BROWNSVILLE'S HISTORY OF UNFORTUNATE MURAL CHOICES

 

Former UTB President Juliet Garcia

A reader reminds us that the lame "BTX" mural on the historic Capitol Theatre's exterior wall is not Brownsville's first mural controversy.

Juliet V. Garcia, the former President of UTB and our city's queen of heavy-handedness, drug our community through at least two such maelstroms, attempting to force one super-expensive piece of art on the rate and tax payers of Cameron County and another with an offensively-graphic display of enlarged male genitalia.

In 2009, Garcia's first proposed mural, a $5,000 work by Mexican artist Sergio Higareda, would actually cost $640,000 to place on the wall of the UTB-TSC library because Garcia had her heart set on a complex process of  casting tile so the art would last for "hundreds of years."

Garcia's plan was to divert $400,000 from a $68,000,000 bond issue for "construction projects," then pay the balance from the school's general fund.

TSC Board Trustee Rene Torres objected, saying at the time:  "This is not the time to spend.  That money could be used to add another room to the library or to buy computers."

Actually, that new UTB-TSC Library embarrassingly could only store about 1/3 of the school's books illustrating poor planning on the university's part.

Facing an enormous public outcry against the expensive mural, Juliet Garcia shelved the proposed transfer of funds and tried to secure private donations for the mural.  That effort also failed.

Based largely on the mural fiasco, but also on a 2008 cheating scandal, the UTB-TSC's History Department gave President Juliet Garcia a vote of "no confidence," a decision that created an uproar in the community but did not oust Garcia.

Garcia was not even done with controversial murals.

In 2012 President Garcia arranged for a $13,000 mural by Miguel Vela to be placed inside the UTB-TSC gymnasium.

The mural drew immediate criticism as it depicted runners with "decidedly out-of-proportion scrotum and buttocks."

When Garcia ran to see what the fuss was about, she ordered the glued mural removed, a process that damaged the wall, costing taxpayers an additional $4,000 for repairs.

So, "BTX," you're not the first mural in Brownsville history to draw a negative response, and, likely, not the last.