John Phillip Santos and the Creation of Sacred Memories

Abstract

Historians of the South have ignored the contributions of Mexicans, Cubans, and Latin Americans to the development of southern history and southern autobiography for too long.1 Mexican-Americans living in Texas comprise a significant percentage of the population of that state, so much so that candidates for governor must speak Spanish in their appeal to voters. Although historians of the South only reluctantly think of Texas as "southern," in fact, the Lone Star State, after a short time as an independent republic, entered the Union as a slave state and joined the Confederacy. That Texas is the only southern state with an international border makes it unique. That Native Americans, Spanish, and Mexicans settled it before ambitious Americans seized it puts it in a category akin to Louisiana. Its history, therefore, is both similar to that of other Deep South states and yet admittedly different. Just how similar and also how different can be seen in John Phillip Santos's Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation, an autobiographical memoir, the tale of a family and its spiritual journey across cultures and borders, landscapes and urban vistas, silences and confessions, across time unbounded by geography or space.