It is more powerful than first imagined.  Where its creators placed it is impressive.  The idea it projects excites the mind, for it is the beginning point of a new future.  It is the new Tejano Monument on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin that will be dedicated tomorrow.  So poignant a commemoration of the past denotes the beginning of a new day.

Standing in front of the monument, one can hear a soft wind that evokes the past but simultaneously whispers the inauguration of a new time formed centuries ago but interrupted by the vagaries of demography that can make and unmake nations.  Though motionless, the statue of a Spanish explorer oversees the future: A Tejano rancher — the original, authentic cowboy — surrounded by a longhorn and another steer and other animals alongside a family that predestines much of the modern HispanicLatino population.

Upon a swath of granite that masterfully captures the sweeping expanse of Texas at its very beginning, its Tejano past is cast in bronze and the future emblazoned on a tableau of larger expectation.

From the south, the creation of Armando Hinojosa captures the eye and the mind immediately, fixing itself with power but also blending into the soft, beautiful landscape that, though a statement of a moment in history, also invokes the new chapter yet to be written.  Not unlike Michelangelo imagining the statue within a block of marble yearning to be freed, it is as if Hinojosa’s statue always existed on the Capitol’s grounds – but then it always did.

The bronze and stone are past yet prologue, precedent yet promise.  Upon artistry is hoisted hope.  The explorer’s eye holds a vision. The longhorn adds heft and presence.  A stubborn goat evokes a people unwilling to surrender their culture or language fully.  A horse’s tail swirls, made so by the pushing wind of change. A more comforting lamb implies a people’s easy and warm compassion.  A couple in their closeness forms new community.

The Tejano statue is a prayerful regeneration of generations past and present.  It carves a path through history that has yet to attain its fullness.  Incomplete, the vision remains, to be filled in by a journey into a better future.

Fully emergent, we can no longer be the same. Now, at this new beginning, it all must be done right.  No one excluded, no one denied.  No one pressured to think less of themselves; no one set apart, but instead going forward with talents at full force and, once arriving at the end, having succeeded at long last. We must be better.  We must work within a faith that never died.

A wonderful word in Spanish captures the moment: Cumpli.  I finished. I fulfilled.  We must all meet the obligations that a new time asks us to bear.  Those brought here to this point by history cannot tire; we cannot rest.  Our history within us is part of the inescapable years ahead.  Our manners, our acts are designed not to reach an objective but to fulfill a dream and thereby build the new world discovered so long ago by a people whose descendants gave their name to a state that was and is our home – and always will be.

Tejas,Tejano: Texas,Texans.

Siempre.  Forever.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.