Jul 16, 2026 | 3:00 pm
It’s not often that a film has an impact past the box office, but one documentary has helped tell the truth about the Texas Gulf Coast’s long-disparaged Karankawa people.
For years, the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas have fought for a corrected Texas Historical Commission marker in Corpus Christi. San Antonio native Adán Medrano’s 2021 film, Truly Texas Mexican, helped finalize a push that will lead to a long-due correction on July 25.
The old marker was plainly offensive. Not only did it say the Karankawa people had “gained a reputation for savagery,” but it repeated the long-discredited claim that they practiced cannibalism — a contention born out of the colonial need to justify violence against the tribe…