Prof won't quit: Educator promotes historical lies
This week began with hope, because it looked as if Stephanie Alvarez, the UTRGV professor who is spreading malicious lies about an old Valley lawman, Tom Mayfield, and the old, historic San Juan Hotel, was going to quit spreading more, well, lies, fabrications of the truth.
No such luck.
She just has to keep it going.
Why?
Publicity, I think.
In the old days, newspaper reporters/opinion writers used to call people like her, male or female, “media hounds.”
Ironic part is, I’m giving Alvarez more publicity simply by writing this, but it’s not like I want to sit here on a Tuesday morning writing another opinion column about her and her group.
Which makes this the fourth consecutive week I’ve written about the same topic — historical facts turned into fiction, AKA, BS writ large.
The Real Story
If you haven't read previous stories written about Mayfield over the past four weeks, in a nutshell here's the gist of the matter — Alvarez has a group, Save the San Juan Hotel, which is trying to convince the city to keep the old hotel standing even though an engineer has already ruled it structurally unsound, and one day, when there is money to be had, turn the old place into a civil rights museum.
Why does Hidalgo County need a civil rights museum, you may ask?
Well, according to Alvarez and her group, our old local lawman, Tom Mayfield, was responsible for the “murder and terrorizing of Mexican Americans for decades,” and the old San Juan Hotel was the “site of many lynchings of Mexican Americans.” (Source: Save the San Juan Hotel flyer/online PDF.)
Unlike Alvarez, however, I actually know the truth, and it’s nothing like the script she wrote/invented.
Mayfield was never responsible for such heinous acts, and as far as anyone knows, he was a decent guy, based on at least four people I’ve spoken to over the years who actually knew the man.
Like one guy told me recently, Mayfield used to have breakfast all the time with (I think his name was Pancho), and Pancho was about as Mexican as you could be.
Which makes sense since Mayfield was married to a woman of Mexican descent for 62 years. And if I had to guess, old Tom loved and cherished her for those many years, based on what I know of his character.
On top of that, last week, someone saved me the trouble and looked up Mayfield’s old obituary, going back to 1966, tied to a story written and published by The Monitor.
“In recent years, Mayfield had been honored many times by civic leaders…”
Back then, apparently, this was how, according to Stephanie Alvarez, Hidalgo County treated a guy who had been responsible for the “murder and terrorizing of Mexican-Americans for decades.”
At some point in time, surely, his wife, Estefana Garza, who died in 1974, would have said something.
“Tom, can you please quit indiscriminately killing and terrorizing my people.”
Not to mention — “And what about all these lynchings at the San Juan Hotel, Tom?”
When Mayfield died, he left behind his wife, two daughters, and six grandchildren.
Meaning, of course, some of his descendants are still alive. In fact, someone told me that one of his grandsons still lives in the RGV.
How many great-grandkids were later spun onto the family tree, who knows.
As I mentioned in one of my previous columns on this continuing saga, no one can defame a dead person and be held liable in a civil court. Nor can any descendants sue for defamation of character.
Doesn’t mean, though, that if you’re one of Tom Mayfield’s proud descendants, you won’t be offended, embarrassed perhaps, insulted when you hear or read about a woman and her group spewing venomous lies about your ancestor. Or, if one of his descendants happens to see the color poster now being handed out in person, posted online by Alvarez and her group.
If that were my ancestor, I would be upset, angry, knowing they were lies.
There in color for everyone to see, if they so choose, from Save the San Juan Hotel’s own flyer: Tom Mayfield was “responsible for the murder & terrorizing of Mexican-American for decades…”
Ironically, today, if an Anglo UTRGV professor did this to an old established Hispanic who was a civic leader back in the day, with no real proof to back up bogus allegations, just spin BS out of whole cloth, good luck with that.
The Advance News wouldn’t be the only media outlet questioning her allegations.
Instead of bringing people together, which has been the case in Hidalgo County going back to at least the early 1970s, maybe the late 1960s, when ethnic barriers really began to fall by the wayside, which led to more intermarriages like the 1904 one Mayfield had (long sentence — sorry), Alvarez is doing her best to start another fire.
Keep it Going
Instead of just dropping the matter, at least as it relates to The Advance, Alvarez had to go and post more hilarious (delete) on her Facebook page last week:
“More from Wendorf. Unfortunately, it appears, he didn't come to the event to get the documented info he's looking for. Also, it's alleged that I am doing this for my own professional gain. Anyone familiar with academia knows that working in and with community does zero for your career. If anything, it's detrimental to your career.”
