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The Rio Grande Valley, is located on the border of Texas and Mexico. The Valley has always seemed different when compared to the rest of the United States. It is possible     I have grown from a unknowing child, to a knowledgeable women. In the eyes and in the mind of a child social injustice is unknown.  For as long as I can remember, there has always been a homeless individual at the corner of 10th street and Expressway 83. This street corner is affiliated as the exit to our Luxury mall. Though the individuals have changed that corner, which is  as always been “home” to someone. If we still see individuals “struggling” in this newer, more advanced era, how was life for the individuals we are finding in the cemetery?

I do not believe the intent of the county was to marginalize these individuals, but to provide a finally resting place that was not our of reach due to what we assume were low income individuals.  Many of the graves we are finding in the cemetery, have been left with small or no headstones. I have seen graves in the cemetery with, wooden crosses, homemade headstones consisting of concrete, as well no headstones at all.  Seeing those graves with no grave offerings or even a headstone at first made me believe, those individuals were simply forgotten by their family members. After reading our articles for the week, as well as reading my classmates responses I suddenly got reminded, we are not dealing with a “high cost cemetery”.

Provided with no information of these individuals resting in the cemetery, we know not how they lived their lives. Because we are dealing with a pauper cemetery directly located next door to a private cemetery. It is evident the pauper cemetery has been neglected through the years as soon as you step foot on the property. While the property line may be invisible, due to the fact there is nothing dividing the two cemeteries physically. You can clearly see the divide of the properties by the luscious green grass of Hillcrest Memorial Park compared to the light brown dirt the covering the majorly of the pauper cemetery.  Not only does the pauper cemetery lack green luscious grass, the grass it does have is over grown, the trees have grown untamed by humans, causing injury to few headstones and graves. This are small injustices on the grand scheme of things.

As a class along will help from the county and the local community, I believe we could solve these small injustices and other injustices that others will call on. The sheer amount of land and graves that are still waiting for our class to visit could be seen sooner if more individuals were to join us in this endeavor. This endeavor, meaning providing the graves with the most information we can gather. By finding the information in the field or searching Valley-wide at funeral homes, who allow us to search through their records that suggest the burial at the pauper cemetery

One of the forms of marginalization and inequality that HCPCP should address is how both we and the community view the pauper cemetery as a whole. The pauper cemetery is surrounded by many negative stereotypes about who was buried there and why. When I first told my friends and family about the project I was asked out right why I would want to work in the “beggar’s field” they also insinuated only the lowest of the low, who had no one were buried there. It is because of this way of thinking so little care up until recently was given to the cemetery ,years of being left alone and practically forgotten the cemetery was in shambles over run with weeds , drugs and a site of ritualistic ceremonies. And with local and state government agencies giving little funding to aid in cleanup of the cemetery not much could be done up until recently. This only fueled public perception of the cemetery, if the agencies that are supposed to maintain cemeteries doesn’t care there is no reason they should.
The stereotypes that surround the Pauper cemetery are false , from working one the project I can say without a doubt that the people buried in the paupers cemetery where very much loved and cared for. Many of the headstones we examined are homemade and show a lot of work and consideration and many of the graves are adorned with grave offerings. While it is true that some of the people buried here may have been the destitute we must be understanding that there could have been unforeseen circumstances that lead them there. The people buried here could have been pillars in their own community but lacked the financial resources to buy a plot in the private cemetery. I also recall that many of those buried there where infants, and as sad it is, many times parents would have to make the choice between their dead child and those who were still alive. Plots are very expensive and if you have several children still alive at home you can’t afford to given them the funeral who might have wanted. It one of the tough choices that exist in our society.
Another and the most common form marginalization and inequality is tied to race and ethnicity. The majority of those buried here are of Hispanic decent, but considering that the majority of the population of the Rio Grande Valley is as well I do not consider race to be a factor in who was buried there only socio-economic status . But directly across from us is the African American cemetery which I do believe was marginalized do to race. While better kept in better shape than the paupers cemetery there is a clear seen difference between it and the private cemetery.
At this point in time we are doing anything to reproduce the inequalities of the past, but we also not doing anything to ramify them either. Going forward I believe that we must keep the community informed about the project. We ourselves must remember not to judge on only what we can see now. That we are not just taking pictures of head stones, but connecting them to real people whose family might still be out there looking for them. And take this as a learning opportunity about how our society functioned in the past , and how we can take those lessons to better our present and future.

