Chicano artists, writers, and activists made the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center the heart of San Antonio's arts movement and one of the most important community cultural institutions in the American Southwest. Founded in 1980 on the predominantly Mexican-American West Side, the Guadalupe was born from the political and artistic ferment of the 1970s Chicano movement, when artists, writers, and activists across the Southwest were asserting the right of Mexican-American communities to tell their own stories in their own voices. The Guadalupe occupies a former movie theater on Guadalupe Street — itself a cultural corridor that has anchored West Side life for generations — and has expanded over the decades to include gallery spaces, a black box theater, a cinema, rehearsal rooms, and outdoor performance areas.
Its signature event is CineFestival, the oldest Latino film festival in the United States, held annually since 1977 and drawing filmmakers and audiences from across North America and Latin America. The Guadalupe is also one of the premier venues for Tejano music in the world — preserving and celebrating a musical tradition that blends norteño conjunto, polka, pop, and cumbia into something entirely specific to the Texas-Mexico borderlands. During Día de los Muertos, the Guadalupe's courtyard fills with elaborate ofrendas — altars honoring the dead — created by community members who have been observing this tradition for generations.