Milliken Garza: History in the making: Texas Commission on the Arts is coming to Brownsville

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Brownsville arts and culture champion Diane Milliken Garza is bringing the Texas Commission on the Arts to Brownsville on August 26th and 27th. It will be the first time the state agency has visited the city.

“I’ve invited them to come, and they’ve accepted,” said Milliken Garza, in an exclusive interview with the Rio Grande Guardian.

“They’re coming to look at historic downtown Brownsville and the beautiful historic buildings that we’re trying to refurbish and that we’re trying to turn into a real cultural district for Brownsville, but also for the whole region.”

Milliken Garza is a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts. Asked what the agency does, Milliken Garza said:

“We give a lot of grants to the Rio Grande Valley region, and, of course, you have to apply for a grant in order to get one. But I think a lot of our cultural organizations are not aware of the statewide art organizations. Number one is the Texas Commission on the Arts. But we also have the Texas Cultural Trust, Texans for the Arts. There are a lot of other ones that are state level, for example, Texas Women for the Arts, that have grant money to give.”

The top goal, Milliken Garza said, is to get Brownsville officially designated as a state recognized Cultural District.

“The Cultural District system that we have in Texas comes from the Texas Commission on the Arts and cities can apply to get a state designation as a Cultural District, and with it, it brings many benefits.”

Milliken Garza said community leaders may not appreciate the value of being designated a Cultural District.

“It brings with it cultural tourism, number one. Cultural tourism is what sustains any community. You can give somebody a grant, and it can be a dead end grant, spend it and it’s over. Now we need more money,” Milliken Garza said.

“If you have something like cultural tourism, where you spend it on something that people want to see or do or eat or whatever… they come they spend their money, that money goes back into the thing that you fund, over and over and over, and it becomes sustainable on its own.”

Milliken Garza said the best example in Texas of what cultural tourism can do that the Rio Grande Valley might relate to is San Antonio. She noted that Brownsville is widely regarded as the second most historic city in Texas, after San Antonio.

“San Antonio brings in billions of dollars every single year because of cultural tourism. And I feel in San Antonio is based on all of the things that we have as a border town. We’re the real border town, and those are the things that we have to offer for real. They’re authentic. They’re genuine. We are the border of Texas and Mexico, and if we capitalize on that through art and anything else that’s involved in art and culture tourism, and we get the tourists to come here, it will be sustainable, and they will bring in so much money to benefit our region.”

It was put to Milliken Garza that the Valley, and in particular Brownsville, has not received the help from the state it could have to promote and market its history. She responded:

“But I feel like you have to ask for it. If you’re not going to, if the local people don’t know their value, and they don’t speak up and ask for the the grants, ask for the funding, as for the attention, the articles, the films, all of those things, well, of course, no one’s going to remember that you’re there because you haven’t celebrated it yourself.”

Milliken Garza said it is her mission to change that.

“I think that’s what we’re starting to do, to realize that we need to bring attention to our own local region, and we need to learn what’s available in our state, in our nation, in our planet that other cities around our state and our planet have taken advantage of and that are working to sustain them with cultural tourism. That’s the biggest thing that we will ever have here, because our whole region is based on history, so we need to grab it and run with it.”

Asked if there were any other comments she would like to add, Milliken Garza said: 

“This visit by the Commission on the Arts is very important. They don’t travel very often. There are a million towns in Texas, as we all know, so for them to come and take an interest in what we have here and help us re-imagine what we can do for arts and culture is just historical, number one. And I feel like it’s going to move us forward in making plans of what we can do in the future for ourselves that maybe we hadn’t thought about before.”

Editor’s Note: Here is a video recording of the Rio Grande Guardian’s interview with Diane Milliken Garza:

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