General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Forget the Alamo" & John WAYNE. It was about slavery and suppressing Latinos.
New book, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, by Bryan Burrough, Jason Stanford, Chris Tomlinson.
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https://news.yahoo.com/weve-telling-alamo-story-wrong-214354374.html
Bryan Burrough
.... Start with the Alamo. So much of what we know about the battle is provably wrong. William Travis never drew any line in the sand; this was a tale concocted by an amateur historian in the late 1800s. There is no evidence Davy Crockett went down fighting, as John Wayne famously did in his 1960 movie The Alamo, a font of misinformation; there is ample testimony from Mexican soldiers that Crockett surrendered and was executed. The battle, in fact, should never have been fought. Travis ignored multiple warnings of Santa Annas approach and was simply trapped in the Alamo when the Mexican army arrived. He wrote some dramatic letters during the ensuing siege, its true, but how anyone could attest to the defenders bravery is beyond us. The men at the Alamo fought and died because they had no choice. Even the notion they fought to the last man turns out to be untrue. Mexican accounts make clear that, as the battle was being lost, as many as half the Texian defenders fled the mission and were run down and killed by Mexican lancers. ....
Census data indicates that Latinos are poised to become a majority of the Texas population any year now, and for them, the Alamo has long been viewed as a symbol of Anglo oppression. The fact that many Tejanos Texas Latinos allied with the Americans, and fought and died alongside them at the Alamo, has generally been lost to popular history. The Tejanos key contributions to early Texas were written out of almost all early Anglo-authored histories, much as Anglo Texans ran Tejanos out of San Antonio and much of South Texas after the revolt. For too long, the revolt has been viewed by many as a war fought by all Anglos against all of Mexican descent. ....
Its a lesson many Latinos in the state dont learn until mandatory Texas history classes taught in seventh grade. The way I explain it, says Andres Tijerina, a retired history professor in Austin, is Mexican-Americans [in Texas] are brought up, even in the first grade, singing the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance and all that, and its not until the seventh grade that they single us out as Mexicans. And from that point on, you realize youre not an American. Youre a Mexican, and always will be. The Alamo story takes good, solid, loyal little American kids and it converts them into Mexicans.
And Mexican-American history isnt the only piece of the past thats distorted by the Alamo myth. Academic researchers long tiptoed around the issue of slavery in Texas; active research didnt really begin until the 1980s. Since then, scholars such as Randolph Campbell and Andrew Torget have demonstrated that slavery was the single issue that regularly drove a wedge between early Mexican governmentsdedicated abolitionists alland their American colonists in Texas, many of whom had immigrated to farm cotton, the provinces only cash crop at the time. ....
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https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/EZpzMOIfGZUpjmxc3UQC5A--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTQyMDtoPTYzOC40O2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/zPwmZ6L3kgVZaf8HEQ31fg--~B/aD00NTY7dz0zMDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/time_72/346d139c45d1672417b19b4e6f7c2daa
blogslug
(38,019 posts)Ex Lurker
(3,816 posts)keep pushing narratives like this. Antagonizing your audience is not a great way to win them over to your side.
blogslug
(38,019 posts)Who am I antagonizing? I've lived in Texas all my life, at the top of the star. A good 50% of the people in my town own a pair of pointy boots. If I were antagonizing them I would call them "kickers". Maybe my attempt at a poetic, self-referential way to kick this the OP fell short but, sheesh.
Ex Lurker
(3,816 posts)Comfortably_Numb
(3,833 posts)Alamo had a Back Door. She was viciously attacked for quite awhile.
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,726 posts)and they brought slavery with them. Most of the civilized world (read European countries) had dumped slavery at home and had been ending it in their colonies as well by the 1820's.
Another example of how American history has been largely whitewashed of its enduring racism.
Doc Sportello
(7,531 posts)Everything's bigger in Texas, even the lies. But they were part and parcel of the white ruling class maintaining control. Truth-telling such as this article is just as necessary in dismantling the power structure.
cbabe
(3,551 posts)there was Hernandez v Texas.
'A Class Apart', American Experience, documentary, 2009.
Law suit challenging Jim Crow style 'we serve whites only' laws against Mexican Americans.
Supreme court win, 1954.
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)********QUOTE******
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_GI_Forum
.... The organization was established in Corpus Christi, the seat of Nueces County, Texas, on March 26, 1948, by Dr. Hector P. Garcia to address the concerns of Mexican-American veterans, who were segregated from other veterans groups. Initially formed to request services for World War II veterans of Mexican descent who were denied medical services by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the AGIF soon entered into non-veteran's issues such as voting rights, jury selection, and educational desegregation, advocating for the civil rights of all Mexican Americans. In 1959, the organization claimed 25,000 members in 18 states.[2] Today, the AGIF advocates on behalf of all Hispanic veterans.
The AGIF's first campaign was on the behalf of Felix Longoria, a Mexican-American private who was killed in the Philippines in the line of duty during World War II. Three years after the war, when Longoria's remains were returned to Texas, his family was denied funeral services by a white-owned funeral home. Dr. Garcia requested the intercession of then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who secured Longoria's burial in Arlington National Cemetery. The case brought the AGIF to national attention, and chapters were opened throughout the country. A women's and youth auxiliary were also formed.
