Hecho en Encinal Youth Arts
culminates in anthology

By Sylvana Longoria

Loose gravel skirting Encinal’s main street grinds under the tires of the Cotulla school buses arriving with students rushing home to divest themselves of their school load.
Having commuted 30 miles to their school in Cotulla, some ten Encinal students shake off yet another school day with a stop at Hecho en Encinal, a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing the arts and cultural activities with rural communities in South Texas, where students engage in reading and writing activities.
The diverse personalities of these precocious Encinal students converged in a mixture of creative ideas about family, friends, and food. Their youthful afterschool cries of enthusiasm promoted ideas for their individual pieces while intensifying descriptive pieces with vivid imagery and their native Spanish language.
During the course of the writing workshops, the students were provided with disposable cameras and encouraged to snap photographs of instances depicted in their pieces. The photographs are evidence of their appreciation for their everyday world in Encinal.
Themes of family influenced their writing, while food inspired a discovery of meaningful convivios shared among the students introducing and turning new phases in their writing. As the discipline of writing developed, their individual expression of details breathed vitality into their pieces.
"Writing together was an adventure, all the while establishing a rapport often hindered in academic settings," said artist assistant Analee Chapa. "The alternative learning environment of Hecho in Encinal bridges the social gap between school and home by building community through arts."
Nestled just west of Interstate Highway 35 at mile marker 39, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, and sponsored by Texas A&M International University, the South Texas Writing Project, and Cotulla ISD, the Hecho en Encinal project provides middle and high school students in Encinal and surrounding communities with the opportunity to work directly with artists to create their own artwork and writing.
Hecho en Encinal prides itself in creating an environment where area students can build community and record a memory of their everyday lives in Encinal through writing, photography, and artwork.
As a part of the workshop, Hecho en Encinal participants compiled an anthology of their work in youth arts, which was showcased at the recent Encinal Elementary School Christmas program. This year’s anthology, The Writing Spirit of Encinal, features the individual and collaborative writings of Roberto Botello, Marcelo Flores, Roxana Garza, Chelsea Hanna, Kate Krueger, Stephanie Lopez, Logan McCormick, Natalie Nieto, Andrew Valles, Clint Valles, and Kaela Valles.
For more information, check out the Hecho en Encinal website at www.encinalart.org, e-mail hecho@netscorp.net, or contact Donna Lednicky at (956) 948-7228 or by fax at (956) 948-7228.