SAN ANTONIO – If you’ve ever driven down Hildebrand Avenue between U.S. Highway 281 and Broadway, you’ve probably seen it: a grand gate standing guard over a large green space and a scattering of sculptures.
It looks a lot like a cemetery or, at the very least, a place that has been locked up and rarely visited.
For most of San Antonio, that’s true. But there’s an effort to change that.
Miraflores Park, or simply Miraflores, is the creation of Dr. Aureliano Urrutia, a surgeon who came to San Antonio in 1914 as an exile during a time of political upheaval in Mexico.
Urrutia blended his love of medicine and science with art, nature and history — all of which are represented at Miraflores today behind lock and key.
“It’s a mashup. This is a mashup of all of these worlds,” said John Phillip Santos, professor of Borderland Studies and Creative Non-fiction at the UTSA School of Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences.
Urrutia’s medical practice was located downtown though most of his patients were from the city’s West Side.
Urrutia was known for landmark surgical procedures, such as separating 5-year-old conjoined twins.
“He created special tools in order to do it,” said Anne Elise Urrutia, great-granddaughter of Urrutia.
One of the twins did not survive long after the surgery while the other lived to be in her 80s.
Creation was as much a passion of Dr. Urrutia’s as medicine.
He sometimes leaned on what today might be considered homeopathic remedies that had connections to indigenous cultures, much like the artwork Urrutia selected for Miraflores.
“The garden was his expression of his attachment to his homeland,” Anne Elise Urrutia said.
The garden was Urrutia’s private property that stretched much further than the five acres it encapsulates today.
“Miraflores used to be about two-thirds larger than it is right now. It used to stretch all the way to Broadway,” said Chris Maitre, CEO of the Brackenridge Park Conservancy, which manages Miraflores on behalf of its current owner — the City of San Antonio.
The park was also connected by a walking path to Urrutia’s home at the entrance of Mahncke Park, which has since been torn down.
A 400-year-old connection
Santos, who snuck into the park as a teenager and whose grandmother was a patient of Urrutia’s, said Miraflores has always held a certain fascination.
“The place, even in ruin, gave evidence of this idea that he had to create a site in San Antonio that illuminated and revealed the connections between our city and Mexico,” Santos said.
The garden was created in 1921, 400 years after Mexico was established in 1521.
“One of the things that Dr. Urrutia had in mind when he created this park: it was a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the conquest of 1521 to 1921,” said Santos.
Miraflores holds statues of Aztec gods with two snake heads, cherubs, the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc, the Greek goddess Nike, remnants of a reflecting pool and more.
An inscription on one of the sculptures reads “en los relojes del mundo nunca suena la hora de la jusiticia,” which translates to “in the clocks of the world, the hour of justice never strikes.”
There was once a large tower in the garden that housed a library and spiral staircase that led to a reading room marked by the Faux Bois style seen in other works in San Antonio.
Miraflores once had a pool and flourishing plants and trees, representing a more garden-like feel than exists today. It was the site of large parties and civic engagements.
The park also holds several benches created using mismatched Talavera pottery that would have otherwise been thrown away.
“The great scholar Tomas Ybarra Frausto calls it a rasquache style," said Santos. ”Sort of like improvised. Making the best of these pieces of discarded pottery, you know."
It’s a style that finds beauty in something that is no longer used, much like Miraflores itself.
Pieces of the benches that used to be mismatched are now simply missing thanks to the passage of time or trespassers.
“Who knows how much of this has been lost due to people coming in and grabbing a few little fragments,” said Santos.
Owners over the years
Urrutia sold the property in 1962. In the years since, it has been owned by Southwestern Bell, later AT&T, and the University of the Incarnate Word.
Part of the park was paved over at one point to make way for office space and a parking lot.
One of the arched entrances to Miraflores has been saved and is now housed at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
The pool has been filled in, and subsequent owners installed barbeque pits and a covered patio at the back of the property to host company functions.
“I‘ve always just wondered whether it became an irritant in the social fabric of the city, you know,” said Santos. “Urban renewal, in the same period in the ’60s, tore down a lot of the Mexican face of San Antonio to make it a great American city."
Hope for restoration
During our visit to Miraflores, remnants of a fire could be seen, which was started by someone who shouldn’t have had access to the park.
“It’s been left to vandals to come in and do what they want with it,” said Maitre.
The Brackenridge Park Conservancy hopes to restore and reopen Miraflores one day and connect it to Brackenridge Park.
“Our goal is, at some point in time, to really restore it to a venue that is not locked and gated and closed to the general public,” said Maitre.
Anne Elise Urrutia hopes for the same, using a plan that honors her great-grandfather’s legacy.
“The restoration, in my opinion, needs to be in line with Dr. Urrutia’s original vision, because that vision is connected to a larger story,” she said.
The biggest hurdle may be harnessing enough interest in the project that add up to adequate funding.
“An opportunity exists for the right people to find the right partner and to really redevelop this and make it a destination place that celebrates Mexican culture, history, landscape, the beauty, art, everything,” said Maitre.
“Too much culture, too much history, has been forgotten about. And Miraflores emulates that in a five-acre parcel of land that’s left,” he added.
