The Rio Grande Valley has been at the center of civil rights movements and demonstrations throughout history.
State lawmaker J.T. Canales investigated the Texas Rangers in a series of legislative hearings in 1919 for their role in state-sanctioned, anti-Mexican violence across the state.
Decades later in 1966, farm workers in Starr County shut down every melon packing shed during the harvest season after the Rangers brutally beat workers who demanded a $1.25 minimum wage.
The Starr County Melon Strikes are believed to help kick-start the Chicano movement of Texas.
Despite its rich history, the Rio Grande Valley — which consists of the four southernmost counties in Texas that share a border with Mexico — often gets left out of important conversations.
Nosotrxs Por El Valle is a group of scholars and activists from the Rio Grande Valley that are working to share this history with the community’s residents.
It has launched a traveling exhibit called “Civil Rights in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Historian Juan Carmona is co-founder of the group.
Carmona, a social studies teacher at Donna High School and part-time lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said he was frustrated by the lack of representation at area museums.
“We didn’t really see ourselves,” he said. “Our lives and the lives of our parents and grandparents and the history we learn from conversations with our elders, [was] just nowhere to be seen.”
Nicholle Moreno, a first-year history major at the University of Texas at Austin and member of Nosotrxs Por El Valle, is a former student of Carmona’s who contributed to the exhibit.
She said working with the group has been an eye-opening experience.
“Working on these panels has given me a sense of pride for my community,” she said. “It allowed me to be able to see there is a rich history where I come from.”
Taylor Seaver, a graduate student in Mexican American Studies at UTRGV and Larissa Gonzales, a graphic designer and graduate student in communication at UTRGV, are also a part of Nostrxs Por El Valle.
Follow Nosotrxs Por El Valle on Facebook here to learn more about the traveling exhibit.
