Remember the Alamo -- but the Right Way

“S.A. sees stars” was the headline of the San Antonio Express-News. The big, center-of-the-page photo featured Billy Bob Thornton -- Davy Crockett in the movie “The Alamo” -- smiling for local paparazzi near the walls of the historic Alamo mission. There was a smaller photo at the bottom of the page, a fourth the size, of raza behind barriers at the Majestic Theater, site of the premiere, pens and paper waving, mouths open in a plea for autographs. These were the ones seeing stars. Not the ones that twinkle after you’ve been slapped and punched a few times. That’s just how I read it.

I haven’t seen the movie -- which opens today -- and I might not. I want to, but not for the reason most Texans will: a nationalism that parallels the fundamentalism of a lot of the Christians going to “The Passion of the Christ.” (I can only imagine how uncomfortable, even defensive, Jewish people must feel about going or not going to see that.)

If “The Alamo” were only a western, I’d be there. I love John Wayne on TNT, those epic, big-screen battles and adventures. I miss westerns. But for Mexican Americans, the Alamo, even at its best, is about “them,” not us, about how heroic “they” are, in the land where we both still live. Celebrating Crockett and Jim Bowie, for us, is like someone reveling in the story of our drunk, abusive stepfather.

The real battle over the Alamo was about Mexico defending its national boundaries against North American insurgents, giddy with Manifest Destiny, who decided to make an illegal grab for land. Whether or not it was a romantic blow for Texas liberty, the occupation was an act of disrespect; the Mexican government had every right to send troops.

The myth got projected into the future by Sam “Remember the Alamo” Houston, and D.W. Griffith, who followed his “Birth of a Nation” (and its Ku Klux Klan nostalgia) with “The Martyrs of the Alamo,” where Mexicans were portrayed as arch-villains. By the turn of the last century, this account was taken as the “true” history of the event.

The last time I visited the Alamo was right after Iraq I. Inside the adobe mission, the tour guide choked up with zealous patriotism over the outrageous number of Mexican troops climbing the walls to battle the mission’s defenders. I couldn’t stop thinking about the U.S. and Baghdad -- now that was some overwhelming force. The Alamo tour guide made those skinny Mexicans, in their funny hats, into your usual dirty bandidos who’d ripped off some French uniforms. Sure, it was mentioned here and there that the Mexican army came to defend its territory. But that gets remembered about as well as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. You remember that, right?

What does get remembered? Those Mexicans. That in winning a battle, they lost. That they had the audacity to fight. That’s also what got remembered as more and more folks from Kentucky and Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana colonized Texas: Mexicans were bad and should go “home,” even though home was where they already were. These new immigrants from the north -- the kin of Crockett and Bowie -- and the law they created for themselves didn’t like or trust these Spanish-speaking Mexicans.

On another page in the Express-News the day after “The Alamo” premiere, there was an article about a march in honor of Cesar Chavez’s birthday. There was a photo there, too, a longer shot of a wide trail of “several thousand people,” mostly union members and organizers, activists and common working people, descendants of the Mexicans who settled the land before the Alamo. Chavez’s fight doesn’t have the makings of a heroic battle movie. His battle hasn’t even ended. He hasn’t been made into a Crockett or Bowie. And so there’s no epic movie role for him. Or for his wife. Or his sons or daughters. Or his grandchildren.

One friend of mine, Maria Ibarra, a talented actor educated in theater arts, worked as an usher for the premiere of “The Alamo” at the Majestic Theater. She earned her minimum wage walking the richly dressed Houstons and Crocketts and Bowies down the aisle for their celebration.

Dagoberto Gilb is the author of “Gritos,” a collection of essays that was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. He lives in Austin.