San Antonio’s airport used to have a cheeky personality, thanks to two adorable statues of cows decked out in traditional Mexican folkloric costumes and posed in the midst of a skillful paso dos dance.
But Henry Cisneros — former US Housing Secretary and favorite son of San Antonio — didn’t like the fiberglass dancing bovines. Why, praytell? It appears that the cows, which were to be auctioned off for cancer research, offended Mr. Cisneros’s sense of Hispanic culture.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Cisneros “argues that they are fat cows decked out in the ranchera clothing of Mexican folk dancers and are an insult to Hispanic traditions” and Cisneros himself wrote: “We invite people to make jokes about them, to indulge sub-conscious prejudices, and to perpetuate hurtful stereotypes — but only about one culture.”
Uh, excuse me? Cute, festive, dancing statues hardly perpetuate harmful myths about a culture, and the bulk of the San Antonio community didn’t seem to understand Cisneros’s heavy-handed censorship. Have a cow.