What’s Amiss in Tejano History?: The Misrepresentation and Neglect of West Texas

The counties and a few notable settlements of the Edwards Plateau and Trans Pecos regions of Texas. Map drawn for the author courtesy of Brittany Wollman and Mykisha Hampton.

Scholars have contributed much to advancing the understanding of Tejano history, but they have paid only fleeting attention to Tejanos in the sizable region that is West Texas. As a consequence, Tejano historical scholarship has salient faults. First, it has favored South Texas over other regions of the state. Second, the historiography has posited that the same historical forces, developments, and encounters that molded Tejano life in South Texas shaped the lives of West Texas Tejanos. That literature is amiss as it ignores the fact that circumstances particular to West Texas shaped Tejano circumstances there. Third, most works assume that West Texas is an extension of the rest of the state and nothing is distinctive about Tejano life there. Few works suppose that West Texas history has unique features and that differences separate West Texas Tejano history from South Texas Tejano history. Considering the discernible characteristics of West Texas, it cannot be affirmed that forces similar to those that determined the broader Mexican American narrative configured the West Texas Tejano experience. To correct the record, new works should portray West Texas Tejano life as shaped by connectedness to place.

The distortion of West Texas Tejano history is most pronounced in the chronicling of the time period stretching from the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 to about the mid-twentieth century. During that century’s span, West Texas differed from the eastern section of the state in its history, its development, and its character. Not recognizing this peculiarity, historians assumed the Mexican American presence in West Texas to have been not much more than a mirror reflection of Tejano life elsewhere. Sometime around the 1950s, however, West Texas began to resemble more closely other parts of the state. West Texas Tejano history seems to have followed the same trajectory, aligning itself with what occurred in Mexican American history throughout the rest of Texas.

No broad consensus exists on the boundaries outlining West Texas. For some historians, West Texas begins along the 98th longitude, continues along this coordinate towards San Antonio, and there the line takes a turn westward in the direction of a point somewhere between Eagle Pass and Del Rio, then follows the Rio Grande to El Paso. Others perceive West Texas as embracing the breadth of land stretching from the 100th meridian and extending from there toward El Paso County in Far West Texas.¹ A more narrow designation is applied in this essay however. Herein, the region is delineated as encompassing the larger parts of the Edwards Plateau and Trans-Pecos.² Under this configuration, the region’s northern boundaries stretch from modern-day Runnels County, to Midland and Ector Counties and continue west to the New Mexico boundary at El Paso County. Its southern boundary is the Rio Grande extending from El Paso to Kinney County, then north from the border back to Runnels County.

Just as scholars disagree on the exact margins that identify West Texas, so do they differ on what lines demarcate South Texas. In this essay, South Texas is considered to encompass an expanse from Brownsville on the Rio Grande, west to Eagle Pass in Maverick County, northeast to San Antonio, then southeast to about Corpus Christi, and from there back to the Lower Rio Grande Valley.³

With some exceptions, much of the scholarship on Tejanos focuses on this part of the state to the comparative neglect of areas such as West Texas. It stands to reason that major attention would be given to Tejanos in South Texas for developments, traditions, and significant incidents there appeal to the historian’s inquisitiveness.⁴ It is a cultural “Tejano homeland,” in the words of geographer Daniel Arreola.⁵ Noteworthy aspects of the region such as community building traceable to the colonial period attract study, and...