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SAN JUAN — Inside the modest confines of Museo 956, fans whirled and music played from speakers as volunteers worked to set up chairs and benches for the third installment of the museum’s “Escuelita De Verano” series.

This week’s topic covered the history of the migrant farmworker labor movement. The lecture was delivered by Dr. Jose Luis Martinez, who has a doctorate in Chicano/Latino Studies.

He touched on topics including the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association of 1903, and key figures in the labor movement while nearly two dozen individuals took notes with complimentary notebooks.

With roughly an hour-and-a-half to cover an era spanning over a century, Martinez explained that he would do his best to convey the vast history of the topic to his audience.

“It’s very difficult to cover because people don’t understand that it’s been 125 years of struggle,” Martinez said just before beginning his lecture. “I think a lot of times people assume that it started with United Farm Workers in the ‘60s. Well, almost half a century before, there had been mobilizations of farmworkers in Oxnard, California, in 1903.”

In addition to his many years dedicated to researching the subject, Martinez also brought his own experiences as a migrant farmworker — an experience shared by many Rio Grande Valley residents.

“I hope people will take something from the talk that sparks an interest in them learning more, whether it’s through textbooks, videos, electronic resources, or learning more from their families,” Martinez said.

It’s that same motivation that inspired him to team up with fellow UTRGV professors in establishing Museo 956.

“One of the things that I tell myself kind of jokingly is that I work on fixing stuff,” Martinez said. “But I’m also a big believer in the vision and the in the mission, which is to try to preserve local history, history that’s often left untold in the history books, and which is often a challenge to get the community informed about a lot of the things that folks don’t want to talk about.”

Museo 956 was established last year as the Rio Grande Valley’s first civil rights museum. The principal idea came about while Dr. Stephanie Alvarez, Professor of Mexican-American Studies at UTRGV, was doing research on the historic San Juan Hotel.

“It started exactly 10 years ago when me and my students created a mural at the San Juan Sports Complex,” she recalled. “At that time, the name was Mayfield Park, and the first thing I thought was ‘Why Mayfield? Who’s this person?’”

She learned that Mayfield was a Texas Ranger in the early 20th century at the height of a historical period known as La Matanza, or the slaughter. Mayfield spent his later years residing in the San Juan Hotel.

“Tom Mayfield was basically in charge of the special rangers here in Pharr, San Juan and Alamo at that time, and special rangers were different from regular Texas Rangers because special rangers were put in place … (in the Valley),” she said. “They were just given a badge and a gun and orders to dispossess the land from Mexicans and Mexican Americans, so that the northern white settlers could take their land here in the Valley and make it their agricultural business.”

“I had uncovered that Tom Mayfield was responsible for a mass lynching of up to potentially 30 Mexican Americans and Mexicans in Alamo at one time.”

Her research continued for the next few years leading up to her fight to prevent the proposed demolition of the historic hotel.

She co-founded the Save The San Juan Hotel Collective in 2024 to initiate a movement to educate the community about the hotel’s history and its cultural impact. She, along with many other supporters, became regulars at San Juan City Commission meetings where they spoke in opposition to the hotel’s demolition.

Hoping to spread the word to a larger audience, the collective hosted an event at the Landmark on Tower on April 12. They created an exhibit with photographs, maps and information detailing the history of the hotel and the history of La Matanza.

“We really didn’t expect that many people to come, and I think it was almost 300 people showed up that day,” Alvarez recalled. “The exhibit was inside, and we noticed that people throughout that whole evening were looking at the exhibit and carefully reading, all ages.”

So popular was the event that there were plans to take the exhibit to different locations throughout the Valley before deciding on a permanent location just a short walk from the old hotel.

The museum held its grand opening on June 27, 2025, welcoming close to 400 people to see the exhibit.

“The interest was really great — a huge volume of interest in the pop-up Museo 956,” Alvarez said. “We called it Museo 956 de Derechos Civiles because it is about civil rights and about people who have fought for civil rights, how our civil rights have been violated, and in the particular context of the Rio Grande Valley, how civil rights have been violated for decades, if not centuries.”

Since then, the museum has moved a few steps over to its current location, 105 W. U.S. Highway 83, and has continuously expanded its exhibitions, collection of artwork, and the books available in its library.

“It’s been a lot of work because we don’t receive any funding for the Museo 956,” Alvarez said. “We are run strictly off of donations from generous people. Most of the donations are less than $20, and we use that to pay the rent. And it’s run by the Save The San Juan Hotel Collective and volunteers that put their heart and soul into this to make sure it’s open for the public to visit to create this new much bigger space than what we had.”

Dr. Alberto Rodriguez, the undergraduate and graduate program director for the Mexican-America Studies degrees at UTRGV, said that he was drawn to the museum because it offered an opportunity for his students to learn more about the Valley’s history outside of the classroom.

“It’s a museum where our students can see their history,” Rodriguez said. “We’re not talking about (Cesar) Chavez in California. We’re talking about Raymondville. We’re talking about the Pharr riots. And it becomes real. We’re at the center of all these movements, and the Museo is, to me, the center for experiential learning in your own backyard.”

With one year under its belt, the museum seems poised to continue growing and educating the community with its exhibits, presentations, and growing library. Alvarez said that, ideally, she’d like to see the San Juan Hotel become the permanent home of Museo 956, and she is also brainstorming creating an online catalog of the museum’s books for people to purchase.

But she said that the future of the museum is precarious.

“I hope we are never gone,” Alvarez said. “It doesn’t have to be me here. I certainly won’t be here forever. But I really am convinced that this space is really essential for the community just to come on in, take a look, sit down, read a book. If you’re hot outside, stop in. We have free water, free coffee, and free Wi-Fi for everybody, and free reading.”

Museo 956 is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 1 to 6 p.m. For more information about the museum or upcoming events, including the “Escuelita De Verano” series, visit the Museo 956 Facebook page, or its Instagram @museo_956.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify Martinez’s credentials, and to correct the museum address.