Nuestra Senora De Guadalupe’s Divided City

In the mid-1920s, the Austin City Council adopted principles of the City Beautiful movement, resulting in legal racial segregation and ultimately rezoning land formerly occupied by a Mexican community. Under the guidance of the Home Mission Guild, a local charitable organization composed of multi-ethnic English-speaking Catholics, Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church was relocated to the area zoned east of the city for people of color. Despite the forced relocation, the Mexican American Catholic community continued to expand, increasing ministries for parishioners, supporting a low-tuition Catholic primary school, and constructing a new building to house a larger congregation. During the 2007 centennial celebration of the parish, a study found that almost half of their parishioners lived outside the parish boundaries as a broader reflection of Austin’s ongoing racial segregation patterns and gentrification. This paper will analyze and compare the campaigns of the Home Mission Guild and the secular Austin City Council to describe the economic and racial motivations for relocating the physical parish and its Mexican neighborhood.