The Alamo Battle . . . Redux

Since Eugene A. Taylor Jr. decided to drag me into his May 8 Counterpunch regarding Howard Rosenberg’s review of James A. Michener’s “Texas” (“Review of ‘Texas’ Fails to Set the Record Straight,”) I must reply.

Without a doubt I can assert that the Alamo, the historical center of Michener’s “Texas,” is probably the single most important source of racism toward Mexicans in this country. Good, loyal and courageous Euroamerican Texans have been maligned and their careers broken because they chose to set the record straight and dared criticize the official Hollywood version of the battle of the Alamo.

For Mr. Taylor’s information, the center of my argument is: 1) The so-called defenders of the Alamo were not defenders, but filibusters who were illegally on Mexican soil; and 2) The Mexicans won the battle of the Alamo. In this argument, I never defend Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, nor his blundering and cruel antics. For example, despite the illegal entry of troops at Goliad, Santa Anna’s order to execute the prisoners was harsh and intolerable--to wit, his Mexican commanders protested his actions. As for the Alamo, Mexican troops themselves acted honorably--in contrast to Sam Houston’s forces at San Jacinto.

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I realize that as an ex-military officer Col. Taylor likes to play war games, and as a political scientist he specializes in the present, but I urge him to go back and read some of the excellent revisionist history that has been published on the Alamo. Since he quotes Jeff Long’s “Duel of Eagles,” I’ll offer some text that Taylor evidently chose to ignore:

“Even so the Alamo displayed more firepower than even the Goliad presidio. Numerically, it outgunned Santa Anna’s expedition, which had a total of twenty-one cannons and howitzers. . . . The Alamo’s eighteen-pounder (was) the biggest gun in Texas. . . . Santa Anna relied on his nine-pounders as the workhorse artillery.” This statement clearly contradicts Col. Taylor’s version of what happened.

Long also questions the chauvinist official version of the battle, which, up to the present time, had Davy Crockett dying while fighting like a tiger with Mexicans crawling all over his body. Long writes: “Crockett wished it understood that he was a simple traveler who had accidentally gotten swept into the whirlwind of revolution.” Crockett pleaded for his life, which was natural. So why try to depict him in another light?

Long is not as kind to William Barrett Travis, whom he describes as a coward. He says he was stricken with venereal disease and openly bragged about his sexual conquests. Long also described Jim Bowie as a slave trader who would buy “half-dead African Negroes (runaway slaves) at a dollar per pound” and herd them into Louisiana from Texas. As for Sam Houston, the “Father of Anglo Texas,” Long describes him as an opium addict who did not want to waste his time “defending” the Alamo because he considered it insignificant.

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It would be easy to quote from many other sources, many from south of the Rio Grande, which evidently Col. Taylor has not read. Whatever, the point is that well-intentioned people like Col. Taylor encourage movies about a subject that has not been rationally discussed because of the chauvinism of people like him. In the course of their cheerleading they justify racism toward Mexicans.

The result is what even historian Walter Prescott Webb has described as the killing of 500 to 5,000 innocent Mexicans in Texas as late as 1915-20. Many justified their actions by pointing to the deaths of good old Davy, Bowie and Travis at the hands of Mexicans. For the record, they were no saints and should have never been in Texas in the first place.