The Library of Congress’ National Film Registry has added a home video of Texas natives Antonio and Josefina Fuentes to its list of important American films.
AUSTIN, Texas — During Hispanic Heritage Month, a website maintained by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image offers viewers rare footage celebrating family life in South Texas from nearly 100 years ago.
Amateur home videos shot by the Fuentes family of Corpus Christi in the 1920s and 1930s document parades, visits to the park, Christmas morning in 1929 and scenes from around town.
When Antonio Fuentes moved to Corpus Christi from Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to work for the Mexican Consulate in the Texas Gulf Coast city, he bought a movie camera to record scenes of his family and special events in his vibrant community.
His films are so important today that they have been designated as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant by the Library of Congress and are in the National Film Registry.
“These films portray this dynamic, socially engaged family, and they represent Hispanic culture, which was often portrayed negatively in earlier films,” said Elizabeth Hansen of the Texas Moving Image Archive, which is working with Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi to make the films available to the public on its website.
“We get to see what it’s like for families to live in Texas, their relationships with the community and how they ended up here,” Hansen continued.
The Fuentes lived in Corpus Christi for their entire adult lives and remained active in civic life. Antonio Fuentes passed away in 1988 and Josefina Fuentes passed away in 1993, but the years they spent raising their children and living in a growing Texas community will live on as moments lost forever but that can be viewed today through the magic of film.
