I've just returned from a trip to San Antonio. I had visited the city once before, with the national youth gathering for the ELCA (Lutherans) back in 1988. That trip was fabulous, and a lot of fun, and I loved the energy in San Antonio. So I was excited to return. But it has become a very different place.
Back in '88, the city was a blend of Texas and Latino cultures, with vibrant colors, cowboy hats, and signs translated in both English and Spanish. Now, the riverwalk is a Disney-fied stretch of restaurants one just like the next, with very little evidence of ANY Latino influence. The only signs I saw translated in Spanish were at the airport and the police station. And I encountered very few Latino people.
I asked a bartender at our hotel about it, and he dove into a diatribe about how the Latinos run the town, and take all the jobs. But, he had his job as a bartender, didn't he? Well, the dishwashers and kitchen staff were all Latino. And those are better jobs? He then went on to discuss the segregation in the city, and the fact that the tourist section is largely Latino-free; the Latinos stay in the east and south.
I also asked our Latino taxi driver about the changes, on our ride to the airport. He told us about how NAFTA changed the city, and how W's money for highway improvements brought more people through, further changing San Antonio.
I left the city feeling really disappointed. I remembered San Antonio as a multicultural, flavorful city, very different from the rest of Texas. Now it just seems like another boilerplate segregated metropolis, bland, boring, and so white that it tries to choke out everything that isn't white. What a shame.
