(SAN YGNACIO, TEXAS) – This summer’s iteration of the San Ygnacio Children’s Heritage Camp – one of the River Pierce Foundation’s most popular and well-attended annual events – adds a philosophy component that sees reflection as an instrumental aspect for educational impact.
Mexican author Valeria Luiselli provides the creative writing component to the camp while neuroscience researcher Gladys Maestre helps attendees explore the brain and mental health. The camp runs through June 16, 2023 with special support from the Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation of Houston.
Camp coordinator Karen Gaytán and Luiselli plan to inspire students to create short stories based on real or imagined adventures in their region and then teach them basic film production skills to communicate aspects of their unique heritage, history, and environments.
Luiselli arranged for a loan of video equipment from Harvard University for the Summer Heritage Camp.
“If language, identity, and memory all come together in the study of history, then film is a great way to see how different layers of meaning and different points of view come together as we explore our lives,” said Gaytán, a founding member of the Laredo Film Society.
Gaytán connected with Luiselli after reading about her most recent work. Lost Children Archive, her first novel written in English, reimagines the American road trip novel by combining it with the tale of a marriage in decline. Underlying their trip is the narrator’s increasing concern for the unaccompanied minor migration crisis. “I wonder, always, about the way that younger generations will retell the story of these dark times,” she said about what inspired the book. “So at the heart of the book is a question about how we tell stories, intergenerationally, and how they form the foundational myths by which a society lives.”
Luiselli has written five books and devotes much of her time to activism. She and her niece teach creative writing to detained youth at a migrant center in upstate New York.
Luiselli’s CV includes a 2019 MacArthur grant, DUBLIN Literary Award, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, and an American Book Award. She has been a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize. She teaches at Bard College and is a visiting professor at Harvard University. She is fascinated by sound, and contemplates how the work she does with refugees and detained migrants will translate to her work.
According to Maestre, who conducts research at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, “Story telling, memory, and identity are all linked to brain health.” Her workshop focuses on cognitive map drawing as a way to explore how the students see their community. “There is a crisis in brain health today in the Lower Rio Grande region and efforts to understand its relation to environmental factors are underway, but environmental factors can also include the way we as individuals connect to others in our community. Rural areas like Zapata and Starr counties where the factors we take for granted in urban contexts are different, scaled back, or altogether lacking, could provide important clues on how to restore and sustain brain health.”
Additional Camp Faculty
Other camp faculty include Ricardo Giraldo, Leonardo Heiblum,
Gabriela A. Treviño, Lauro Martinez, and Bianca Brewster.
Giraldo works in sound, film promotion, contemporary classical music, audiovisual media, and exhibit design. He is the director of the Podcast Division of La Corriente del Golfo, Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal’s production company.
Heiblum is an award-winning composer, producer, and sound artist who has composed music for over 50 feature films. He collaborates regularly with Philip Glass, Patti Smith, and musicians from all over the world, mixing classical and indigenous instruments with field recordings.
Treviño is a filmmaker from Laredo, currently based in Mexico City. She studied Cultural Anthropology and Ethnomusicology at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and Documentary Filmmaking as a graduate student at the Universidad Autonoma de México (UNAM). She is the founder of the Laredo Film Society and a producer with Sledge TV, a local media collective that celebrates the local arts and music scene that exists along the South Texas-Mexico border.
Martinez currently serves as the Climate and Water Outreach Officer at the Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), where he focuses on building community partnerships with the City of Laredo and advocating for environmental justice. With a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Policy from St. Edward’s University, he has gained extensive experience in the field of environmental consulting and advocacy. He is a native Laredoan, and through his work with RGISC, has gained a deep appreciation for the often-overlooked beauty of the border. He is committed to sharing his experiences with others to help them fall in love with the unique and beautiful border community.
Brewster is the Director of the Laredo College Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center. She is an active wildlife advocate and has rehabilitated numerous wildlife for the Laredo community.
The Camp
Founded in 1991, the San Ygnacio Children’s Heritage Camp has served as an outlet for children of San Ygnacio to explore, reflect, and participate in the history and natural environment of the South Texas borderlands. Through archeological and creative exercises coupled with exposure to the thriving and often unknown and unappreciated regional ecosystem, the goal of the camp is to plant the seed of land stewardship in children. With the ever evolving challenges faced by border communities, the camp provides a positive and empowering perspective to living in the borderlands – the unique identity bred out of the northern Mexico and southern Texas blend.
The Summer Heritage Camp had its beginnings as an art curriculum from 1991 to 1995. It became a summer program in 2000, and evolved to focus on archaeology and science in 2007. By 2014 it expanded to include heritage studies and cultural arts. In 2020, it was interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Ygnacio
Known for its nationally significant historic buildings, San Ygnacio tells the story of human migration from prehistoric times to now. With close access to the Rio Grande River and hidden in rural isolation, the town has been relatively undisturbed for centuries. Most recent historical sites date to 1830 – 1875, encompassing events like the founding of Tamaulipas, Mexican Independence from Spain, the Republic of the Rio Grande, the Republic of Texas, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the establishment of the Rio Grande as an international border, the Civil War and the Underground Railroad, amongst others.
In the early 1950s, the construction of the Falcon Dam and Reservoir caused the relocation of several historic settlements in Zapata and Starr counties.
San Ygnacio was spared when its residents petitioned the government to stay. Its renowned but simple architecture became the last collection of buildings representing the ranch traditions that shaped the cattle industry in the United States. Its oldest building, the Treviño-Uribe Rancho was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 by the National Park Service and it sits on the El Camino Real de Los Tejas National Trail, established in 2007. The Fort is open to the public throughout the year.
The River Pierce Foundation
The River Pierce Foundation works to identify, conserve, and make known the built vernacular and cultural heritage of the rural village of San Ygnacio, including the San Ygnacio Historic District (National Register of Historic Places 1973). The Foundation was established in 1990 to bring artists in residence to the serenity of this ranching outpost.
San Ygnacio is located in one of the five poorest counties in Texas.
For further information on the Children’s Heritage Camp, please call the River Pierce Foundation at (956) 765-5784
