Some of you may have read about the San Antonio flood and how it helped create the River Walk. What you probably did not read was that most of the people who died were Mexican Americans, and San Antonio did little to address flooding on the West Side until the 1940s.
Marvin Zindler used to say, “It’s hell to get old.” Meme says, “It’s hell to be not white in a land of racists.”
In September 1921, San Antonio was hit by one of the worst floods in its history. Nearly eight inches of rain fell in a matter of hours. The San Antonio River and the creeks running through the city became raging torrents, tearing through homes and businesses and leaving destruction for miles.
The West Side suffered the worst.
That was where thousands of Mexican and Mexican American families had been crowded into some of the poorest housing in the city. Many homes lacked proper sewage, running water, drainage, or sturdy construction. One local publication described living conditions there as so primitive that some people were housed worse than cattle in modern dairies.
When the water came, those homes had little chance.
The flood ripped through the West Side, carrying away houses, animals, furniture, and people. Thousands were left homeless. The New York Times reported that the destruction included the downtown business district and the heavily populated West Side, where thousands of Mexicans were homeless, and the dead had not yet been counted.
The death toll was never certain.
The same storm also struck Central Texas. In Williamson and Milam counties, more than 100 people were killed when rivers and creeks overflowed. Almost all of the dead were Mexican and Mexican American migrant farmworkers living in temporary housing in low-lying areas. In Thorndale, 65 bodies were recovered, all Mexican or Mexican American. On one farm near Elm Grove, 29 Mexican workers died. Only two Anglos died in those floods.
The rain fell on everyone.
But the people most likely to die were those who had been pushed into the weakest housing, the poorest neighborhoods, and the most flood-prone land.
That was not an accident of weather.
It was the result of segregation, poverty, and political neglect.
The flood was natural.
The disaster had been built long before the rain began.
