Agave Festival Marfa – a weekend dedicated to celebrating the culture and ecology of the Chihuahuan Desert – returned to West Texas this month. The festival brought scholars, anthropologists, archeologists and artists to the region for a series of free talks, tastings and performances.
To highlight some of this year's programming, Marfa Public Radio is broadcasting two talks from the festival today, June 16 from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
We’ll begin with art historian and poet, Roberto Tejada, reading from his new book, “Carbonate of Copper,” a collection of poems addressing lives lived on the borderlands.
Following that, you’ll hear a talk from a familiar voice: historian and raconteur Oscar Rodriguez, discussing the old Rio Grande dialect, Caló, which he has been sharing on a weekly basis with listeners of Marfa Public Radio for the past many years as a part of the eponymous program which he writes, produces and performs.
Following both talks, you’ll hear songs from the band Los Texmaniacs, who performed at the festival.
You can find those and other selected talks from the Agave Festival below.
Art historian and poet, Roberto Tejada reads from his new book, Carbonate of Copper, a collection of poems, addressing lives lived on the borderlands. Written during periods in Brownsville, McAllen, and Marfa, in Carbonate of Copper Tejada gives voice to unsettled stories from the past, as well as to present-day experiences of custody and displacement. The poems stage scenes adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico border and to the realities of migration warped by jarring political vitriol, bearing witness to past and present-day hazards and sorrows waged by those in search of asylum.
Historian Oscar Rodriguez (Lipan) will discuss the old Rio Grande dialect, Caló, which he has been sharing on a weekly basis with listeners of Marfa Public Radio for the past many years as a part of the eponymous program which he writes, produces and performs. In addition to being a great historian, Rodriguez is a fabulous raconteur with an illuminating understanding of our region and its linguistic particularities.
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Agave Festival Marfa in June 2025.
Hannah Gentiles
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Agave Festival Marfa in June 2025.
Carlos Morales
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Agave Festival Marfa in June 2025.
Carlos Morales
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Agave Festival Marfa in June 2025.
Hannah Gentiles
Journalist, essayist and river guide Sam Karas of the Big Bend Sentinel will reflect on the modern history of rafting Santa Elena Canyon in what's now Big Bend National Park, from the US military expedition that mapped the southern border in the 1850s to her own personal experiences hiking the canyon during a record-shattering dry spell. As the US and Mexico spar over nonexistent water and the region is subjected to unprecedented militarization, can the iconic canyon still stand as a symbol of wonder, hope and international friendship?
Chinati Foundation, in partnership with Agave Festival, presents a talk by Erika Blecha, archeologist at the Center for Big Bend Studies, on 16,000 years of dynamic human, animal, and environmental interactions at the San Esteban Rockshelter, situated along Alamito Creek just south of Marfa. Recent archeological work at the site is providing profound, new understandings of the history of our region.
