Few things wrong in last week’s story

If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it.

Regarding what I’ve written recently about UTRGV Professor Stephanie Alvarez, I made a few blunders, so I’m taking time to correct them.

First off, Alvarez is a “full professor,” not an “associate professor.”

In one of the opinion columns I wrote about her work to stir up things in San Juan, based on historical fabrications, I wrote that she was an “associate professor.”

She made notice of the professor mistake two weeks ago in an online social media post, and since I’m sure she worked to get where she’s at, the mistake was indeed mine, and I apologize for any confusion.

Just this morning (April 15), however, I went to Google and typed in her name, and up pops this under UTRGV’s MAS (Mexican American Studies) Faculty and Staff: “Stephanie Alvarez, Associate Professor of Mexican American Studies…” If you click on the link, however, it takes you to the UTRGV page, where she is listed as “Professor.”

In a post on social media approximately two weeks ago, Alvarez wrote this, after inviting me to an April 12 event for Save the San Juan Hotel: “Also, I’m a full Professor, not an Associate Professor.” Fair enough, but someone should change the “tags” on the UTRGV page, so your name doesn’t come up as “Associate Professor” before one clicks the link to the department’s website.

The Salazar Story

Second up, according to Alvarez, The Advance got a few things wrong in last week's story about Carlos Salazar, although the professor took time to compliment certain aspects of the piece, with regard to its portrayal of county history and how local Hispanics were once treated unfairly by a few, not all, Anglos.

What did I get wrong? When discussing souvenirs as they related to Tom Mayfield, Alvarez writes that she never used the term “body parts.”

Okay, but if she doesn’t know this, that’s been the chismé for years among the same anti-Mayfield group who wanted the name of the city park changed because the old lawman was suddenly so bad.

In other words, the “souvenirs” Mayfield allegedly kept in his room were not your typical souvenirs.

Also, when I wrote about many lynchings, as mentioned in the Save the San Juan Hotel/online PDF, I put the word “poor” in front of them.

Alvarez writes in a post to social media made last week that she never used the word “poor.”

Okay, but if there were “many lynchings” going on in San Juan back in the day, at the San Juan Hotel, which, again, never happened, despite Alvarez’s claim that it did, it sure wouldn’t have been the Hispanics of means being lynched.

That fate typically falls to the powerless, in both money and connections.

Alvarez also claims that the San Juan City Commission didn't place the San Juan Hotel project on hold because of the Save the Hotel group. She writes that the San Juan EDC put a pause on downtown revitalization due to lack of funds, but the vote to demolish remains.

Fair enough, but that’s still splitting hairs.

With a mayoral election this May, anyone who thinks that having a group of people going around loudly claiming that “many lynchings” went on at the old hotel, and the guy after whom a city park is named was a mass killer, isn’t going to close down any work on the hotel until after the election is not thinking logically.

Next, Alvarez also states in her social media post that my story was wrong when it claimed that she and her group suddenly popped out of the woodwork last year.

“Our first formal meeting was in June 2024,” she writes, “after some of us met at city meetings previously. It's not out of the woodwork, The city bought the hotel in November 2023 and voted to demolish the hotel in February 2024.” Okay, that’s still subjective.

The hotel has been an eyesore in downtown San Juan for close to two decades. The EDC/city commission want to tear it down and at least consider plans to build a conference center there, and suddenly, now there’s a new group trying to stop the project?

Where have they been for the past 20 years?

Glaring Omission

What is missing from Stephanie Alvarez’s social media posts, however, is the fact that she is the one who has come up with mistakes, as has the group, Save the San Juan Hotel. Compared to mine, her mistakes are whoppers.

In this case, she's also deflecting to a degree.

The big elephant in the living room is the fact that she claims Tom Mayfield, a well-respected local lawman who patrolled PSJA and Hidalgo County, not to mention the state as a Texas Ranger, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, was actually a killer who had murdered many Mexican Americans over the years.

How does a “full professor” do this with a clear conscience without any proof to back up her claims?

History does sometimes get rewritten if new evidence is uncovered that alters the facts as previously known.

However, in my opinion, Alvarez wants to rewrite this bit of local history for her own professional gain, so she can claim credit for building a new Civil Rights Museum.

Fine, but build it on the back of truth, facts, not lies.

There is no historical evidence to support the claim that there were ever “many lynchings” at the old San Juan Hotel, circa the 1920, nor is there any proof that Tom Mayfield was responsible for “the murder & terrorizing of Mexican Americans for decades...” (Source: Save the San Juan Hotel flyer/ online PDF.)

If Alvarez wants to make a correction, we’ll be happy to print it.

When you’re wrong, which we all are at some point in time, it’s not hard to admit it.

I just did.