Boss Rule, Texas Ranger Violence, & Indigenous Survival in Somi Se'k
About this Event
Boss Rule, Texas Ranger Violence, & Indigenous Survival in Somi Se'k (aka South TX)
Centering Carrizo, Karankawa, Black, and Mexican-descended histories, this gathering explores how Boss Rule governance and Texas Ranger violence shaped fertile lands, waterways, labor routes, and mobility in South Texas during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Through Indigenous stortytelling, historical reflection, and collective dialogue, we honor the resistance and survival of Indigenous and Black communities across generations.
Art Exhibition: Curated by Andrea Casares, this immersive archival and sculptural installation examines the relationship between waterways, ancestry, land dispossession, and state violence in Somi Se’k (Rio Grande Delta or so called Rio Grande Valley).
Rooted in the histories of the artist’s family lands along the Rio Grande River (Atamahau pakma’t) and surrounding delta waterways, the exhibition investigates how systems of political and economic power controlled access to rivers, resacas, irrigation routes, crossings, and fertile lands in order to consolidate territorial authority throughout South Texas.
Through photography, sculpture, mapping, oral testimony, soil collections, archival records, and mixed media, the installation traces histories of lynching, disappearance, land seizure, ecological transformation, forced migration, and resistance experienced by Indigenous, Black, and Mexican-descended communities across the region.
The exhibition positions water as a mother, witness, archive, migration route, ceremonial space, and site of survival.
Indigenous & Black Led Market: A community market featuring local artists, farmers, seed keepers, herbalists, and artisans will connect visitors with local ecological knowledge, agricultural traditions, and independent cultural production from across South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley (Somi Se’k). The market will foreground relationships between water, food systems, land stewardship, and cultural continuity.
Live Music: The public program will open with live performances of traditional corridos and conjunto music rooted in the storytelling traditions of the Rio Grande Valley
Community Plática: Featured artists will discuss South Texas Indigenous survival, ecological memory, Boss Rule governance, Texas Ranger and paramilitary violence, and the militarization of waterways in South Texas. The conversation will center intergenerational storytelling, environmental memory, cultural survival, and the role of art in recovering suppressed regional histories.
Oral History Booth
Interactive sound booths will provide visitors access to recorded oral histories from Rio Grande Valley residents reflecting on waterways, migration, labor, family memory, land loss, flooding, irrigation work, river crossings, displacement, and experiences connected to Texas Ranger violence and political repression.
The listening stations will function as a living environmental archive, foregrounding community testimony, water memory, and intergenerational storytelling connected to the waterways of the Rio Grande Delta.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00
