MCM Books News

A number of poems authored by MCM Books author Servando Cardenas were recently found in the Spanish language newspaper La Prensa of San Antonio. Cardenas is author of La Voz de Amor . Here is one of those poems. It is a somber look at what life is all about.

Manuel Andrés “Andy” Soto has had a lifelong fascination with art. He has also had a deep appreciation for his Tejano roots in South Texas. He chose his love for art to express to his son his love for his cultural roots as a Tejano son of the soil. Soto was raised in Edroy, Texas and went on to earn a PhD in Coastal Sciences from the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now an Associate Professor of Biological and Health Sciences at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. This book is about his art, his family, and his culture. Soto uses mainly acrylic paints and pine or cedar planks to create his impressionistic folk art. His subject matter focuses on various aspects of Tejano culture. His inspiration is his childhood growing up in Edroy, which was no more than a colonia . Many colonias are located on the border with Mexico, although they can and are found in many other counties throughout South Texas.

La Voz de Amor , released in September 2016, is a book of Spanish poetry written by Servando Cárdenas. The poet looks at love from a romantic, familial, patriotic, cultural and spiritual perspective and provides great insights into Tejano culture. The book is also a labor of love for co-editor Alfredo E. Cárdenas, son of the poet. His co-editor, Javier Villarreal, Ph.D. is a recently retired professor of Spanish at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

In October 1915, 18-year-old Jesus Martinez was arrested by an Army guard at the Brownsville train station on—well there was no reason to arrest him other than he was suspected of being a bandit, perhaps involved in recent attacks against innocent “Americans”. He was a Mexican, afterall. Martinez carried with him a letter that raised suspicions even more. The investigation into the contents of the letter led authorities to a surprising conclusion.

Late in the evening of Oct, 19, 1915, men believed to be rebels fighting under the flag of the Plan of San Diego attacked the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico passenger train at Olmitos, Texas six miles south of San Benito. When the smoke cleared, three people—three “Americans” as the newspapers pointed out—were dead.

MCM Books will soon release its second book. La Voz de Amor is scheduled for release later this summer, perhaps as soon as the end of July. The book is a collection of Spanish poetry written by Servando Cardenas, mostly in the 1930s although several date to the 1940s and at least one to the 1970s.

Scholars have found the Plan de San Diego (PSD) of great interest and for decades have produced a large body of works on the incident, in doing so expanding on fields such as Tejano history, Borderlands history, or Mexican history. Most recently, historians Charles H. Harris and Louis R. Sadler published the episode’s most comprehensive scholarly study under the title of The Plan de San Diego: Tejano Rebellion, Mexican Intrigue (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013). What lacks at this point, however, is a source that fills the needs of the reading public and instructs it on the dimensions of this struggle that burst forth in South Texas in the year 1915. Alfredo E. Cárdenas’s Balo’s War : A Novel About the Plan of San Diego (Corpus Christi: MCM Books, 2015) addresses that call.