LAUREN IBAÑEZ / NEXTGENRADIO
What is the meaning of
home?
Maria Ruiz speaks with Monica Sosa, a Brownsville native who is working on Boca Chica, Corazón Grande, an archival project to preserve memories and oral history surrounding the beach. Boca Chica, Corazón Grande is influenced by Sosa’s deep-rooted connection to the space she would go to as a child and is now bringing to her own daughter. She hopes the archival project will preserve community experiences before companies such as SpaceX change the landscape with development. For Sosa, home is a place where the community can feel safe and accepted while connecting with nature.
Brownsville native finds joy in creating Boca Chica Beach archive
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I’m Monica Sosa. I am a worker, owner here at ENTRE, which is a film center and regional archive, and the project curatorial manager for Boca Chica, Corazón Grande, which is a community archival project and the first of its kind from ENTRE.
WAVE SOUNDS
Boca Chica, Corazón Grande started off as a desire to reconnect with home.
Boca Chica is a beach that is located here in South Texas.
It is somewhere that I grew up going, somewhere that my mother grew up going, and somewhere that I know many of us share similar stories.
My mom always talks about how she would go every weekend and it would be her cousins and her sisters. And that is where they found their place of peace and joy, in terms of just being able to connect with the land and the water, a place of joy in my memory book, and, a place of infinite beauty.
Every time I think of Boca Chica, I think of how peaceful things felt, although the world is always happening around us. It felt like it was just us and the beach. Being able to find different activities that really nourished your spirit, whether it was swimming in the water, Walking through the lomas, running for your life against bees.
It’s always had a very particular energy, right? It’s very rooted in come as you are.
Boca Chica Beach does feel like home.
FADE WAVES SOUNDS
So I think in that there is this whole tapestry of lived experiences that have touched me, my mother, and now my daughter, because of the intergenerational experiences that we have.
I think Boca Chica also has the capacity of not only preserving these memories and stories that are continuously disappearing because of the older generations who are now passing, right?
But particularly with Boca Chica Beach, it’s not documented in the Brownsville Historical Association. It’s not documented in the Texas Archival of Movement Images.
Without Boca Chica, Corazon Grande, and the database and archive that we’re trying to build, the fear is that we will lose all cultural history, cultural significance of Boca Chica Beach.
COUNTDOWN AMBI “Three, two, one…”
Ever since Elon Musk decided to invest in his aerospace. company, SpaceX…. he wanted to completely strip Boca Chica Beach and call it Starbase. And he continues to do that.
And so what does that mean? it’s essentially this idea that it’s a region that is not deemed important enough and can be sacrificed for the quote unquote betterment of humanity.
WAVE SOUNDS
And it really is heartbreaking, because since SpaceX moving in, it’s, just completely being destroyed in so many different shapes and forms because of the different trash that is left from rocket launches, or the trash that is left from people who just come in and want to see this rocket launch and then leave.
And so without this archival work, we are at risk of complete erasure of the histories that have been experienced on that beach.
We find the courage, not just in community, but as those who have opted into being community representatives, being community advocates, and really define this region for what it is and not what we think it should be.
WAVE SOUNDS
Monica Sosa smiled as she stood on the shoreline of Boca Chica beach one August afternoon, keeping a watchful eye on her 7-year-old daughter, Remi, who was playing in the gentle waves with her cousin, Lola.
With her feet grounded on the wet sand, the Brownsville native reminisced about what her childhood was like – how safe and free she felt growing up right by the Gulf Coast.
“It is somewhere that I grew up going, somewhere that my mother grew up going,” Sosa, 35, said. “And somewhere that I know many of us share similar stories in terms of just being able to connect with the land and the water, a place of joy in my memory book, and a place of infinite beauty.”
For her, Boca Chica is more than a beach. It is a place of safety and freedom; for her, it is home. While she watched her daughter wade through the water, she remembered why she’s so passionate about preserving the beach’s history.
(From left to right) Monica Sosa kneels by the shore with her 7-year-old daughter, Remi Sosa, at Boca Chica Beach on August 31, 2024.
MARIA RUIZ / NEXTGENRADIO
It is somewhere that I grew up going, somewhere that my mother grew up going, and somewhere that I know many of us share similar stories in terms of just being able to connect with the land and the water. A place of joy in my memory book, and a place of infinite beauty.
A mirror with ‘Boca Chica, Corazón Grande sits under a sand dune surrounded by makeshift flags during a community event, Playa de Memorias, on August 31, 2024. The SpaceX launch and catch pad peeks from over the dunes, only sitting miles away from shore.
MARIA RUIZ / NEXTGENRADIO
Her love for the beach pushed her to act on her desire to preserve its beauty, and for the last three years, Sosa has contributed to creating a regional archive that collects pictures and videos people have taken through the years along Boca Chica beach. Sosa calls the archive Boca Chica, Corazón Grande.
The community archival project is dedicated to being a safe place to store and preserve memorabilia of Boca Chica. Sosa said this is not only important for Brownsville natives, but it’s also an effort to protect the beloved beach’s culture.
Housed by ENTRE, a local film center in nearby Brownsville, the project’s broader goal is to preserve the beach’s history by collecting photographs and oral histories.
The Boca Chica, Corazón Grande, Community Archival Project zine.
MARIA RUIZ / NEXTGENRADIO
“These are physical representations of how we can exist on the day to day when we’re able to connect with ourselves and the land, right? Because it is just so liberating when you find your roots again,” Sosa said. “And particularly community archives have the capacity of doing that for many.”
In 2021, Sosa, alongside one of her friends, researched archivals from the Brownsville Historical Association and the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. She said they were both shocked and saddened to find the limited information on Boca Chica.
Her nostalgia is what sparked her passion to archive memories at the beloved beach, which took her back in time to her childhood.
Sosa fondly remembers caravanning to the beach at 12 years old with her parents, sister, cousins, tías and tíos. She said they ate Dorito-filled ham sandwiches after a swim.
Monica Sosa, aged 12, stands by the family Ford pickup truck in a 2000s archive photo.
MARIA RUIZ / NEXTGENRADIO
Monica Sosa holds a seashell bordered frame with two archived photos on September 3, 2024.
MARIA RUIZ / NEXTGENRADIO
When Superheavy, SpaceX’s booster system (a rocket engine), first launched in April 2023, the rocket destroyed its launchpad, sending concrete into the surrounding wildlife. According to a report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the launch caused a 3.5-acre fire in the surrounding area.
“The 3.5-acre fire that resulted from the test flight occurred on upland habitat,” the USFWS stated, reporting no wildlife casualties and “significant regrowth” of grasses after 22 days. Shorebird nests were littered with debris, but SpaceX and Texas Parks and Wildlife worked to remove the mess before nesting season to minimize any disruption to the habitat.
“The landscape itself will completely change,” Sosa said. “Our waters will be inaccessible to swimming, much less eating. And so there is this continued destruction that SpaceX is leading.”
This is all the more reason preserving Boca Chica’s history is important, Sosa said. Through the archive, Sosa says she hopes to foster a sense of rediscovery and cultural preservation not just for her family, but the Rio Grande Valley, the four southernmost counties of Texas.
“Memories build this archive as a resistance project, as a project that fills our cups, as a project that fills the cups of the future and inspires the future in ways of looking back and thinking, strategizing: How do we do it differently?” she said. “Without this archival work, we are at risk of complete erasure of the histories that have been experienced on that beach.”
For those interested in contributing to the Boca Chica, Corazón Grande archive, please contact ENTRE Film Center and Archive at info@entrefilmcenter.org.