In this Issue of Voices of Mexico
Content

Our Voice

The unam San Antonio at Eighty
Paula de Gortari Pedroza

Establishing a National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) campus abroad opened the possibility of reflecting about its symbolism in the university and the country’s history. The site where our campus was founded in 1944 in the city of San Antonio is fundamental for explaining a large part of bilateral relations between Mexico and the United States. It has already been eighty uninterrupted years of activities directed at the com-munity residing here.

The Alamo Plan: A Transformative Journey
To Preserve and Expand the Legacy of Texas
Jonathan Huhn

The Alamo, a site deeply intertwined with the spirit of Texas, stands as a testament to a history rich in courage, conflict, and cultural exchange. As one of the most iconic landmarks in the United States, the Alamo attracts 1.6 million visitors each year, eager to connect with the stories of those who shaped the state’s past. However, the Alamo’s history spans far beyond the well-known events of the Texas Revolution, encompassing over 300 years of cultural and historical significance. To fully honor and preserve this legacy, the Alamo Trust, Inc., in collaboration with local and interna-tional partners, has embarked on a visionary $550 million redevelopment project known as the Alamo Plan.

Juan O’Gorman’s Mural
The Confluence of Civilizations
In San Antonio, Texas
Miguel García Audelo

From my point of view, the Mexican Revolution is a kind of spiral: a flat curve that indefinitely turns around a point through time like the hermeneu-tics that we historians make of it. As the years go by, the curved interpretations distance and project themselves in a way that is so disproportionate that its true dimensions can be disregarded. What is more, just to make the original topic of study more complex, that same curve often divides into others that follow their own paths.

Urban Renewal and Cultures,
Strategies and Challenges
Alejandro Mercado-Celis

Urban renewal through large-scale cultural projects has become prominent as an effective strategy for revitalizing urban areas in decline. These projects, known as culture-led regeneration strategies, seek not only to improve physical infrastructure, but also to renew cities’ social and economic fabric. As cities around the world face challenges stemming from deindustrialization, glob­alization, and migration, culture-led urban regeneration strategies have emerged as a viable response for restoring urban identity and fostering sustainable development.

The Alamo Collection: A Testament to the
Rich History and Cultural Heritage of Texas
Ernesto Rodriguez

The Alamo stands as a symbol of Texas’ enduring spirit; a place where history has been both made and preserved for over 300 years. While the Battle of the Alamo is undoubtedly the most well-known event associated with this historic site, the Alamo’s story is far more expansive. This narra-tive is richly documented through the Alamo Collection, a growing repository of artifacts that now includes approximately 5,000 items that contrib-ute to the broader understanding of the site’s history. The Alamo Collection, enhanced by acquisitions such as the Phil Collins Collection and the Donald and Louise Yena Spanish Colonial Collection, is a cornerstone of the ongoing $550 million redevelopment project known as the Alamo Plan. Central to this plan is the creation of a $185 million visitor center and museum, which will showcase the entire collection, telling the full, complex story of the Alamo.

Education at the Alamo

Alex Rivard

For decades, students from Texas and beyond have visited the Alamo on field trips. As the most visited site in the state of Texas and a storied his-toric landmark, it’s practically a rite of passage. However, providing a responsible and meaningful educational experience for the tens of thousands of students who visit yearly presents a unique set of challenges.

“The Alamo” of Myth, Propaganda,
And Utilitarian Mediatization
The Construction/Consecration
Of a Unilateral, Distorted Memory
Francisco Peredo

The myth of “The Alamo” as the great epic battle in the history of the United States —not only of Texas— has been consolidated by all manner of means: paintings, engravings, comics (like Texas History Movies), diverse memorabilia (plates, knives “of the era,” press articles, handguns , etc.), films, television series, documentaries, and books (with contradictory perspectives and based on a good number of cases). The most important may have been the construction of the physical infrastructure that has become a space of civic worship, ideal for the construction of citizenship, to forge feelings of identity and belonging, and, ominously, for the systematic exclusion of the “others” (Native Americans, Afro-descendants, and Mexi-cans), who also belong to this history that white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, racists and supremacists have appropriated for themselves and exploited as “their legacy” to systematically manipulate and utilize as a powerful ideological weapon, giving rise to the racism, marginalization, and demoniza-tion of the “others” from 1836 until today, based on distortion.

Paradiplomatic Relations
Between Mexico and Texas
Roberto Zepeda

Introduction
The United States is Mexico’s main trading partner, and that relationship has been strengthened over the last three decades as a result of the North American Free Trade Agree­ment (NAFTA), replaced a few years ago by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). From a subnational point of view, export, import, investment, and employment figures show Texas to be one of the U.S. states that trades most with Mexico, making it our main commercial partner.