Just think of it: Rick Perry and Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz and Louie
Gohmert would all be Mexico's problem today if Santa Anna had won…
Huzza for Texas! Huzza for Liberty, and the rights of man!…Let Texas
stand firm and be true to herself and we will have nothing to fear.” –
Lt. Col. William Barret Travis, 1835
A hundred years to
come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is,
unenlightened as they are, and under the influence of a catholic
clergy, a despotism is the proper government for them.” – Gen. Antonio
López de Santa Anna, 1836
Historical what-ifs are always popular. Have you
ever thought about what might have happened if the hero of the
revolution against Spain,
General Antonio López de Santa Anna,
had captured the Alamo in 1836 without destroying his chances of
reconquering rebellious Texas? If Texas had stayed part of Mexico,
perhaps under Stephen Austin’s original conception of a Mexican state?
Think
about an America in which Texas is part of Mexico. Then ask yourself
if, by losing, Santa Anna hurt Mexico more? Or was the true harm done to
America? Given the state of repugican cabal ideology today – I’m thinking about the
politics of Rick Perry, and those of Greg Abbott, fresh from his theft from the better candidate, Wendy Davis, not to mention that recent immigrant, Allen West,
who found Floridians to be too smart for him. I’m thinking about Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert, both at least
as insane as Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann or Alaska’s Sarah Palin.
I’m thinking not only about depths of corruption
that would do any Santa Anna-style despotism proud, but about
bottom-dollar jobs and people dying from want of healthcare. I’m
thinking about hatred and religion and guns.
With apologies to our fellow liberals in Texas, It
does not seem all that unreasonable to suggest now that Santa Anna would
have done us all a favor by being a better general.
Here is another what-if: what might have been the
course of Texas history if he had failed to take the Alamo, and James
Bowie, William Barret Travis, and David Crockett, had lived? These three
men were movers and shakers in Texas. The first two based on what they
had already accomplished there, and the latter based on what he had
accomplished in Congress for the people of Tennessee. Both Bowie and
Crockett were larger-than-life figures, living legends on the frontier.
We hear a lot about Sam Houston (he defeated Santa
Anna and had a city named after him, after all), but how much would we
have heard of him had these three lived to spread their own shadows over
the land? Would the city of Houston today be the city of Travis, or
Bowie? Or even Crockett? And what kind of state would it be?
To
Santa Anna these Anglos might have been nothing more than pirates
trying to steal parts of Mexico, but Travis, whom historian James
Donavan calls a “firebrand,” the most extreme type of revolutionary, was
a lawyer, a good friend of Governor Henry Smith, and a member of the
War Party that favored independence. He was also intelligent, personally
brave, a gifted orator, and “no man in Texas could claim more credit
for the present uprising.” And he was only 26 in the year he died. He
had a long and influential future in Texas politics ahead of him.
We can no more know what sort of movie Ron Howard
would have made about the Alamo, had Disney not refused the movie he
wanted to make, than what sort of world we would have inherited had
Santa Anna been the “Napoleon of the West” in more than his own
imagination. We do know what sort of movie was made instead, and it has
served as a corrective to some earlier, mistaken notions about Texas
history.
That film, John Lee Hancock’s,
The Alamo (2004), has Travis tell the beleaguered garrison of the Alamo,
Texas has been a second
chance for me. I expect that might be true for many of you as well. It
has been a chance not only for land and riches, but also to be a
different man. I hope a better one. There have been many ideas brought
for in the past few months of what Texas is, and what it should become.
We are not all in agreement. But I’d like to ask each of you what it is
you value so highly that you are willing to fight and possibly die for.
We will call that Texas.
Contrary to John Wayne, who,
in his 1960 film,
for some reason humanized Santa Anna and the Mexicans under his command
without recognizing the Mexicans standing against him, the Alamo’s
approximately 200 defenders included at least a dozen Tejanos.
John Wayne presented the Alamo as a struggle between
right and wrong, and not as a struggle between Anglos and Mexicans; it
just so happened in his Mexican-free Alamo that the guys who were right,
were Anglos, and the guys who were wrong, were Mexicans.
The freedom won in the ensuing war was a victory for
those opposed to Santa Anna’s tyranny. But in a very real sense it was
also a victory of Anglos over Mexicans because Travis’ War Party won out
over Austin’s Peace Party, which had favored Mexican statehood. John
Lee Hancock put the Mexicans back inside the Alamo, but a film cannot
change history, only correct it.
Texas became a slave state, which it would not have,
had Santa Anna won, because slavery was illegal under Mexican law
(though its peonage system was not much of an improvement). And after
that, Texas joined the Confederacy in rebellion against the lawful
government of the United States.
As
reported here, K.C. Massey, who the
SPLC characterizes
as an anti-immigrant nativist extremist, “a member of a militia that
‘patrols’ the Texas border, met with and posed for photos with Texas repugican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbot just four days before his
arrest on illegal weapons charges.” Massey
tells the SPLC he is innocent, but then, Rick Perry and Greg Abbott also claim
they are innocent. None of their arguments are convincing.
They would all be Mexico’s problem today if Santa Anna had won.
Racists gathered in Rockwall, Texas, last weekend,
to protest immigration and to
celebrate the swastika
and no doubt they had a good time with their kooky ideas about history,
just has had Rick Perry and that enemy of an educated populace, David
Barton.
They would also be Mexico’s problem. Or perhaps, a happier thought here, that of the cartels.
Walter Hill’s film
Geronimo: An American Legend
(1993) has Al Sieber, chief of scouts (played by Robert Duvall) mutter,
“I don’t see how any man can sink so low. Must be Texans… the lowest
form of white man there is.”
It is difficult, again with apology to our liberal Texas friends, not to sympathize.
After all, the first Anglos in Texas were themselves
immigrants, many of them illegal immigrants at that, present in
sovereign Mexican territory without permission and settling down on
whatever land pleased them.
Granted, the men in the Alamo were fighting for many
different things, some for independence, some for the 1824
Constitution, some for their homes and their families. But what the
Alamo has become is a symbol of racism that completely discounts the
historical realities.
Sadly, racism, like corruption, has become a staple
of Texas politics. It may have become so even if Santa Anna had retained
Texas, but it must be remembered that the first Anglo settlers were
actually welcomed by the Mexican government, which couldn’t get anybody
else to move there.
The Anglos only become unwelcome when they tried to
take Texas away from Mexico. So far, no immigrants have tried to take
Texas away from the United States. On the contrary, they want to be part
of the United States, just as the first Anglos in Texas wanted to be
part of Mexico.
Ironically, the word “Texas” is an Indian word. And
it means “friend.” You would not know that by the actions of the Texas repugican cabal.