Settlement patterns throughout the past 250 years in the Rio Grande Valley have proven to result in the displacement of people of prior communities. When José de Escandón arrived along the banks of the Rio Grande in the mid-1700s with his bands of Spanish colonial settlers to claim the land for the King of Spain, Native American peoples who occupied the region were either displaced or had to assimilate into the life-ways of the new arrivals. One hundred years later, as a result of the American victory in the war with Mexico, ‘Anglo’, or white/non-Hispanic settlers embarked upon the opportunity to acquire a lot of land for little money. At first, many of the newcomers would marry into the Tejano or Mexican-Texan community in order to accumulate wealth and function successfully in the local business community, but eventually, many Anglo settlers would attempt to marginalize the local population by taking over large portions of land that was lost by the heirs of the original Spanish land grantees. With the turn of the 20th century and the installation of the railroad to the Rio Grande Valley, more and more Anglo Americans arrived; attracted to the promise of guaranteed success in farming in the ‘Magic Valley’.

As towns began to emerge along the railroad tracks that ran between Harlingen and Mission, marginalization of the local Hispanic communities became more evident. With land developers building Anglo communities that contained larger lots on the south side of the railroad tracks, the Hispanic population was displaced to smaller lots on the north side of the tracks. Even though the Anglo population was technically the minority population in terms of numbers, somehow they had the power to dictate exactly where the Hispanics could not go to school, where they could not shop and where they could not socialize. So, with each new wave of settlers that has chosen to move to the Rio Grande Valley, displacement of the previous population has occurred. However, fast forward another 100 years to the mid-20th century and you will see a movement of leadership in the Rio Grande Valley shift as Hispanic leaders such as Hector P. Garcia founder of the American G.I. Forum, Raul Yzaguirre of the National Council of La Raza and the Civil Rights movement, and especially in municipal politics where there were several mayors emerged in towns throughout the Valley with Hispanic surnames (e.g., Alfonso Ramirez elected 1st Hispanic mayor of Edinburg in 1963).

I apologize for the long introduction about my theory of marginalization throughout Rio Grande Valley history but I feel it is important to identify trends. The question this week asks us about forms of marginalization or inequality with regard to the HCPCP. The theories at work here are that those who are buried in this Hidalgo County Pauper Cemetery are either from the indigent or low income population, or had no family to claim them at their time of death. In a sense, marginalized because either no one could pay or no one cared. Was this potter’s field initiated in an effort to segregate and marginalize? According to research done for Cemeteries of Texas, this cemetery was appropriated in December of 1913 by the Edinburg Cemetery Association via trustees James H. Edwards, Washington Barton and Plutarco de la Viña. Burials took place in this cemetery between 1913 and 1990. The property as a whole contains four cemeteries. The Restlawn section of the cemetery is the most segregated portion; located in the far, north-westernmost point of the grounds. Mirroring a point in time in Edinburg where schools were segregated as White only, Mexican, and Black, the cemetery system within the Hidalgo County seat appears to be no different.

In the Mullins article, he refers to marginalized communities found on college campuses with respect to archaeological civic engagement projects and urban renewal (92). The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is one of the largest and most recognized Hispanic-serving institutions in the country. I would like to think that the Hispanic community is not marginalized within the walls of this institution nor within the communities at large. As promoted in Shackel’s article, HCPCP is following along the same effort to ‘foster dialogue’ that examines the inequities of society with hopes to bring about a social consciousness (243). We are following this directive by making an effort to engage the local citizens in the scope of this project simply by initiating it. We are examining, recording and analyzing the make-up of this cemetery as a whole.

