San Antonio is home to an unsuspecting 5-acre garden filled with unique sculptures and benches that have fallen into disrepair in the last century. The garden is known as Miraflores.
Its founder, Aureliano Urrutia, was a renowned surgeon who fled Mexico in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution. He built the garden to reflect his birthplace of Xochimilco — a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mexico City.
TPR’s Arts & Culture reporter Jack Morgan examined the garden and the story behind the man who created it.
El Paso poet and publisher Bobby Byrd died on July 11 at age 80.
Byrd and his wife Lee founded Cinco Puntos Press, an independent press founded in El Paso in 1985.
Cinco Puntos sold and published bilingual children’s books, and nonfiction and fiction out of their colorful brick and mortar store. The authors, which included acclaimed writers like Benjamin Alire Saenz and Dagoberto Gilb, highlighted the diverse community in which they lived.
The Byrds sold their publishing house last year to Lee & Low Books out of New York.
Byrd talked about his career and life to the public radio program “Words on a Wire” on KTEP in 2013.
“Writing is self-discovery and publishing is self-discovery,” he said. “We’ve been very lucky in that way.”
