San Antonio on Parade

In this look at late-19th century festivals in San Antonio, the author brings an art historian's sensibility to accounts of the pageantry, parades and festive events that typified a city welcoming settlers into a community that valued their individuality even while it taught them a new identity.

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Cities, like people, may be best known by the way they party. For nearly a century and a half. San Antonio has partied well. In this look at late-nineteenth-century festivals in San Antonio, Judith Berg Sobre brings an art historian's sensibility to accounts of the pageantry, parades, and festive events that typified a city welcoming settlers into a community that valued their individuality even while it taught them a new identity. Six historic festivals provide windows into the culture of this polyglot city the Fourth of July, Juneteenth, Diez y Sets Columbus Day, the German Volksfests, and the Battle of the Flowers. The festivals allow their sponsors to showcase the language, foods, costumes, and dances of their homeland while still identifying themselves as patriotic supporters of their new country. Sobre describes the festivals vividly, and the result is a delightful picture of a city and an era at play - a city and an era that would soon find less reason to play and less ability to nurture and celebrate diversity.