For more than two decades, San Antonio’s Latino literary community has advocated, sometimes with little support, for a public space that celebrates the city’s deep Latino literary traditions.

Scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto rightly calls such a space a necessity in "the social, cultural capital of Mexican America."

By this fall that space will become reality when the Central Library opens the Latino Collection and Resource Center in a newly renovated space on its first floor.

The 6,000-square-foot area will house the library's existing 10,000-volume collection and provide room to grow its holdings. The space will have research capacity, study rooms, a small gallery and spaces for programming. If the colorful plans are any indication, it will be a place of inspiration.

Established in 1995, the Latino Collection was sequestered on the sixth floor of the downtown library in what can only be described generously as an afterthought.

"It was just to appease us," said Ellen Riojas Clark, a UTSA professor emerita, recalling a library board that "was not supportive at all." It even attempted to evade Latino activists by switching the site of public meetings.

She recalled a remarkable meeting when a teen Marisa Bono, now Southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, spoke before the board and advocated for the creation of a Latino Collection.

It volumes were placed in a 2,000-square-foot area in a seldom-trafficked spot on the sixth floor. It has remained in a solitude there while providing little to no space for readers to study, write or celebrate the word.

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