My Purple House -- Color is a Language and a History By Sandra Cisneros
© 1997 Hispanic Link SAN ANTONIO, Aug. 31, 1997 --http://www.latinolink.com/news/news97/1006ncis.htm
My life is such a telenovela! One day I painted my house tejano
colors; the next day, my house is in all the news,
cars swarming by, families having their photos taken in front of my
purple casita as if it were the Alamo. The neighbors put up an iced-tea
stand and made 10 dollars!
All this happened because I chose to live where I do. I live in San Antonio because I'm not a minority here.
I live in the King William neighborhood because I love old houses.
Since my neighborhood is historic, certain code restrictions apply. Any
house alteration plans must be approved by the Historic Design and
Review Committee. This is to preserve the neighborhood's historic
character, and that's fine by me.
Because I thought I had permission, I gave the go-ahead to have my
house painted colors I considered regional -- but as it turns out, they
hadn't been approved. However, I was given the chance to prove them
historically appropriate. So I did my research, and what I found is
this: We don't exist.
My history
is made up of a community whose homes were so poor and unimportant as
to be considered unworthy of historic preservation. No famous architect
designed the houses of the tejanos, and there are no books in the San
Antonio Conservation Society library about houses of the working-class
community, no photos romanticizing their poverty, no ladies' auxiliary
working toward preserving their presence. Their homes are gone; their
history is invisible. The few historic homes that survived have access
cut off by freeways because city planners did not judge them
important.
Our history is in the neighborhoods like the famous Laredito barrio,
heart of the old tejano community and just a block from City Hall; it
proved so "historically valuable,'' it was demolished and converted
into a jail, parking lot and downtown police station, with only the
casa of tejano statesman Jose Angel Navarro as evidence Laredito was
ever there.
Our past is present only in churches or missions glorifying a Spanish
colonial past. But I'm not talking about the Spaniards here. My
question is, where is the visual record of the tejanos?
The
issue is bigger than my house. The issue is about historical inclusion.
I want to paint my house a traditional color. But I don't think it
unreasonable to include the traditions of los tejanos who had a great
deal to do with creating the city of San Antonio we know today.
I
wouldn't mind painting my house a historical color, but please give me
a broader palette than Surrey beige, Sevres blue, Hawthorne green,
Frontier Days brown and Plymouth Rock grey. These colors are fine for
some houses, and I think they look handsome on the dignified mansions
on King William Street. But look at my casita. It's not a mansion. It's
a late-Victorian rental cottage, built circa 1903. In 1913 my house was
sawed in two like a Houdini magic act and wheeled to its present
location. This accounts for its architectural affinity with the houses
in Baja and Lavaca communities.
Frankly, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I thought I had
painted my house a historic color. Purple is historic to us. It goes
back a thousand years or so to the pyramids. It is present in the Nahua
codices, book of the Aztecs, as is turquoise. the color I used for my
house trim; the former color signifying royalty, the latter, water and
rain.
But
we are a people sin documentos. We don't have papers. Our books were
burned in the conquest, and ever since, we have learned to keep quiet,
to keep our history to ourselves, to keep it alive generation to
generation by word of mouth, perhaps because we feared it would be
taken away from us again. Too late -- it has been taken away.
In San Antonio when we say "historic preservation,'' we don't mean
everyone's history, even though the Historic Review office is paid for
by everybody's taxes. When they ask me to prove my colors historically
appropriate to King William, they don't mean tejano colors. But I am
certain tejanos lived in this neighborhood, too.
Color is a language. In essence, I am being asked to translate this
language. For some who enter my home, these colors need no translation.
However, why am I translating to the historical professionals? If
they're not visually bilingual, what are they doing holding a
historical post in a city with San Antonio's demographics?
Color is a story. It tells the history of a people. We don't have
beautiful showcase houses that tell the story of the class of people I
come from. But our inheritance is our sense of color. It has withstood
conquests, plagues, genocide, hatred, defeat. Our colors have survived.
That's why you all love fiestas so much, because we know how to
have a good time. We know how to laugh. We know a color like
bougainvillea pink is important because it will lift your spirits and
make your heart pirouette.
We
have a tradition of bright colors. Dr. Daniel Arreola of Texas A&M
University has written that in a survey of 1,065 houses in a
Mexican-American district in San Antonio, 50 percent showed
evidence of brightly painted exteriors, even if only evidenced in the
bright trim. From the Arab influence of elaborate paint exteriors
carried over to the Iberian peninsula, as well as to the use of intense
pigment in the pre-Colombian structures, our people have always
decorated their exterior walls brightly.
In
some pre-Colombian centers there is not only evidence of a love of
color, but a love of vivid visual effects; in Teotihuacan, it is the
drama of red contrasted with blue. That passion for color is seen even
now in our buildings on both sides of the border. Mango yellow, papaya
orange, Frida Kahlo cobalt, Rufino Tamayo periwinkle, rosa mexicana
and, yes, even enchilada red.
King William architecture has been influenced by European, Greek
Revival, Victorian and Neoclassical styles. Why is it so difficult to
concede a Mexican influence, especially when so many people of Mexican
descent lived in the city?
This issue is not about personal taste, but about historical context.
It belongs not only to the architecturally elite, but also to los
tejanos, as well as the Irish, French, Native American and yes, even
the poor. History belongs to us all.
My
purple house colors are not deemed historically appropriate because
"there is no evidence or documentation these colors were ever used in
King William.'' But if the HDRC is true to its word, oral testimonies
should count as evidence. I am inviting the community to assist me. I
invite Brackenridge High School, especially, which, I'm told, adopted
my purple house because it's their school color. So why not an oral
history project they could get credit for? Why not a documentation of
our ancestors? It's about time we had our history count on paper.
If
you know someone who lived in San Antonio at the turn of the century
who remembers the colors of the tejanos who lived in the King
William/La Vaca community, document their stories on paper. Would you
like to be part of a collection of tejano oral histories? If so, tell
me your stories. I would love to collect them and publish them in a
book we could gift to the San Antonio Conservation Society, the San
Antonio Public Library, the King William Association, the Historic
Review Office, the City of San Antonio. After all, maybe somebody else
will be inspired and follow my example, and paint his or her house a
beautiful South Texas color, too, and nobody would raise a fuss. Now
wouldn't that be something? Send your testimonies on paper, video,
audiotape or disk, to: Sandra Cisneros, P.O. Box 831754, San Antonio TX
78283.