Mexican-American Moments

From Stand and Deliver to Giant, These Are Hollywood's Strongest Cinematic Depictions of America’s Third Largest Ethnic Group

For better or for worse, when many Americans think about Italian-Americans, they think of The Godfather. When it comes to Irish-Americans, it’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And for Chinese-Americans, …