The students in our class have been collecting data on the gravesites within this cemetery and have found a majority of Hispanic surnames among the buried. Should we equate poverty with the term “Hispanic” as a result? What is interesting about the term ‘Hispanic’ is that there is a constant reference to this being a minority group in this country. I think that it is time to stop using the word ‘minority’ with relation to the word ‘Hispanic’. I know one very strong-minded person who is Hispanic and refuses to be referred to as a ‘minority’ because ‘minority’ means ‘less than’ and no one should feel that he/she is less than anybody else. In fact, the Hispanic population has become the majority in our country. Perhaps someday in the future there will be so much blending of the three biological races (as well as multi-cultural blending) that it will be difficult to clearly identify a person as purely Caucasian, Mongolian or Negroid. So, if we as a society continue to produce inequities among biological races, cultural groups, religious groups or socio-economic groups, then we need to practice more acceptance and understanding than prejudice and exclusion. We cannot change the past, but we can chose to behave in a more tolerable and less fearful manner in order to foster positive change.

The main form of inequality that HCPCP can and should address is economic marginalization. Being a pauper cemetery, the HCPCP is the burial place of the individuals who, for a variety of reasons, could not afford a paid-for burial. These are individuals who may have had a variety of reputations within the community, some extremely positive, but did not possess financial resources. The HCPCP happens to be located in very close proximity to privately owned memorial grounds. Upon entering the vicinity, it is immediately apparent which cemetery has funds and which does not. The HCPCP has seen neglect, not because those in charge do not care, but because resources are minimal. Racial marginalization does occur in many places, though in Hidalgo County, Latino culture is the most prevalent. The vast majority of individuals buried in the HCPCP are of Latino/Hispanic descent, so I do not believe these individuals have been marginalized solely because of their ethnicity. This being said, many of the individuals may have come to Hidalgo County from Mexico or may have come from Mexican families. If any of these individuals were undocumented, they may have had a more challenging time earning money or gaining economic status in the community. In this way, racial and economic marginalization may be linked.

            The individuals who are buried in the HCPCP may have experienced economic marginalization in life, but deserve no less justice than those of higher social standing. This public archaeology class has an opportunity to not only map out the cemetery and locate additional graves, but bring justice to each and every individual. To begin, we can use our social media and university platforms to shine light on this cemetery, reminding inhabitants of Hidalgo County that it does exist and deserves our attention. The occupants of these graves matter and should not be regarded as community outsiders. We can also use said platforms as a reminder to all, of the ongoing issues surrounding social inequality in this community of which we are all members. The HCPCP may no longer operate as a cemetery, but economic marginalization is still very present today. It is important to recognize the issues of the past in order to achieve fairness in the present and future.

I do not believe our public archaeology platform is reproducing economic inequalities. If anything, I believe we are shining light on the inequalities of the past and showing that with hard work and attention, any individual, alive or buried, can and should be shown the respect they deserve. No one deserves to be buried in an overlooked or unmarked grave, regardless of their previous financial means. Archaeologists have the unique opportunity of investigating the ‘forgotten’ in a way that is respectful to the past and beneficial to the future. Paul R. Mullins (2007, pp. 92) states, “Ultimately the goal of an engaged archaeology should be a critical analysis of inequality and not a flood of volunteers who troop off to the PTO to potentially craft collective political interests”. It is undeniable that in certain situations, a profit of some sort may be sought after by a collective of scholarly or political professionals. In our situation, I see the standout gain of our work being our contribution to a stronger community.

Reference:

Mullins, Paul R. (2007) Politics, Inequality, and Engaged Archaeology: Community        Archaeology Along the Color Line. In Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement,        edited by Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, pp. 89-108. Alta Mira Press, Lanham,     MA.