AUSTIN, Texas — During Hispanic Heritage Month, a rarely seen celebration of family life in South Texas from nearly 100 years ago can be viewed at a website curated by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.
The amateur home movies of the Fuentes family, from Corpus Christi, from the 1920s and 1930s chronicle parades, visits to the park, a Christmas morning in 1929 and city scenes.
Antonio Fuentes moved to Corpus Christi from Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and served in the Mexican Consulate in the Texas Gulf Coast city. He purchased a movie camera to film scenes of his family and to capture special occasions in the thriving community.
His films are so important today that they’ve been designated “culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant by the Library of Congress and listed in the National Film Registry.
“The films show this active, civically engaged family and represents Hispanic culture in a way that often in early films were portrayed negatively," said Elizabeth Hansen from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, which has made the films accessible to the public via their website in cooperation with Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi.
“We get to see a family living their life in Texas, their engagement with the community and how they made their home there,” Hansen continued.
Fuentes and his wife remained in Corpus Christi throughout their entire adult lives and stayed active in civic activities. Antonio Fuentes passed away in 1988 and Josefina Fuentes died in 1993, but the years spent raising their children and living in the growing Texas community will live on as moments in time that, while gone forever, can be seen today through the magic of film.