Latinx Heritage Month

Ire'ne Lara Silva

Rebecca Flores

In 1975, Rebecca Flores established a large membership among the Rio Grande Valley farm workers at the United Farm Workers' offices in San Juan, Texas. With these organized farm workers, Rebecca and her committed staff provided social services where there were none; she advocated for change in state services that did not consider the unique needs of farm workers, their migrancy, their poverty, and their language.  

After being trained by the famous leaders Cesar Chavez and Fred Ross, she and farm workers organized dozens of committees in the colonias of the Rio Grande valley that then fought to raise wages and working conditions in the fields; elected politicians that would introduce and fight for good farmworker legislation; and who would fund projects that would upgrade the living conditions of colonia residents, through developing an infrastructure of streets, sewage systems, street names, electricity, water, etc.

From 1983 to 1988, she helped pass legislation for workers' compensation for injured farm workers and unemployment compensation, raised the Texas minimum wage, prohibited the use of the short-handled hoe, provided for toilets and potable drinking water in the fields, and passed protective Pesticide Right to Know legislation.  

She led annual campaigns in the Texas onion fields to raise piece rates. She also organized mushroom pickers in Florida and strawberry and grape pickers in California, which resulted in union contracts.    

Rebecca was the State Director of the National AFL-CIO for three years. In December 2005, she retired from her union job.  

Since 2014, she has been following the situation of refugee mothers and children being detained in Karnes City and Dilley, Texas. This detention is based on the determination by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that they pose a national security risk. After Governor Abbot signed Senate Bill 4, with the help of two other women in San Antonio, she formed the Pro Immigrant Coalition in San Antonio, a grassroots organization with 300 members that supports advocates for policy changes for undocumented immigrants. In the last year, she has become involved with her neighborhood residents who are feeling the effects of gentrification.  

Along the way, she raised three intelligent children committed to justice in their work.

Joseph M. Fonseca Jr. is a Political Science (Govt.) Instructor at Palo Alto College.

Manuel Garza

Manuel Diaz Garza is a lifelong San Antonio and Texas resident, as his family dates back to 1540. Garza is a community organizer in San Antonio. His involvement in creating positive change began at age five by helping his Mom get signatures on a petition to ask for running water in their neighborhood. At the time, water was delivered in wooden barrels in many parts of Westside San Antonio, including Edgewood. 

Garza's mark in history starts with his participation and involvement in the 1968 Edgewood High School student walkout and fight for equitable public education funding in Texas and the country. Manuel walked out in 1968 in response to education inequities. Garza also lost multiple family members in the San Antonio flood of 1921, a sign that generations of his lineage have been entrenched in the disinvestment of the Westside. 

Garza, along with others, have continued their work for equity. Garza first worked through the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and La Raza Unida Party and served as Central Texas organizer, ran for Hays County Commissioner Pct. 2 in 1972, and served as Raza Unida Party Bexar County Chair. Garza is also part of the community-led effort for the City of San Antonio's 1970s move to elect the San Antonio City Council by single-member districts. The change followed the Voting Rights Act of 1975, in which the U.S. Justice Department found the city's previous annexations disenfranchised minorities. While there was local pushback and a fight to challenge the decision, the citizens of San Antonio approved the single districts in January 1977. 

Manuel serves as Chair of the Alamo Colleges District Westside Education & Training Center (WETC) Advisory Board. Previously, Garza served on the Edgewood ISD Board of Trustees. Garza was instrumental in developing a 2-and-a-half-year-long progress to establish WETC. 
Manuel works with the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project as a Senior Advisor to improve opportunities for Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Latinos, Blacks, Asian American Pacific Islanders, and other persons and communities of color in voter registration and education. Manuel is a Graduate of the Development Training Institute National Internship in Community Economic Development with Accreditation from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, with 30 toward his Masters in Community Economic Development. 

Patssi Valdez

Patssi Valdez, born and raised in East Los Angeles, is a visual artist and a founding member of the art collective ASCO. As the only female member of Asco, Valdez’s wide artistic range–which includes performance art, conceptual art, installations, murals, fashion design, collage, photography, easel painting, and set design–was crucial to the group’s role in expanding the definition of Chicana/o art into alternate creative realms that went beyond traditional media such as murals and posters. Asco’s artistic practice was performative and conceptual, taking on various forms, such as staged events and street performances. Her artistic contributions in ASCO challenged the dominant narrative of the Chicano Movement and Chicano Art to provide an expanded and contemporary vision of Chicana/o identity.

Valdez received her BFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and was named outstanding alumni in 1985. In her visual art practice, Valdez works to capture her internal world and spaces she both inhabits and re-imagines. Since the late 1980s, Valdez has gone on to develop some of her most recognizable works, a body of images that are Neo-Expressionistic and Surrealistic in form and content and are both autobiographical while also pushing back on traditional depictions of American domesticity and Chicanismo. Her work has contributed to an ongoing Chicana feminist critique and examination of the sociopolitical reality of the Chicana/o community living in the United States.

Valdez has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions such as Les Démons Des Anges, Halle du Centre de Recherche pour le Développement Culturel, Nantes, France, 1989; A Precarious Comfort, The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA, 1999; ASCO No Movies, (Touring Exhibition 2013-2014) Nottingham Contemporary, UK, 2013; Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2017; and L.A. Memo Chicana/o Art 1972-1989, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles, 2022.

Her work is highlighted in the newly inaugurated Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California, 2022. Her artwork is in major collections, including the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Valdez continues making art in her studio in Los Angeles. 

