Although they are among the most important sources of the history
of the American Southwest, the lives of ordinary immigrants from
Mexico have rarely been recorded. Educated and hardworking, Luis G.
Gomez came to Texas from Mexico as a young man in the mid-1880s. He
made his way around much of South Texas, finding work on the
railroad and in other businesses, observing the people and ways of
the region and committing them to memory for later transcription.
From the moment he crossed the Rio Grande at Matamoros-Brownsville,
Gomez sought his fortune in a series of contracting operations that
created the infrastructure to help develop the Texas
economy-clearing land, cutting wood, building roads, laying track,
constructing bridges, and quarrying rock. Gomez describes Mexican
customs in the United States, such as courtship and marriage,
relations with Anglo employers, religious practices, and the simple
home gatherings that sustained those Mexican Texans who settled in
urban areas like Houston, isolated from predominantly Mexican South
Texas. Few of the 150,000 immigrants in the last half of the
nineteenth century left written records of their experiences, but
Gomez wrote his memoir and had it privately published in Spanish in
1935. Crossing the Rio Grande presents an English edition of that
memoir, translated by the author's grandson, Guadalupe Valdez Jr.,
with assistance from Javier Villarreal, a professor of Spanish at
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. An introduction by Thomas
H. Kreneck explainss the book's value to scholarship and describes
what has been learned of the publication history of the original
Spanish-language volume. Valdez's comments provide a lucid and
engaging picture of his grandfather's later life and his
gentlemanly character. This charming little volume provides a
valuable account of a relatively undocumented period in Mexican
Texans' history. Almost unknown to those outside his family, this
narrative has now been "recovered," edited by Valdez and Kreneck,
and made available to a wider, interested public. Guadalupe Valdez
Jr., who translated the Spanish original, is the grandson of Luis
Gomez.Thomas H. Kreneck is the associate director for Special
Collections and Archives and graduate lecturer in public history at
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
General
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