EDINBURG, Texas - South Texas authors Aurelio Manuel Montemayor and Thomas Ray Garcia will be discussing their new book, "El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor," at the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg on Sunday, January 14, starting at 2:00 p.m.
Montemayor is an educator and educational trainer from San Antonio, Texas, with a career in education spanning five decades. He is also the developer of the family leadership and education model for the Intercultural Development Research Association.
Garcia is a writer, educator and entrepreneur from Pharr, Texas. He's the author of an award-winning short story volume "The River Runs" and he serves as the founder and executive director of the College Scholarship Leadership Access Program. He is also one of the leaders of the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force.
Their new book tells the story of Montemayor, a Chicano activist and self-described fronterizo.
According to the book’s back cover, Montemayor’s “dual identities as an educator and political organizer informed his hitherto little known role in developing a course, or curso that cultivated Chicano leadership from the barrios.”
The memoir, the back cover states, follows Montemayor during the formative periods of his life - his education, his teaching career, his political awakening - to describe the development of his critical consciousness in 1960s America.
“The book combines the personal and the political, leading readers along a journey of self-discovery that results in Montemayor’s most consequential yet relatively unknown contribution to el movimiento, the Curso de la Raza.”
Author Martha P. Cotera said of the book: “Montemayor's story is integral to the intellectual and spiritual infrastructure that undergirded the Chicano Movement.”
The book is published by Texas A&M University Press.
