My journey with Texas Tejano.com

I freely admit that it is very hard for me to remain unbiased or impartial when discussing Texas Tejano.com (that’s dot com as in www.texastejano.com) and all that it has accomplished in its brief, yet influential existence. This is mainly to my having been involved with the company since its inception over six years ago.

I humbly think that I helped to build the company from the ground up, taking it from an idea of what it could be – dreamed up by its President and Founder and Patron Saint Mr. Rudi R. Rodriguez.

He and I started out with the simple goal of taking a manuscript left behind by one of his illustrious ancestors and drafting a new publication out of it. Not an impossible task to be sure and to my chagrin at the time, the ease with which we published this new book planted the seeds in Rudi’s imagination of what else we could do.

Before I go any further, let me tell you in a little more concrete fashion about what Texas Tejano.com is and what it does. Formed by Rudi, Texas Tejano.com is an Internet-based research, communications and publishing in San Antonio specializing in Texas history ... Hispanic (Tejano) Texas history from the 18th and 19th centuries beginning with Texas’ founding in June of 1690.

And when we say “Tejano,” we define that as being the descendants of the first Spanish, Mexican and indigenous families on the Texas frontier. The way Americans are from America or Germans from Germany, thus Tejanos are from Tejas/Texas.

Since the initial printing of the book, entitled A Tejano Son of Texas: The Autobiography of Jose Policarpio “Polly” Rodriguez, there we grew a Web site, a feature-length documentary, a series of traveling exhibits – which have been on display across the state and seen by millions of Texans – several original and world-class works of art, a stage play and, as incredibly as it may sound, a movement to recapture Texas’ lost Hispa ...

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