More lies my teacher told me.
>And the story of the Alamo—how an outmatched band of white heroes fought to the last against an implacable and vicious foreign enemy—has become so enmeshed in the culture that any attempt to tinker with it is met with outrage.<
The Tejanos (Mexicans who were rebelling against the Mexican government) have somehow disappeared from the Alamo story; even though they were there in the Alamo, fighting against Santa Ana and dying just as dead as the Texicans (the White folks fighting to defend their freedom to peddle in human flesh).
> “Texas,” wrote Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas, “shall be a slave nation!”
Yet slavery was illegal in Mexico. The American immigrants rebelled...<
So the Tejano’s were fighting for freedom from the dictatorial government, while the Texicans were fighting to create a dictatorial government in which they could enslave their fellow human beings.
Still, they had a common enemy so they fought together and they died together.
It should also be noted that few people seem to realize that the defenders of the Alamo had been ordered to abandon it because it was indefensible and defending it served no purpose in the greater strategy and tactics of the war. They disobeyed their orders.
So how did the story change? The same way the story of the confederacy changed. > In time, as Texas continued its fight for independence, the men became more than insurrectionists who had defied orders to retreat. They became martyrs whose sacrifice was deemed essential to the ultimately successful breakaway.
That interpretation—Anglo heroism in the face of Mexican oppression—got a major boost in the early 20th century when what was left of the Alamo site came under the management of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Akin to the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Revolution, the group drew from San Antonio society.<
In other words, racism changed the story. White supremacy changed the story. Imaginary history replaced real history.
The glorious monument to those who died at the Alamo includes only the White people who died at the Alamo > ...the Cenotaph features a romantic carving of the Anglo heroes—and only the Anglo heroes—perched atop its pedestal.<
But the whole story has been greatly distorted, not merely the racial elements.
> “There’s a significant distance between mythology and reality,” Harrigan, the historian, told me Santa Anna was not a drooling murderer. His professional officers were divided over executing rebels. And Travis never drew his famous line in the sand, asking willing defenders to cross over.<
This lengthy excerpt clears things up, but it will arouse bitterness and hatred in those who are allergic to reality.
> Chris Tomlinson, co-author of a forthcoming book on the subject. Entitled Forget the Alamo, it will be the 600th book on the subject, according to the Library of Congress. He is withering in his recasting of the narrative. “Everything about the Alamo is a lie.”
Among Tomlinson’s rebuttals: Slavery fueled not a revolution but a land grab. The Alamo was a blunder; it was supposed to be destroyed and abandoned. Travis was an amateur. Davy Crockett’s legendary toughness crumbled like a facade; he begged for his life when he was captured. The battle didn’t slow the Mexican march east. And ultimately, it was U.S. Army artillery, secretly deployed from Louisiana, that finally won Texas its independence at the battle of San Jacinto.
“We call it a revolt, not a revolution,” said Tomlinson, a former U.S. Army officer-turned-journalist. “They weren’t defenders or heroes.”<
How bad was the whitewash? Here’s one example: > ...the roster of the rebels at the Alamo is incomplete; there’s no mention of the Hispanic fighters; some names are misspelled; and the structure is probably 125 feet away from where Mexican troops allegedly burned the rebels’ bodies.<
And yet to the jingoists, this is a holy cause, a crusade for the very soul of Texas. > “Texas history is the Alamo,” proclaimed Bush’s Land Office predecessor, Republican Jerry Patterson..<. Or, more accurately, Texas history as reported in history books and as taught in Texas schools is a lie. Racists find it a very pretty lie; even a beautiful lie. Still, it remains a lie.
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