A Latino Museum opens in San Antonio’s Westside: labor leader Emma Tenayuca among the honored.

The Museuo del Westside opened its doors on October 18th with its inaugural exhibition, “Our Work Transforms the World,” which honors women in the community who were providers or embodied the community’s spirit through their work. The Esperanza Center, led by Graciela Sanchez, conceived of the Museo in 2007 when the Center acquired Ruben’s Ice House, which once served as a community gathering place and a neighborhood grocery store on Guadalupe Street in the heart of the city’s Westside.

A grant from the Mellon Foundation of over a million dollars in 2022 enabled the transformation of the former community space into a museum celebrating the Latino community.

The Museo Del Westside, Sanchez told a large gathering on opening day, is a community participatory museum “dedicated to preserving and presenting the unique history, culture, heritage, pride and diverse experiences” of the large Latino community west of the city’s center. The Museo is located in the historic Rinconcito de Esperanza (Little Corner of Hope) Historic District on the Westside.

Sanchez, the founder and executive director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, a community-based cultural arts and social justice organization, thanked the many women from the Westside whose photos and memorabilia filled the walls and halls of the new Museo.

While the Museo opened in October 2025, the collection of photos and memorabilia has been an ongoing project for the Esperanza staff over the past two decades. Six-foot historic photo banners of community members adorn the outside walls of the front entrance of the Museo.  Inside, to the left of the entrance, stands a collection of large photos of the community’s famed musicians and singers. The inside of what was once Ruben’s Ice House has been wonderfully restored. A jukebox stands ready for patrons to select a favorite song. An old 1940s cash register with shining brass keys awaits the infusion of cash.

I grew up on the Westside. My parents married at the Guadalupe Church, and they moved into their first rented home in the Alazan-Apache Courts across the street from the Museo. The photos of my paternal grandmother, Maria S. Romo, a partera [midwife], and of my aunt Julia Saenz, the midwife who delivered me and my brothers and sister, are prominent in the Partera section of the colorful and informative museo.

The new Westside museo is located a block from the Guadalupe and Progreso theaters. My family lived close to both theaters.  At age six, I walked there with my older brother Henry to see my first movie–I believe it was a Cantiflas or a Tarzan movie. My mother, Alicia Saenz Romo, grew up during the Great Depression and worked as a pecan-sheller, as did her mother and several of her sisters. The champion of the pecan-shellers was Emma Tenayuca, whom my father called the finest orator in Texas. A photo of Emma Tenayuca in the Museo was of special interest to me.

Emma Tenayuca was born in San Antonio in 1916,  the oldest of eleven children. Her mother’s family traced their lineage to early Tejano settlers, while her father’s family descended from the Native people of the region.  As a child, Tenayuca’s grandparents took her to La Plaza del Zacate next to Market Square to listen to political speeches.   Her maternal grandparents, both registered voters, read La Prensa, the Spanish-language newspaper, and debated local and state politics at home.

As a Brackenridge High School student, Tenayuca excelled academically and was a star athlete in two sports. At age sixteen, when women workers at the Finck Cigar Company on Veracruz Street near the Museo went on strike for higher wages, she joined their picket line and was arrested. That experience cemented her dedication to labor activism.

Tenayuca’s most significant contribution to the labor movement in Texas came in January 1938 when twelve thousand pecan shellers—mostly Mexican American women—walked out to protest wage cuts and atrocious working conditions.  At the time, San Antonio was the center of Texas’s pecan industry, producing about half of the nation’s supply. That strike was one of the largest in Texas history and the largest Latino labor strike of its time.

The pecan shellers worked in overcrowded Westside factories. The factories were poorly heated and poorly ventilated, and as a result, tuberculosis cases among workers and their families were among the highest in the city.  Most shellers in the factories earned between two and three dollars per week on average, with full-time employment rarely yielding more. Thousands of pecan shellers also worked at home, often working ten hours a day, seven days a week.  The lowest-paid shellers for some contractors received only one cent per pound of pecan pieces and could earn barely a dollar a week after working 40 to 60 hours.​

As a leader of the strike, Tenayuca became a symbol of resistance and a target of anti-labor and anti-Communist attacks. The photos in the Museo led me to do additional research among the files of the Library of Congress and the San Antonio Express newspaper held by the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Local newspapers at that time branded Tenayuca a dangerous radical, and even fellow organizers asked her to step back to protect the movement. In her youth, Tenayuca had joined the Communist Party, and many saw her membership in that organization as a liability to the pecan workers’ protest movement.  The communist party she belonged to was the group to which Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo also belonged.  The strike and Tenayuca’s leadership led the U.S. Labor Department to force the pecan workers and management into arbitration. The arbitration resulted in a modest wage increase for the pecan shellers, but not all of their demands were met, and mediation was seen as a compromise for both sides.

The strike, however,  ultimately led to mechanization and massive layoffs in the pecan shelling industry, counteracting some of the strike’s gains for workers. Tenayuca’s leadership eventually helped deliver national attention to Mexican American labor conditions. The strike also impacted San Antonio politics over the next decade.  Former U.S. Congress Representative from San Antonio, Maury Maverick, supported the strikers.  Then, in 1939, he launched a campaign for mayor with the support of Mexican American voters. He won, demonstrating for the first time in Texas urban politics the strength of Latino political power.

Tenayuca’s labor activities proved controversial in a state and city long known for being anti-labor. In 1939, a rally led by Tenayuca at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium turned violent. San Antonio police had to hustle her out of the large gathering via an underground tunnel when angry protestors stormed the auditorium. Soon after, death threats forced her to leave San Antonio.

Tenayuca moved to California in 1945, completed her degree at San Francisco State University, and began a teaching career that she continued after returning to San Antonio in 1968. She earned a graduate degree from Our Lady of Lake University and retired from teaching in 1982.  Tenayuca was rediscovered during the Chicano Movement of the 1970s and was celebrated for her lifelong commitment to equality and workers’ rights.  Her story continues to inspire new generations of organizers and educators who see in her a model of courage and conviction.

The Museo del Westside stands as San Antonio’s first Mexican American effort dedicated to preserving and celebrating the Westside Latino community’s unique culture and history.  It is operated by the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Community volunteers are actively involved as tour guides, and a community advisory committee played a key role in shaping the museum’s inclusive narrative aimed at counterbalancing negative stereotypes associated with the Westside neighborhood.

The Museo is a magnificent treasure for the community and future scholars who want to explore previously untold urban histories.

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Copyright 2025 by Ricardo Romo. All photo credits as indicated.