Paseo por El Westside

Join The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the Westside Preservation Alliance and the Historic Westside Residents’ Association for the 13th Annual Paseo Por el Westside, a historic and cultural preservation community gathering on the Westside of
San Antonio.

This event will take place on Saturday, May 7, 2022 at Rinconcito de Esperanza at 816 S. Colorado St.,  from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Click here for more information. 

There will be walking tours of the historic Westside that shares the history through its architecture and culture. Individuals can also participate in many workshops including piñata making, recipes with chiles, dances of the 1920s and 1930s and children’s juegos y canciones (songs). 

Started in 2010 to help save “The Pink Building,” (aka Casa Maldonado) that was destined for demolition, Esperanza and the Westside Preservation Alliance created Paseo por El Westside to build community consciousness about the importance of the history, culture, traditions and the built environment of the historic Westside.

As part of National Historic Preservation Month, the Paseo offers Westside and San Antonio residents, and visitors alike, walking tours of the historic westside, a neighborhood that has always been seen as the “bad side of town,” and shares the history through its architecture, culture, sacred spaces, political struggle and now, through the destruction of our casitas and the displacement of our gente.

In addition to the walking tours, individuals can participate in many workshops including piñata making, recipes with chiles, dances of the 1920s and 1930s and children’s juegos y canciones. Learn how to research your home, how to save your family documents, letters and photos and help us map the more important spaces in this historic neighborhood. Musical performances by Belen Escobedo, Juan Tejeda, Conjunto Heritage Taller and Azul will also be featured along with Westside poets and storytellers.

Paseo Por El Westside offers a variety of culturally grounded learning experiences to root our families in our long history and traditions. Join us at Paseo to celebrate, preserve and honor the places, history and the tangible and intangible cultura of San Antonio’s historic Westside. Paseo promises to be a fun-filled educational community-led event for all ages.

Paseo presents our historic neighborhood through the lens of long-time residents, historians, professors, artists and musicians and all the participants who attend this festival. Recover cultural memory, see the beauty and surviving architecture and help us preserve what remains in the historic Westside by joining us in play, storytelling, and practice of traditions at the 13th Annual Paseo por El Westside.

Esperanza, the Westside Preservation Alliance and the Historic Westside Residents Association are the principal organizers of the Paseo Por El Westside. We have come together over the last 20 years to preserve the buildings and promote historic and cultural preservation in San Antonio’s Westside. From trying to Save La Gloria (2002), Saving Lerma’s (2010), Casa Maldonado (2008-2011),
Univision (2013), Hays St. Bridge (2011-2019), Basila Frocks (2013-14) and the hundreds of casitas that are being demolished or threatened with demolition, our organizations have been at the forefront of issues involving historic and cultural preservation that have to do with the working class community of San Antonio.