A few years ago, the city of San Juan purchased one of the Rio Grande Valley’s oldest standing boarding houses: the historic San Juan Hotel, which was erected in 1920 and had fallen into disrepair.
Many hoped the city would invest money into restoring the building and preserving its history, but that hasn’t happened despite a big push from some in the community.
Now, as preservationists say they’re getting pressure from law enforcement to stop their fight, the hotel has been named one of the 11 most endangered historic sites in the U.S. by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Stephanie Alvarez, a professor of Mexican American studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, has been among those leading the push for preservation with Save the San Juan Hotel. She joined the Standard with more on the latest development.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Can you first remind us of why you want the San Juan Hotel to keep standing? It’s actually a building that represents a lot of negative history for many in the area.
Stephanie Alvarez: Yes. Well, the city of San Juan did purchase this hotel in November of 2023 and by February 2024 had voted to demolish it to put a conference center that the city would be able to use.
The hotel is really significant historically. First, it is the oldest building in the city of San Juan, and it’s also one of the Valley’s most iconic buildings. The history of the hotel is a very complicated one, and the building itself was actually made from bricks that come from the San Juan plantation. So the bricks are literally made from the earth of San Juan.
During the turn of the 20th century there was a boom in agribusiness here in the Rio Grande Valley. Anglo settlers from the north were coming to the Valley to make their fortune. But with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, that land was given to the people who were already residing there and owned the land. And Mexicans were given full rights of citizenship.
The height of this engagement between law enforcement and land developers really began in 1910 to 1920, which is a period of time called La Matanza, or in English, the Slaughter. And it’s estimated by some scholars that up to 5,000 Mexicans were lynched, murdered here along the border. The San Juan Hotel plays a role in all of this.
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So your group has been working for over a year to have conversations with the city about making a plan for preservation here and telling the story of the San Juan Hotel. Has that progressed at all, or have things, I guess, gotten worse in those efforts?
Things have not progressed at all. I don’t know if they’ve gotten worse, because we just have not made any inway whatsoever.
They have mentioned once or twice their willingness to meet with us but have never fallen through. We don’t really understand the rationale as to why they don’t want to be held accountable to the citizens of San Juan and the Rio Grande Valley.
Your group isn’t giving up its efforts. In fact, I understand you’re prepared to make a big announcement. Do you want to share that with us?
The National Trust for Historic Preservation puts out a list of the 11 most endangered historical sites in the United States. And the San Juan Hotel has been selected as one of those sites.
The Save the San Juan Hotel group is a group of community members that came together after seeing each other at various city meetings. Together, Save the San Juan Hotel group, along with the Hidalgo County Historical Commission and Latinos in Heritage Conservation, applied and received the recognition of the San Juan Hotel being recognized as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the entire United States.
And for us, what this means is greater visibility to the cause, but also we hope that the city and others will recognize just how important this building is in terms of not just the local historical narrative, but in the national historical narrative.
There’s a lot of small cities in the Rio Grande Valley that have a very similar history. They share a history that is very painful, and it does need to be acknowledged. And we really need that in order to heal as a community. And we believe by preserving these spaces, we can do that. Because if we just erase history, as the old adage goes, we’re likely just to repeat it.
