Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the celebration of Texan heritage involves the strategic construction of savage 'others'. This disavowal of the multicultural complexion of Texas past and present echoes the current economic and environmental injustice to which Texans of colour are routinely exposed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how pioneering processes of independence and extraction underpin the official narrative of Texas history and memory in museums and heritage sites. We contrast this narrative with counter-memories that expose the state's continuing history of environmental racism. The celebration of rugged independence remains a crucial part of the master-narrative of Texan history, and the notion of the pioneer spirit is often exemplified by the discovery and extraction of oil on Texan land. However, museums and heritage sites typically ignore the racialised forms of environmental injustice upon which processes are premised. In a heritage landscape which celebrates oil as essential to American life, TEJAS, run by Juan and Ana Parras, provide an alternative experience via toxic tours of Houston's marginalised neighbourhoods. This paper analyses a tour taken with Juan Parras, revealing the extent of big oil's social, economic and political influence in the area and the impact of this on local Latino and African American communities living in the shadow of extraction infrastructure. Such impact includes increased respiratory, neurological, immune, and reproductive health issues and higher risk of cancer. Tours also provide an alternative reading of the San Jacinto Battleground State Historical Site, home to the Shell sponsored exhibit Big Energy. For TEJAS, this site functions as a paradigm of structural racism and environmental injustice propped up by big oil. Overall, we suggest, TEJAS's tours provide an important corrective to revisionist memory-making and offer an embodied experience of living and dying unevenly in one of America's most polluted cities.