Pastime Annex

Just received today, a prospectus from Yolanda Arauza. I'm posting it for her here while she and the rest of you learn the ropes of posting to the weblog. Comments and questions about Yolanda's prospectus are now welcome to the e-mail list.

Working Title: Urban Renewal in the city of Crystal City, Texas and its impact on the Mexican American community.

Summary: Crystal City, Texas: the "Spinach Capital of the World," and the birthplace of the Raza Unida Party. It is located in the Winter Garden Area and in the heart of Chaparral/Brush Country in South Texas. Crystal City adopted the General Neighborhood Renewal Plan under the Urban Renewal Agency in 1959. This plan called for urban rehabilitation to be carried out in stages over a period to not extend beyond ten years. By the end of the 1970s, the federal government had injected approximately fourteen million dollars into the community’s urban renewal projects and low-income housing. (Note: The actual Urban Renewal Records were destroyed, I have attempted to reconstruct the history and impact on the community through city records and oral history interviews).

Tentative Thesis statement: Blight elimination or economic development? Urban renewal projects in Crystal City displaced hundreds of Mexican American families. While many benefited from the construction of new homes, numerous Mexican American business owners on the main thoroughfare lost their businesses--some through the power of eminent domain--and were never able to recover financially.

Preliminary Sources:

Primary Sources:
City Records from the City of Crystal City
Ordinance Books, City of Crystal City
Deed Records filed at the Zavala County Courthouse
Urban Renewal Plan on file in the city office of the City of Crystal City
Oral History Interviews Rodolfo Palomo and Severita Lara.

Secondary Sources:

John Staples Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town. University of Notre Dame Press: Indiana, 1974.