Since 1907, Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church has anchored the streets you walk here, once Barrio Guadalupe, the historic Mexican American neighborhood. The church arrived before the barrio had a name — or rather, it helped give the community its name. Mexican American families who had lived in Austin since before Texas statehood, and waves of immigrants fleeing the violence of the Mexican Revolution after 1910, gathered here to build a Catholic community that spoke Spanish, celebrated Día de los Muertos, and maintained Mexican cultural traditions in the face of Anglo-American indifference.
The barrio's murals told stories the mainstream city ignored. The 1960s and 1970s brought Chicano civil rights activism to these streets — farmworker solidarity marches, Brown Beret organizing, student walkouts at Austin High School demanding Chicano history in the curriculum. The politics of identity and justice ran hot here for decades.
Today the original barrio is dramatically changed. Gentrification has replaced most of the working-class homes with condos and coffee shops. Our Lady of Guadalupe remains, its bells still marking the hours in a neighborhood that barely remembers the community that built it.