MCM Books News

On June 11, Genie and I had the pleasure of visiting the Museum of South Texas and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I did not expect to find a first class museum in the small town of Edinburg, population 77,100. Well maybe its not the small town I remembered from years ago but it certainly is no metropolis. Met with Shan Rankin, Executive Director of the Museum of South Texas and René Ballesteros, Archival Assistant . We walked around the exhibits and were genuinely impressed. Not only are they very informative and relevant they included genuine artifacts in very professionally done exhibit surroundings. Forgive me if I do not use the correct terminology but needless to say it was all very enlightening and entertaining. Halfway through our tour, we were met by Shan Rankin, Executive Director of the museum. Shan and I have a mutual friend and we both worked for Senator John Tower circa 1975; she was in the Dallas office and I in the Austin district office. We had a good time re...

Several people have asked “who is Balo,” the main character in my novel “Balo’s War. Funny they should ask. The name was an attempt to align the character with Basilio Ramos who was a signer of the Plan of San Diego and who was arrested with the Plan in his possession. His arrest made the Plan known to the public. Since my lead character was going be caught with the Plan, in place of Basilio Ramos, I sought to come up with a name with the same initials and settled on Baldomero Reyna, or Balo for short. In fact, I have a brother who we call Balo, that’s him in the picture with a very young yours truly. In the interest of full dsclosure, there we are in a more recent picture. My maternal grandmother, Lucinda Molina Esparza, was a midwife and delivered my nine siblings. She was too old by the time I came around. When my brother was born, my Father Servando Cardenas wanted to name him Baldomero, after an uncle of his. Grandmother sent her son Ismael Esparza to record the bi...

This is a video I presented on March 27 at an event sponsored by the Duval County Historical Commission entitled “El Plan de San Diego, 100 Years Later.” Basilio Ramos’ granddaughter and great granddaughter were present for the occasion. 

t was an exciting week at the Cardenas household as we receicved our “proof” copy of Balo’s War. It was a great sense of accomplishment holding the book in our hands after working so hard on the manuscript during the last several months.  The manuscript was actually completed about eight years ago but for various reasons remained in my files until late last year when I realized that 1915 would be the centennial of the Plan of San Diego. I decided it was time to take it out, spruce it up and publish it.  So when we got the book this week it was a great feeling. Of course, the excitement quickly wore off as I had to go over the entire book one more time to try to catch any last minute edits. As much as I would like it to be perfect, I know it is not. But, it is as clean as I have been able to make it. A couple of days ago we gave the printer the final ok to begin printing the books. We should get them with plenty of time before the debut book signing scheduled ...