Permit me to begin this academic essay with a little personal context: It’s currently the year 2020. I have strong misgivings about the morality of the American project, and I’m deeply conflicted about my identity as an American citizen in the context of 21st century globalism. I’ve passed most of the last decade living on the other side of the planet from USA. I grew up in far north in the country, as did my ancestors, who generation by generation moved west through the north woods, culturally and physically much closer to Canada than to Texas. So why do I remember the Alamo? Because I do. I can’t help it.
It’s common knowledge that history is written by the victors; nevertheless, there is always more than one version of history, more than one perspective regarding who were the good guys and who were the bad. As such, in this essay, I’m not going to make a qualitative statement about who were the bad guys and good guys in the history of the American southwest. Instead, I’m simply going to illustrate a few case studies in the subjectivity of the region’s history.
Clearly, the legend of the Alamo and it’s geopolitical implications are one of the most glaring illustrations of this subjectivity. Como un norteamericano, I learned songs from Disney movies about the virtues of Davy Crocket, (“king of the wild frontier”), but never learned that David Bowie was a slave trader. Even today, the heroes of the Alamo are lauded, as can be seen in the 2018 Houston Chronicle article “Alamo defenders defined what it means to be heroic” (Erica Grieder). Whether it’s portrayed in Hollywood cinema or a mandatory part of public education, the story of the Alamo is a foundational piece of our national self-image as the land of the free and home of the brave. It symbolizes the Americans as simultaneously victims and victors – brave and strong in the face of overwhelming odds.
But there’s another interpretation of the legend, as we can find in América ocupada por Rodolfo Acuña (1976). In his perspective, the Alamo was defended by lawless mercenaries, and it had little strategic value (31). The Mexican army was hungry, had been marching for weeks, and was poorly armed, while the norteamericanos, despite being fewer in number, were an elite militia with the most modern military technology. In the end, Davy Crocket and his men didn’t fight to the last breath, killing Mexicans with their bare hands. They surrendered, begged for mercy, but were nevertheless executed for their crimes against the state (32). Within the months following the battle, the memory of the Alamo would be used to justify a massacre of unarmed, surrendering and starving Mexican forces at the battle of San Jacinto (33), and in subsequent years the legacy of Crocket and Bowie as brave defenders of the frontier morphed into justifications for rape, pillage and other war crimes committed by the Texas Rangers against innocent civilians who were supposedly protected by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (56 – 60).
The subjectivity of the Alamo legend and it’s legacy symbolizes the multi-dimensionality of the broader history. Obscured by the fog of time and the layers of nationalistic bias, it’s impossible to assign a qualitative morality to one side or the other. However, in modern days, there is certainly quantifiable injustice which began during this period of history. Mexican-Americans have since been viewed as second class citizens. Gringos used the myth of American exceptionalism as justification to steal land which was guaranteed to remain with Mexicans who found themselves on the north side of the border after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Generations of Latinos have been viewed as nothing more than cheap labor or gangsters without the opportunities available to a norteamericano such as myself. While the history is subjective, the modern reality is very concrete. If ICE agents putting kids in cages and vigilante posses of white supremacists in the desert view themselves as a continuation of the legacy of frontier heroism, that legacy surely must be reexamined.
One tempting perspective on the history of the new world is that there are no good guys and bad guys – there are just multiple bad guys. If one were to subscribe to the philosophy of karma on a society-wide scale, the injustices of the anglos against the latinos could be viewed as payback, centuries in the making, for injustices perpetrated by the Spanish against the indigenous population. It’s hard to ignore the genocidal activities of Cortés, for example (Ramón Tamames), or the cruel tactics which the church used to spread its religion among the indigenous population of their new territories. Modern metropolises from San Antonio to Los Angeles began as small missions on the frontier of Spanish expansion, and this frontier often advanced hand-in-hand with executions, mutilations, and violations (Javier Zurro). There are various interpretations, but always the fact that, by modern standards, the Catholic inquisition was cruel, and attitudes of white supremacy were inherent in the actions of all European colonizers. Anglos are not the sole perpetrators of injustice in the New World, rather simply the most recently successful.
It takes an admirable level of mental gymnastics to deny the cruelty of the Spanish Conquista of the New World. After all, it’s called “The Conquest”, not a “A polite cultural exchange with some new friends.” However, such mental gymnastics have indeed been performed. One such example is the book Spanish Roots of America, published by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division of Hunting, Indiana, in which Bishop David Arias (born in Franco’s Spain, 1929, died in Trump’s America, 2019) tells a story of the virtuous missionaries who spread education and civilization across the New World. Arias calls them “explorers” rather than “conquistadores”, downplaying their greed for gold while emphasizing their role as gentleman in “times full of romanticism” (33) who paved the way for missionaries who “had to have good reputations and credibility” (56) and building missions which were “a definite success for the preservation of the Indian, his introduction to the faith, and his human progress” (55). By the end of the book, the Spanish conquest of the New World appears to be a humanitarian mission with the primary goal of building schools, planting fields, and guaranteeing the eternal salvation of indigenous souls. It’s hardly noted that many of these indigenous souls entered eternity thanks to Spanish steel.
A popular approach in modern Spain is to recontextualize the violent history of the Conquista. For example, the Fundación Civilización Hispánica has a primary goal “desmontar la Leyenda Negra de la imagen histórica de España en el mundo” with hopes that by doing so it can “cohesionar España y a la Comunidad hispánica” (civilizacionhispanica.org). In this project, reinterpreting history isn’t only for the purpose of improving the image of Spain in the Americas, but to provide real humanitarian opportunities to real people across Latin America. While the historical perspective is debatable, the goals are inarguably admirable.
In an incredible short documentary, titled Frontera, John Jota Leaños writes about the historical figure Estebanico, a Moorish member of an early conquistador party who was largely responsible for introducing the “cities of gold” legends to the early Spanish colonists. “Who was this guy?” the narrator asks. “Does he bring medicine and prophecy? Or poison and misery? Is he a slave of the colonizers? Or is he their leader? No one knows for sure, but I think Estebanico was killed near Zuñi. His legacy is one of confusion in the borderlands, where blood is still being spilled.” If you’ve read this far, I hope you take away two ideas. The first idea is that history is subjective, and I’m certainly not capable of looking back to find a good guy and a bad guy. Researchers who have spent a lifetime studying and people with direct ties to the history and land still have very diverse ideas about what really happened. However, the second idea is that, whatever the interpretation of history, the modern implications are unavoidable. The legacy of colonialism and violence in the new world affects real lives today, in the year 2020. For that reason, we will always remember the Alamo, but also must never feel too comfortable that we completely understand its legacy.
Simeon Brown 