Seriously?
All depends.
Alvarez, for example, is a professor of Mexican-American Studies.
If she uses her students and the “Save” group to bolster her profile, and then is named as the professor who created a civil rights museum in the RGV to remember the “least of these” mercilessly killed and terrorized by Tom Mayfield for years, not to mention the many lynchings at the San Juan Hotel, yes, that will bolster her professional creds and gain her more attention from people outside the RGV who will laud her as a spokeswoman for the lost, the forgotten.
Please.
Alvarez continues in her latest post:
“I never intended to be a leader in this matter. However, when my students and I uncovered this history in 2016, I made a commitment to them, the people in the city to ensure the history was not erased.”
In a previous post, Alvarez (full professor) said that she and her students had spent eight years researching this matter — the murderous Tom Mayfield and the now infamous San Juan Hotel.
In the first piece I wrote about Alvarez and the lies she and her group are spreading, I offered to write a $1,000 check out to the nonprofit of her choice (e.g. LUPE, the Food Bank RGV) if she would simply drop off proof to the newspaper office that Mayfield had actually killed and murdered many Mexican-Americans and that the old, historic SJ Hotel was the site of “many lynchings.”
I mean, come on, if she used her university students to research this very topic for eight years (for free), as she has claimed (not the free part), then, like the old Wendy’s commercial used to say — “Where’s the beef?”
The $1,000 Check
Yet, according to her most recent post, I’m supposed to attend the last Save the SJ Hotel event (held in Alamo) to collect the proof?
She should quit academia and do stand-up comedy, only she’s not funny.
For starters, Steph, I probably have 30 years on you; maybe 25 since I turn 70 this August, and you’re probably past the age of 40 by now.
Second, since we’re being real, I have killer arthritis that now makes walking difficult and unbalanced. Killer as in “painful and stiff.” It’s not fatal. Sorry.
So why would I take the time to drive to your event, get out of the truck, walk to your “Look-at-Me” show, just so you can show me the proof you don’t have?
I have the $1,000 check just waiting to be written out to the nonprofit of your choice, so you need to come to my office; not the other way around.
I’d gladly quit writing about this topic, if she would just quit posting lies about old Tom, about the old SJ Hotel, about the “many lynchings” here that never happened.
It paints a false picture of the RGV.
Just stop. Go find another cause. Maybe help out with the poor, battered women at Las Mujeres Unidas. Find poor abandoned animals a home.
Do something productive and meaningful with your life.
Quit spreading more BS.
Pretty simple.
Of course, that won’t give you the publicity you so, apparently, need.
And, yes, I do believe she is doing this for professional/ personal reasons.
In the end, digging into the Mayfield story, and the story about the SJ Hotel being the site of many lynchings of Mexican-Americans, talking to the people who knew Mayfield, digging through old newspaper archives, searching for stories about lynchings, I have come away with one conclusion:
The claims against Tom Mayfield and the SJ Hotel, which opened in 1920, never happened.
And for that, Alvarez and her group should feel at least some sense of shame.
But they won’t.
I’m done writing about this, but it’s just hard to not respond to her never-ending comedy act disguised as history.
The sad part is, I have no doubt that this is what she is teaching some of her college students, who walk away with a false impression of what the RGV was really like back in the day. Yes, there was discrimination, but “many lynchings” were not taking place, and Tom Mayfield was not going around like some rogue assassin killing and terrorizing “Mexican-Americans for decades.” (Source: Alvarez.)
(To read some factually accurate anecdotes about this county’s history, please see online Advance News story – Carlos Salazar; April 9, 2025 – at anjournal.com.)
The New Conference Center
Let’s hope that after this San Juan mayoral election is over next month, the mayor and city commission majority will vote to raze the old hotel, in ruinous state for at least the past two decades, and when there is money, build a conference center on the site.
Last but not least, I’ll raise the check-amount offer to $2,000.
Double the money offered, overnight.
You just need proof, Steph, which you and I both know you don’t have.
By proof, just to clarify, we’re talking about first-person reports, accounts, or even second-person accounts, newspaper articles, personal journals recounting the horror, photos of the mass lynchings, any official record that Mayfield was ever accused of murder or being a terrorist.
What doesn’t constitute proof, historical fact, are oral histories you may or may not have from someone, anyone, who may have said this into a recorder:
“My grandma used to tell me stories of the mass lynchings at the San Juan Hotel and the fact that Tom Mayfield killed and terrorized our people for many years.”
“Did your grandma ever say how she knew about all of this?”
“No.”