Jovita González de Mireles

Her method is the story the plaque skips. For her 1930 master's thesis, Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties, Jovita González carried a letter of introduction from the Catholic archbishop of San Antonio and knitted during interviews so people would see her as a down-to-earth person. Few theses of its day did not treat Mexicans as a social problem. In Corpus Christi she and her husband Edmundo Mireles wrote Spanish textbooks, Mi Libro Español, in the 1940s, with lessons on Cabeza de Vaca and Lorenzo de Zavala, and she taught for twenty-one years.

What the plaque says

Jovita González de Mireles Mexican American folklorist, writer, teacher, speaker, and cultural historian, Jovita Gonzales de Mireles, was born in Roma, Texas, near the Texas-Mexico Border as a fifth-generation descendant of a land-grant family, she was born and raised on her grandparents' rancho, Las Viboras, where she heard stories and legends from the people who lived and worked there. Their experiences influenced her throughout her life. Jovita moved with her family to San Antonio in 1910 and she completed the high school equivalency by the age of 18. She earned a scholarship at our lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, while studying and teaching Spanish at a local school. Jovita earned her bachelor's degree in 1927. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1925, she was introduced to J. Frank Dobie, noted Texas historian and folklorist, who encouraged her to write about her heritage and culture. In 1929, Jovita was awarded a Lapham Scholarship to conduct research along the border. This award allowed her to complete her master's thesis at the University of Texas. Jovita's literary abilities, combined with her authentic knowledge of south Texas, gave her an authority within the field of Texas folklore studies. She gave lectures at Texas Folklore Society (TFS) meetings and was the first and only Mexican American woman to serve as president of TFS. Jovita's writings, articles, novels, and Spanish school curriculum books were celebrated. She also wrote two novels which went unpublished until they were discovered in the archives at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi: Dew on the Thorn (1996) and Caballero (1997). Jovita taught Spanish and history in Corpus Christi until her retirement in 1966. She was active in LULAC, sponsored many academic and social clubs, and co-created to Pan American Club of Corpus Christi. Jovita died in 1983 and is buried at Rose Hill Memorial Park. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 10 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 11 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 12 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 12 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Sunshine Cemetery — 3.1 mi
• Karankawa People — 5.3 mi
• Stanley L. Kostoryz — 5.4 mi
• Moravian Club of Nueces County — 5.4 mi