Rio Grande Valley Oral Histories

Identifier

HCHC_Luna_Baudelia_2026-09-25

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Creation Date

9-25-2026

Description

This oral history interview with Baudelia “Mimi” Luna (born May 24, 1946, in Acapulco, Mexico) was recorded in Duncanville, Texas, on September 25, 2026. Luna recounts her family’s migration from Acapulco to the Rio Grande Valley in late 1948, when she was a toddler, and the earlier story of her paternal grandfather, Teofilo Peña, who fled violence during the Mexican Revolution era and settled near Karnes City, Texas. She describes growing up in Monte Alto as the seventh of eight children in a large Peña-González family, attending local schools (including the choice between Edinburg and Edcouch-Elsa high schools), and living with severe childhood asthma that shaped her schooling and limited her participation in sports.

Luna discusses her family’s ties to the Good Samaritan nursing home in the Monte Alto/Elsa area (where her sister and brother-in-law served as administrators), her own training and brief work there, and a year spent in western Kansas that improved her health. She recalls returning to the Valley, attending Pan American College, working part-time at the Hidalgo County courthouse (including for the health department), meeting her husband at a campus dance, and marrying in 1969 after his military service. The interview covers raising four sons in McAllen, returning to college after a thirteen-year gap to earn a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a reading minor, obtaining bilingual endorsement, and teaching for roughly twenty-five years—first in Edinburg (Stephen F. Austin Elementary) and later in the Dallas area—before retiring in 2004. She also reflects on family naming traditions, her mother’s sewing, the loss of an infant sister, Valley community life, and the family’s later move to Duncanville. The recording offers a firsthand account of mid-twentieth-century Mexican-American family life, education, health, and work in the Rio Grande Valley and beyond.

Format

.M4A, 256 kbps

Length

01:48:05

Language

English

Notes

Part of the Hidalgo County Historical Commission, RGV Legacy Anthology Collection.

Interview with Baudelia “Mimi” Luna

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