Sunday, June 29, 2008

People you s“hood” know: Richardson’s Clara Borja Hinojosa

By Catherine Cuellar

RICHARDSON — Clara Borja Hinojosa's life has come full circle in the last quarter-century. In 1983, with an all-volunteer cast and crew including Colombians, Cubans, and Mexicans, she produced The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca on the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas. Now, as founding director of the Mexico Institute, she hopes to build the area's first "Casa de Cultura" on campus.

When Clara Borja Hinojosa first moved from Mexico to Texas in the late 1960s, she experienced major culture shock – or more accurately, shock at the lack of culture. In her native Mexico City, “art is part of daily life,” she says. “Here, it's an elective, a luxury.” Hinojosa studied anthropology before she met her husband Hector, a telecommunications engineer from the Rio Grande Valley. She remarks that in Mexico, “indigenous languages don't have a word for art; it's an integral part of the soul.”

In search of creativity through her daily life, Clara and her cousin, a doctor at UT Southwestern, started organizing traditional Mexican cooking contests in the Dallas area. Then her husband's job took their family to California, Virginia, and South America, where she picked up Portuguese. “The culture gets into you just like humidity,” Clara says of her time in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Upon her return in 1978, she worked for Neiman Marcus as a consultant on the 1978 Brazilian fortnight, staying on at Stanley Marcus' request to help open a new store at Prestonwood Town Center. She employed her Neimans colleagues to design and build sets for the first play she produced, and through it, “I found people just like me looking for artistic expression.”

Clara created Mundo Cultural Hispano to realize her life's mission of connecting people and things. The organization became a clearinghouse, attracting students attending local universities, professionals working for North Texas companies, and individuals wondering “Where do they sell...?”

After a 1984 gas explosion in Mexico, Clara led efforts to raise $150,000 in aid in the Dallas area. The following year when an earthquake in Mexico City injured 30,000 and left 100,000 homeless, she asked the Thompson family to place donation collection boxes at their 7-Eleven stores, generating $385,000 in two weeks. And when an undocumented immigrant was injured by a train in his search for a new life in Texas, Clara came to his aid, raising $15,000 to pay for prosthetics, physical therapy, and safe transportation back to his family in Mexico.

In 1989, the Mexican government gave Clara a grant to focus her efforts. Originally called the Mexican Cultural Center, the organization was renamed the Mexico Institute to avoid confusion with the Latino Cultural Center. From then on, Clara went “full blast — creating exhibitions and concerts,” including exhibits at the Dallas Museum of Art and Meadows Museum that drew thousands of visitors. She partnered with community institutions from the West Dallas Community Center (teaching piñata-making and leading a Christmas posada) to the USA Film Festival (sponsoring and screening Mexican movies). As a board member for the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture for eight years, Clara introduced Latin American thinking to the curriculum. She also supported the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Mexican music director Eduardo Mata in the campaign to build the Meyerson Symphony Center.

She describes her goals through these endeavors as “Teaching Americans who their neighbor is; giving the children of Mexicans pride in their culture; educating Mexicans; and filling the void of nostalgia felt by immigrants.” In 2002, she became a U.S. citizen.

Clara is ready to hand over the reins to a new director this August, but she will continue her campaign to build a Casa de Cultura – not merely a facility that can be rented for special events, but a community center with a cafe, library, school and gallery. Through this and her other projects over the past 18 years, she has “found her bliss” by serving and teaching.

See more stories in:

• Citizen Profiles
• Mexico