For more than a decade, a cultural center has been serving the growing Latino community in Hays County by preserving history, offering opportunity and giving the community a place to feel at home.
In a historically Hispanic neighborhood in San Marcos, a building that used to segregate Hispanic students now welcomes everyone through its doors while preserving culture and history.
“It’s important to see who is your neighbor and to appreciate them,” said Gloria Salazar, co-founder of the nonprofit Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos.
Late community leader Ofelia Vasquez-Philo approached Salazar, Lupe Costilla, Margie Villalpando and Dr. Rosina Ruiz Valle with the idea in the mid-2000s.
“We met at her kitchen table for like five years as we hashed it all out,” Salazar said.
This building was sitting empty for a year after San Marcos ISD moved out.
“We decided to look at it and went, ‘Wow, this is perfect,’ because not only is it big enough for us, the space that we need, but also we’ll be able to preserve the history of what happened here,” said Salazar.
This cultural center opened in 2010. It now houses a museum with community artifacts, a gallery for Hispanic artists to display their work, a bilingual library and cultural classes like baile folklórico for all ages.
Most programs at the center are free.
“Our mariachi and our piano, which are the ones that do have a fee, we do have scholarships available,” Salazar said.
KVUE met Fernanda Casar while she was picking up her daughter from piano class.
“It’s such a great gift, to be honest,” Casar said. “Besides all the classes and all the things that the kiddos can learn, it offers a space for them to know where they came from and to be proud of who they are.”
Salazar sees the impact.
“It changes them,” she said. Salazar. “It gives them confidence to come and do something that is their creation.”
Salazar says she’s watched many students who started young go on to graduate high school.
“When you see students going off to NYU and carrying on the music that they learned as a part of being here, that’s incredible,” she said. “That’s amazing. I mean, what would have been their life had they not had that experience, that exposure, that confidence building in themselves?”
San Marcos ISD donated the campus to Centro in 2022, and the city awarded the nonprofit money for repairs.
Salazar said they were given the building for another 50 years, adding major steps toward deepening roots in a place that’s been home for generations.
Centro partners with Texas State University to provide teachers for its music program. They also host events like poetry and book readings.
Anyone interested in attending classes at the center or donating can visit their website here.