A.B Cárdenas

A South Texas native and former Vietnam War era Marine, Adolfo Butch Cárdenas is an award-winning newspaper journalist who has worked throughout the Southwest and Mexico. In 1991, while at the Beeville Bee-Picayune, he was awarded first place by the Gulf Coast Press Association for a feature chronicling his flight aboard a Navy FA/18 Blue Angel. Along with colleagues at the Bee-Picayune, he earned several first-place community news awards from the Texas Press Association for coverage of military a military base closure in Beeville beginning in 1989. He covered border issues, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, for the Laredo Morning Times.
Cárdenas is a 2005 honor graduate from Texas A&M–Corpus Christi with a degree in English and a minor in creative writing, and he completed his graduate coursework in composition and rhetoric. While in graduate school, Cárdenas worked as a technical writer and his short stories and poems were published in the university’s literary journal series Puentes. His Young Adult Literature book, Por la Calle North Claremont: The Beto Stories was published in 2012 by Floricanto Press.
In 2024, Cárdenas retired after fourteen years at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, tutoring English composition, rhetoric, and research. He continues working on several other writing projects including the novel Hollywood Marine based on his experiences during 1973 bootcamp at MCRD San Diego.