However, new renovations and projects across Central Austin are focusing on bringing together the Mexican-American community to celebrate their history, including the Mexican-American Cultural Center renovations and nearby pocket park entrance, along with ideas for future possible changes at the Fifth Street Mexican-American Heritage Corridor.
A closer look
The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center is actively involved in community engagement for its renovation efforts. Apart from expanding the center and its spaces, one of these changes involves a collaboration between the MACC and the Art in Public Places program in making a public open call for art to be included in the renovations. The search for artists or artists groups will be statewide. Once works are submitted, a couple of artists will be shortlisted and given stipends to create the final art applications.
Project manager Frederico Geib said this project is made possible by a city ordinance instated almost 40 years ago that dedicates funds to making Austin beautiful.
“The artists need to understand what the MACC is, what is the history around the communities that gave birth to the MACC,” Geib said about the 3D or sculptural artistic and historic art for which the city is looking. “Because the opportunity does allude to the fact that, you know, there is a sense of preserving the stories while also pointing towards the future.”
Geib said the project aims to display the power of public art to inspire conversations within the community, and that those conversations can lead to positive changes in Austin.
Another aspect of the MACC renovations is the Rainey 64 Pocket Park project that will become the “gran entrada” or grand entrance to the center. According to writer and historian Martha Cotera, the park is meant to be a historic space of resilience and growth.
“Rainey 64 was added to [the MACC] land after four years of advocacy by the community to prevent a multistory structure from being built in the front entrance to [the MACC]. It’s part of the entrance to [the MACC], and is meant to be a restful and contemplative space,” Cotera said.
The space will include historic markers like panels covering topics from the area's indigenous history, the founding of Austin, the first Mexican-American families, Spanish-style architectural developments and more recent efforts to represent the community.
The space is also reclaiming and including art, as it will add a recreations of the “Los Elementos” mural by local artist Raul Valdez. The original mural was a part of the Juarez-Lincoln University, one of the first Latino study spaces, and was demolished in the 1980s.
“From that collective trauma, many of those folks got engaged into politics and they got engaged into their neighborhood centers to ensure that we could have nowadays places like the Mexican-American Cultural Center and Mexic-Arte,” Geib said about the impact of the mural on the Mexican-American community of Austin.
Because Rainey 64 is an ongoing project, additional details are still being determined. The renovated MACC space is projected to open in summer 2025.
Next steps
Mexic-Arte Museum is the anchor that connects the Rainey Street Historic District with the downtown area. Located at the intersection of Fifth Street and Congress, it was first established as a nonprofit cultural space.
The Mexican-American Heritage Corridor is also located on Fifth Street, which consists of signs marking the area as an important heritage site for the Mexican-American community. The location represents the area where many community members originally opened businesses.
Mexic-Arte Director Sylvia Orozco said she is hopeful the corridor will eventually transform into a historical district in the downtown area.
“I came to UT and was like, ‘Where are the Mexicanos?’ Nothing really Mexican, so it will help maybe then [the community's history] can be taught and local history can be incorporated in what the kids learn in school, and they can see that they belong and then want to do things for the local community to build community pride,” Orozco said.
