Ruidosa Church Community Day 2023

Mark your calendars! Friends of the Ruidosa Church is excited to announce our third annual Community Day on Saturday, November 11 from 1-6PM. This year we are honored to present: 

• Free food and drinks: tamales, rice and beans + beer and wine
• An opening dance performance by Matachines de Santa Teresa from Presidio, Texas (1PM)
• Afternoon music set by Primo y Beebe, from Marfa, Texas (2-4:30PM)
• Large scale work by San Antonio painter, Matt Kleberg
• A community altar built in collaboration with high school students from Presidio, Texas
• A candlelit evening musical performance  (5-6PM)

For all who have attended in the past, you know it is a rare celebration in a remote location. Visitors come from all over to celebrate both the church and the families historical connection to Ruidosa. 

The theme of this year is “raise the bell,” which signifies our efforts to locate the original church bell (which has been housed in the former Presidio County Jail) and restore it to it's historic position. 

Thanks to H‑E‑B,  Cactus Liquors, and The Bean for sponsoring this event.  ✨

 If you’d like, please also bring meaningful objects, candles or photos to contribute to our community altar. 

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About the project:

Ruidosa Church is a striking, historic adobe structure that sits along one of the most remote stretches of the border between Far West Texas and Mexico. Its adobe brick arches–widely thought to be the largest in the state of Texas–frame a view of the Rio Grande riparian zone running through the Chihuahuan Desert. For most of the year, the border hamlet of Ruidosa is quiet. Only a handful of inhabitants now live in the area after the Rio Grande was diverted in the 1950s. When the water left, so did the families whose descendants are now scattered across Texas and beyond.

Friends of the Ruidosa Church, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring and preserving this far flung sacred space, was given the deed to the Catholic Church after a papal appeal in Rome in 2018. Beyond a faithful historic restoration, the nonprofit is also focused on restoring the church’s status as an active cultural space–despite (but also because of) its remoteness. To that end, the organization invited the public to the first Ruidosa Church Community Day in 2021, which featured a large-scale textile installation within the rafters of the nave, a local mariachi band and 500 tamales. Over 150 people made the journey to Ruidosa for the event, some from half a day’s drive away. An estimated half of the visitors had family heritage connected to Ruidosa and many contributed to oral history with memories of the church and border life.