 "Photo: Alma E. Hernandez/The Pan American")
The small house on Robert Street wears its colors proudly. The patriotism shines through in every bright red shutter on white paneling and in the red brick lining the driveway leading up to the American flag pole by the front door.
Mary Esther Saldana stands by the door, half looking at her well kept yard, half looking out at what is now overflow parking behind the baseball stadium.
“It’s been a lifetime I’ve lived here,” Saldana said. “I moved in when I got married in my early twenties and never really left.”
Since her move in 1968, what were once open fields and neighborhoods have turned into the parking lots and expansions of the university. In front of her house there are only scattered houses, some occupied, some waiting to be torn down.
Saldana’s property lies just past the land acquired under Phase 1 of UTPA’s plans for expansion, with the date for the start of Phase 2 still not set in stone due to budget concerns. As of now, the university has purchased 65 homes, approximately 85% of the first phase.
“I suppose I would sell this house if the university offered me the right price,” Saldana said. “But this is my home, it always be.”
Saldana, who after more than forty years in the area lovingly calls it hers, recalls what that area was before the university began growing.
“I remember that overflow parking used to just be a field where the kids would play,” Saldana said. “They used to bury the pets there whenever one would die and have little processions down the street.”
Behind the field was a cattle rancher whose cows used to escape from time to time when the kids played. They were scared of the cows and would climb up the mesquite tree and stay there until the cows were shooed away, Saldana reminisced with a smile on her face.
That mesquite tree is now the corner of Chavez and Robert Street, next to the house of Saldana’s best friend, who has lived there just as long. It is one of the few occupied houses still left on the other side of the street.
“People just pack up and leave once their house is bought, then the bulldozers come and just cave in the roof to tear it down,” Saldana said.
A street down, on Elizabeth Avenue, tractors begin clearing the brush around a solitary pale blue home to prepare for future demolition.
Saldana isn’t negative about the changes to her neighborhood though.
“The people are really nice and we never get any trouble from anyone,” Saldana said. “Like the kids next door, they moved in maybe 10 years ago and they’re really friendly.”
Despite the good spirit with which Saldana has taken the changes, it’s hard to ignore the amount of history and emotional connections being replaced by parking lots. With the university’s current budget issues, however, Saldana may be able to hold on to her own piece of that history for a bit longer.
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