March 18, 2019 | UHCL Staff
Houston’s history is filled with stories of Mexican-American activists and organizations that have mobilized the community toward change. Lydia Newcomb, who will be receiving her master’s in cross cultural and global studies from University of Houston-Clear Lake in May, is presenting an exhibit titled, “¡Ya Basta!” in the Julia Ideson Building in the Houston Metropolitan Research Center on April 4 from 6-7:30 p.m.
Newcomb is completing a 500-hour internship at the research center, culminating in this exhibit. Her studies are overseen by Associate Professor of Anthropology and Cross Cultural Studies Maria Curtis.
“We are thrilled to have our students working closely with the Houston Metropolitan Research Center,” said Curtis. “This is an incredible community resource that contains many powerful, untold local stories about our history as a city. Lydia’s research makes important contributions to understanding how Houston’s Latino community experienced the Civil Rights era, and how they organized for better educational opportunities.”
“The name of the project, ‘¡Ya Basta!,’ is a kind of a rallying yell,” Newcomb said. “In Spanish, it means ‘stop now!’ and it’s used in marches and posted on signs. I used it because it’s in papers and flyers, so when it came time to call the exhibit something, it made sense,” she said.
The exhibit examines some highlights of Mexican-American activism in Houston during the 1960s and 1970s. “There are original cartoons, as well as materials about the huelga (strike) schools, which were alternative schools in Houston set up in response to Houston Independent School District’s reintegration program,” Newcomb said.
Houston ISD refused to consider Latino students as a minority for the purpose of desegregating schools, so they were reintegrating students into black schools, not white schools, she explained. Many students boycotted Houston public schools and began attending huelga schools.
Additionally, Newcomb said the exhibit would spotlight material from the Moody Park riots, which were very serious in Houston. “The phrase ‘¡Ya Basta!’ was used a lot during these riots, which stemmed from the high-profile murder of a young Mexican-American man named José Campos Torres, whose death in 1977 was due to police brutality,” she said. “The Hispanic community was very upset about it and there were marches and (political satire) cartoons coming out from the trial. There were riots and marches over his murder.”
The exhibit also covers the United Farm Workers’ Minimum Wage March, which took place between Memorial Day and Labor Day 1966. “These workers marched from the Rio Grande Valley to Austin and ended upon the Capitol steps to protest for a minimum wage of $1.25,” she said. “They had a huge rally and there are great photos from this event.”
Newcomb said she felt strongly about presenting this exhibit. “I feel we are standing on the shoulders of giants as Latinos,” she said. “These are issues we still see today. This is just a taste of the difficulties that people worked hard to overcome in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s a rich time period for civil rights and it was wonderful for me to put this together.”
For more information about UHCL’s anthropology program, visit www.uhcl.edu/human-sciences-humanities/departments/social-cultural-sciences/anthropology.
