Rene Torres is a retired University of Texas-Brownsville and Texas South-most College assistant professor. He has a long history in the Rio Grande Valley as an educator, sports historian, RGV Sports Hall of Fame Inductee, and humanitarian, with extensive community service.
In the roaring 1920s, it was not enough to just listen to swing music on the radio; dancing the Shim Sham Shimmy, Charleston, and the Lindy Hop was the norm and a shared obsession among the ladies of the time.
Swing music’s popularity peaked throughout the late 1930s and 1940s. The sounds of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller dominated the airwaves.
With orchestras blaring not only the music of the period but also the romantic Latin rhythms, including boleros and danzones, music that could surrender any caballero to the wiles of a beautiful senorita.
In San Benito, Sobre Las Olas staged a dinner dance, which was enthusiastically supported by a Valley-wide crowd. The event took place on Friday night, November 23, 1928.
The Aztec building on Robertson Street opened its doors to its “Enclosed Garden,” overlooking the Resaca on the building’s rooftop. It was known as an ambiance unlike any other in the Rio Grande Valley.
It had all the sounds of a professional orchestra, a dance floor for everyone to swing the night away, and dinner was included, all for $1.
The Azteca Building, as it was also known, was built in 1930 along the banks of the Resaca (an old tributary) that flows through the city.
It is said that this unique building was constructed in the shape of a boat, with fence posts along the rooftop’s perimeter to simulate cannons.
The flat-roof design offered an open dance floor and a beautiful view of the surrounding Resaca.
Over the years, the building has served as City Hall, a police academy, a USO for the military in the 1940s, and a public dance hall. Today, the City of San Benito owns it, and it was used by the Head Start Program before housing the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum as of 2023.
The Azteca building is also three-stories high and is located at 402 W. Robertson St. in an area now known as the historic Robertson Street District.
(San Benito News/Ray Quiroga)