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Woven as a labor of love, Mr. Calderon has put together an anthology of the "Coal
Mining Oral History Project of Mavrick County". This publication was created from donated pictures and interviews from
people in the Eagle Pass area, Austin, Del Rio, Uvalde and San Antonio Texas in addition to contacts in Piedras Negras and
Coahuila Mexico. The publication, "...the result reflects a cross section of the community's wirters both past
and present; all contributions through, concentrate on one or more aspects of the history of coal mining in the region" (Introduction,
Calderon).
Copyright 1984 Roberto R. Calderon All rights reserved
"As you may or may not know, we printed only about 400 plus copies, I now forget
the exact number, and these were all numbered copies. That's all we had money for. This book was the first book ever
published in Eagle Pass by Mexicanos, and it was for this reason that I very much wanted it printed in the city itself, because
it made history by our doing so. It was my hope then and still that there would be other books written by members of
our community and published in that city, books about the area and region's history, Mexican American history if you will."
"I had a wonderful time during the summer of 1983 conducting the
research for
the book all over South Texas including in Uvalde.."
"In any case, the closest bet is to try and get ahold of one of the
copies available in the Eagle
Pass Public Library and photocopy it.
This is the only option until, and if, a reprinted edition of the book
were to
be released. And at this time I am working on a history of
Mexicano-Anglo electoral politics in Laredo, 1845-1911,
and am deep into the sources and cannot take time out to do the reprinting of SOUTH TEXAS COAL MINING."
"As for a copy of the interview, I left the entire set of interviews,
copies of the casettes, that
I realized that summer, some 20 plus
interviews, along with some 50 or so original photographs I was given
by various
persons, with the library director at the Eagle Pass Public
Library. The director then was Ramiro Salazar, who was
originally from Del Río, Tejas, and is now the director of the public library in
Dallas, if you can imagine that.
Since that time some 19 years ago, I have been in the public library in Eagle Pass only once, when my most recent book, MEXICAN
COAL MINING LABOR IN TEXAS AND COAHUILA, 1880-1930, was published and I did a talk and book-signing there. But even
that has been over two years ago, and the director then was a different person than before, when I was there doing the research
in 1983, as noted. I do not recall ever asking that person about the original materials, tapes (interviews) and photographs,
that I had given the library to look after. I wonder what became of those materials. My hope would be that they
are all still there and have been taken care of, which was what I had hoped would happen upon giving these materials over
to the library."
"I also gave one copy to every single public school library in the Eagle
Pass Independent School District
(EPISD), and these copies may still be in these libraries too (no sé cuál sea el caso). All the elected
public officials
in Eagle Pass and Maverick County, the school board members, the city council members, and the members of the county court
of commission also received one copy each. These copies, I repeat, were distributed free of charge. The actual
number of copies that I actually ended up selling and that were gone within about one or two years was somewhere in the vicinity
of 200 or so copies. These sold for $10.00 each, which was a very fair price and barely, if at all, covered the cost
of publishing the book."
(e-mailed from Calderon 10/08/02)
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