The AGIF, along with the League of United Latin American Citizens, was a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case of Hernandez v. Texas (1954). Pete Hernandez, a farm worker in Texas, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury. His attorneys appealed his conviction because Mexican Americans had been systematically excluded for years from Texas juries. But, since they were classified as white, the state court said a white jury constituted a "jury of peers" for Hernandez. His defense attorneys took the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first Mexican-American attorneys to appear there. They argued that Texas discriminated against Mexican Americans as a class and Hernandez's rights were violated by Texas' exclusion of Mexican Americans from all juries. In its unanimous decision, Hernandez v. Texas (1954), the court ruled that Mexican Americans were a class in this case, as discrimination against them was proven, and that they and all other racial or national groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
In contrast to LULAC, the America GI Forum was more willing to engage in oppositional politics and some of its members wearing their caps marched in solidarity with Chicano protestors. Between 1969 and 1979, the Forum led a national boycott against the Adolph Coors Company, one of the largest beer producers in the nation, challenging the corporation's discriminatory employment practices affecting Chicanos.[3] ....
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Hulk
(6,699 posts)This doesn't surprise me one bit.
I've met too many Texans that firmly believe they are the anointed ones and their state is Shangri-La.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
BobTheSubgenius
(11,572 posts)Be impressed with everything someone shows you. Texans are as proud of the place as if they'd built it themselves.
llashram
(6,265 posts)the record must continually be set straight. Almost all 'progress' in America between races and cultures has been as a victory in the battle against white supremacy and hatefully ignorant human beings fighting for that supremacy. As Ameria is in now. Qanon, GQP, RW Fox propaganda, Koch pressure on democrats, all fighting to make America a KKK paradise, again And if they win here's the outcome guaranteed...
BannonsLiver
(16,485 posts)llashram
(6,265 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 10, 2021, 11:59 AM - Edit history (1)
for the expansion of a white supremacist Amerika...that's the part that has made them idiots of the first order. Early magRATS fail...and with that fail and their upcoming fail at restoring a white supremacist 'paradise', I can explain exactly what that will entail. Just like the thousands dead at Getty'sburg, Antitum...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_costliest_American_Civil_War_land_battles. And if you want, I can dig a little deeper and give Americans here an idea of the smells and sounds after an engagement between violently opposed forces that I experienced. Anyone? I could do this with just a few words...
LeftInTX
(25,583 posts)I have been like once or twice and I've lived here for 40 years!
We have events at Alamo Plaza, but really it's an old hollow building (abandoned church) with boring museum stuff with a courtyard. The courtyard is nicely landscaped and is this best part. There used to be an Alamo research library next to the Alamo, but I don't know if it is still there. You can walk through the Alamo mission in about 5 minutes.
Visit the missions instead.
bucolic_frolic
(43,334 posts)Peter Ustinov had it all over John Wayne at the Alamo.
Viva Max!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Max!
And it sorta presaged Canadian Bacon
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)"...a brigadier general of the state's National Guard, whose day job is running a mattress store."
bucolic_frolic
(43,334 posts)truth is stranger than comedy
NQAS
(10,749 posts)Can't wait to read it.
This kind of stuff makes you realize that we - I'm a boomer - were really not taught history at all. Inevitable, as our teachers were not properly educated either. One hopes that my grandchildren's generation are better educated about our history, the good, the bad, and the fantastically ugly. All of it.
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)More than I ever did from the education system.
But not in history.
It would be interesting to check the course listings at my (also state) university from the early 1970s. Anything on Native American genocide? Anything other than pablum regarding slavery. The back story to the Puritan emigration from Europe. Actual information about the Native American and European settlements in America at the time, and the eradication of those settlements. Etc. etc. To be fair, I'm not sure I would have taken these courses (not a history major or minor), but, still, I doubt it was even taught.
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)silly me, I enrolled in an upper grad grammar course because I wanted to get a solid foundation for linguistics. Surprise!1 - We were told that it was all old hat to think in terms of "rules", that that was "Prescriptive grammar" while we would be doing "Descriptive grammar" deconstructing the communication to get down to the "Deep Meaning."
agingdem
(7,862 posts)it was a Manifest Destiny land grab ... christian white guys, convinced they were"ordained" by god, to take land that was not theirs to take... and if they had to kill and enslave Native Americans and Mexicans who stood in their way then that was ok.. you know god's blessings and all...
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,256 posts)If true that doesn't sound like much of a shrine.
Ex Lurker
(3,816 posts)19 other Mexican states rebelled against Santa Ana at the same time. Texas just had more wherewithal and outside help.
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)The situations were separate in the separate places.
czarjak
(11,298 posts)Mexican first graders at Lubbock Cooper repeated first grade regardless of grades. I know someone who lived it.
oasis
(49,418 posts)"Where freedom was fighting another foe, and they needed him at the A-l-a-m-o".
So the song goes. >>>>>>
SergeStorms
(19,204 posts)when there's a good myth that can replace them. How would Texas look in the eyes of Texans and other Americans, if they started off getting their asses kicked?
The history of Texas and the United States would be unrecognizable if actual facts were written instead of romantic myths. However, Americans wrote their own history books, and the rest is.............history.
I think this is true of many nations, if people took the time to research instead of accepting the myths at face value. Of course, as with most things Texan and American, things are always a bit bigger, and the truth stretched a little further than other nation's "history".
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)go back to when the Whites weren't about to become a minority.
SergeStorms
(19,204 posts)The reich-wing nuts want to turn back the clock to a time when everything was heavily in their favor.
Time marches on, and if you don't adapt and keep up, you'll be left behind. Hopefully we'll be able to leave those relics of the past behind. There's certainly no future with them hanging on to the past.
obamanut2012
(26,148 posts)in CA in the 1960s. Chicano rights movement that to my shame I knew nothing much about until I watched the movie a few years ago. If you have HBO/HBO Max you can watch it without paying anything extra.
Stars Alexa Vega and Michael Pena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkout_(film)
UTUSN
(70,748 posts)OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)Well, I figure I must have because I was today years old when I found out it was BS. I grew up in Dallas.