GARCÍA DE FALCÓN, ÉLIDA (1879-1968). Élida García de Falcón, Methodist writer and translator, was born to Juan and Luisa (Benavídez) García in Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on March 21, 1879. Both of her parents died before she was ten, and Élida went to live with her sister, who was married to an early Mexican-American Methodist minister. She started her education in the Methodist schools in Mexico where her brother-in-law was posted. After her graduation from the Palmore Institute in Chihuahua, she received a scholarship to attend the Laredo Seminary, a school founded by the Methodists and operated by their Women's Missionary Council for Texas Mexican women along the border. There she continued her studies in English and music and graduated in 1900. Later she also took teacher training at normal schools in Corpus Christi and San Marcos. She became a teacher in Springtown at the age of seventeen and later taught in several towns in the Rio Grande valley.

In 1907 Élida García married Antonio G. Falcón, a descendent of original land grantees in the valley. They had two sons and a daughter. García de Falcón spent some twenty years as a translator for the women's division of the Methodist Church. She helped translate the official Methodist hymnbook into the Spanish version, the Himnario Metodista (1955), edited by Alfredo Náñez,^qv a Methodist minister who was also her son-in-law. This hymnbook and the translated Ritual Metodista are the two most important documents in the Methodist expansion into the Texas Mexican community. In addition to this work García de Falcón wrote articles and apparently poetry for numerous Spanish language newspapers in the state. She died on August 11, 1968.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Walter N. Vernon et al., The Methodist Excitement in Texas (Dallas: Texas United Methodist Historical Society, 1984). Vertical Files, Special Collections, Texas Woman's University.

Teresa Palomo Acosta