Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth Read Free

Texans is being educated in the state’s public school system with textbooks that continue to omit and obfuscate the facts. Today’s young Texans will face societal and economic challenges like no other generation. In order to prevail in the global economy, the next generation of Texans must forge a personal and societal identity that unites them through a mutual and respected history. The prosperity of our state lies in our ability to merge the diverse ethnic tapestry of today into the Texas of tomorrow.
    Reared in south Texas in the second half of the 20th century, I was taught historical reality as it was forged by our Texas founders. The original history of Texas was written by historical giants whose legacy and importance lives on. Their accounts of what happened at the Alamo in 1836, and in that great swath of land between San Antonio and the Rio Grande River, literally shaped south Texas and influenced the outcome of national politics. In the nine years between 1836 and 1845, Texas become a republic and the American army invaded the nation of Mexico. Three years later, in 1848, the national boundary was established at the Rio Grande and Mexico lost half of her landmass. Today, 163 years later, the United States government seeks to build a wall along the country’s southern border, failing to place this ill-conceived act in historical perspective and to realize its future implications.
    The Republic of Texas was followed by statehood; its legacy provided my generation, born in the 1950s, with both a national and a cultural identity, a road map that leads us through life in Texas today. We were taught that Anglo Texans were heroes and nation builders; but our Mexican ancestors were no less capable as nation builders when in 1840 they founded the Republic of Rio Grande, carved out of the three northeastern-most Mexican states. The cultural and historical realities of Texans and Mexicans have underpinnings on both sides of the Rio Grande. So who are we: Texans, Mexicans, Americans, MexicanAmericans, or simply Tejanos?
    Raised by a mother from California, I took years to feel comfortable in my cultural skin, to understand and come to terms with my mixed and confused identity. My father’s parents heralded from prominent Spanish land grant families that traced their heritage across the Spanish province of Coahuila y Tejas long before there was a State of Texas. Even today, the family stretches out along the Camino Real from Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila, to Ciudad Mier on the Rio Grande, northward through the brush country to San Antonio de Bejar and southward to Matamoros on the Gulf Coast. As a kid of “mixed blood,” I was at the same time neither Mexican nor American. Torn between historical realities, I made a conscious decision to embrace both as compatible, and Texas-Mexican history supported this decision.
    As I was growing up in the 1950s, my hometown of Brownsville was widely divided along racial and ethnic lines that had to be carefully navigated. Coming from a well-known family was good, but not speaking Spanish was bad. We grew to become Texans molded by the stereotypes and misrepresentations of a one-sided historical drama in which there were only two clear sides, winners and losers. As a schoolboy I learned that the Alamo was important and my father took me to see it. We were descended from the side that carried the field of battle in 1836, but had lost in almost every way since then. I had family who served in the Matamoros Battalion at the Alamo, but I was told I shouldn’t talk about it because people wouldn’t understand. Santa Anna was a family friend of my ancestors, but I was told I shouldn’t be proud of that either.
    Dr. Tucker’s work helps to explain something my grandfather once told me: Diles quien eres —tell them who you are. It took forty years for me to truly understand what he meant. His advice was an essential requirement in his day, but was it still so in mine? It was. People