Shelley Lares

Nicknamed "Little Miss Dynamite" for her many talents, Shelly Lares has been one of the most enduring artists in the Tejano music scene for over 40 years and a member of the Tejano Roots Hall of Fame. She has a large, devoted following due to her powerful singing voice and charismatic stage presence. She is a Tejano Music Icon, musician, songwriter, producer, guitarist, percussionist, business owner, and activist. She has been nominated for and won several categories for the Tejano Music Awards, Pura Vida Awards, Cyber Awards, My Tejano Awards, Grammys, Latin Grammys, and many more.

Lares recorded her first record at the age of 10 with The Hot Tamales Band, which was when she was introduced to Tejano Music. Lares stayed with them for four years, recording five 45 records before branching out independently and signing with Manny Guerra at 17. She recorded for Manny Music between 1989 and 1995. Her fifth album, "Quiero Ser Tu Amante," was a breakthrough and landed inside the Top 40 of the Latin Albums Charts. Her biggest hit, "Soy Tu Amor," which she co-wrote with JJ Reyes, was the most Latin-played song of 1994. After leaving Manny, she signed to Sony Discos, and her self-titled 1996 album "Shelly" peaked at 35 on the Top Latin Albums Chart, and its single "Siempre Lo Esperare" was recognized by BMI that same year. It reached number 18 on the Regional Mexican charts. It allowed her to record half of the album in Nashville alongside country superstar Vince Gill, who was featured on guitar and vocals. It solidified her as a cross-over country music artist, and she performed several shows with major country artists.

 
In 2012, she started her record label, Shellshock Records 3, which allowed her complete control of recordings, manufacturing, distribution, and sales. "Renacer" in 2012 was the first off her label and did well on the digital charts and continued to rack up sales years after the initial release. Her 2015 album "De Mi Corazon" was nominated for a Latin Grammy in the best Tejano Album category. Her 2019 album "Obra De Amor" earned success in sales and won Single Of The Year for "Devuelveme El Corazon" at the Tejano Music Awards. 

She has collaborated with artists such as Little Joe, Ruben Ramos, Jay Perez, Elida Reyna, Ram Herrera, David Mares, and many others. This earned her another nickname, "Queen of Collabs," with over 30 collaborations in her career, the most of any Tejano artist. One of her most successful collaborations has been with Elida Reyna and Stefani Montiel as Las Tres Divas. They toured the United States, Japan, Guam, and Korea. They received a Grammy Nomination for Best Mexican American Album and a Latin Grammy nomination for their album "Las Tres Divas."

She has since received several lifetime achievement awards, most recently the Human Rights Campaign Legacy Award, for her work and representation in her community. 

Celebrating 40 years in the industry in 2022, Shelly decided to retire from the road and, as an artist, to work on her label ShellShock Records 3. She signed her first exclusive artist, El Gallo Dez, in April of 2023, opened her recording studio, and is following her love for hospice through music therapy. Shelly was named the first-ever artist-in-residence at the University of Texas San Antonio and will begin teaching in late October 2023. She will be featured on the series "Leguizamo Does America" with John Leguizamo in 2025, highlighting her career. She continues to be a trailblazer and an advocate for new artists. 

"Jimmy" James Canales

Jimmy James Canales is a sculptor and performance artist based in San Antonio, TX. His work explores his Mexican-American / Tejano identity through imaginative installations and proxy performance sculptures.

Canales received his BFA from the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston and his MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Locally, he has exhibited work at Artpace, Sala Diaz, Presa House, The Contemporary at Blue Star, and the McNay Art Museum. At the national level, his work has been exhibited at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago, IL, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) in San Jose, CA, and the Great Jones Gallery in Seattle, WA.

Canales is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most notably the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Award for Artists from the Dallas Museum of Art (2015), the Tanne Foundation Award (2016), The Contemporary at Blue Star Berlin Residency Program at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE (2019) and the 2024 Individual Artist Grant from the Department of Arts & Culture in San Antonio, TX. He works as a Lecturer in Studio Art at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Growing up in San Antonio, the iconic San Antonio Missions have loomed large in my imagination since I was young, and I have been shaped by the stories surrounding them. These UNESCO Heritage sites are unique and fundamental to the city’s identity. However, their stories are also complex and tangled in the history of Spanish Colonialism. I want to ask the question: In what ways can we expand our relationship with the missions? What would happen if the Missions came to life?

This project imagines the Missions coming to life. I affectionately call this project Mission Bots. I have created a sculptural installation that moves between tableau, altar, and tabletop role-playing games. The intricately constructed figurines, which are the same scale as 1980s Transformers toys, will navigate a giant human gameboard. Individually outfitted and expressing different attributes, superpowers, or shortcomings, these figures will tell a story of fantasy, play, and transformation.

Juan Tejeda

Juan Tejeda retired in 2016 as a Mexican American Studies and Music professor at Palo Alto College in San Antonio, Texas. A writer, musician, educator, ex-Jefe Segundo of Xinachtli (the first traditional Mexica-Azteca Conchero dance group in Texas), arts administrator, and activist, from 1980 to 1998, he was the Xicano Music Program Director at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center where, among his many duties, he founded and directed the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio. He is the button accordionist for the Conjunto Aztlan, and he and his wife, Anisa Onofre, are the publishers of Aztlan Libre Press, a small, independent publishing company based in Yanawana that is dedicated to the publishing, promotion, and free expression of Indigenous/Xicanx literature and art.