[For Cinco de Mayo, a series on a handful of impressive and inspiring Mexican American voices. Leading up to a special Guest Post from an inspiring young scholar and voice!]
On a couple
takeaways from a controversial but apparently authentic memoir.
In 1955, Mexican
journalist and historian Jesús Sanchez Garza self-published La Rebellion de Texas: Manuscrito Inedito [Unpublished] de 1836 por un Oficial de Santa Anna.
Garza’s book comprised the first published edition of the purported Texas
Rebellion diary of José
Enrique de la Peña, a Mexican colonel and amateur historian who had
served with Santa Anna’s forces at the Battle of the Alamo (among other
military engagements); Garza framed the 100-page diary with another 150 pages
of introduction and supporting materials. The book didn’t garner much scholarly
attention at the time, but in 1975 Texas A&M University Press published an
English translation, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal
Narrative of the Revolution. Although there was a good deal of initial
skepticism about the diary’s authenticity, subsequent work by both historian
James Crisp and a team of researchers led by Dr.
David Gracy has confirmed that the diary is in fact a legitimate primary
source; the manuscript is now held at the University of Texas-Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History.
A great deal of
the controversy over Peña’s diary stemmed from one particular detail, a historical
twist that is also one of the book’s most compelling takeaways. It had long
been assumed that Davy Crockett died fighting at the Alamo, as did most of the
Texas Republic combatants there. But according to Peña, Crockett was taken captive
by Santa Anna’s forces after the battle, held for a short time, and then
executed ignominiously. Even in his own lifetime Crockett had become a larger-than-life,
mythological American figure; by the late 20th century, thanks
largely to the 1950s
Disney TV show but also to John Wayne’s performance
in the 1960 film, his legend had only grown. Peña’s far less glamorous version
of Crockett’s death seemed to many suspicious historians like an attempt by
Garza to capitalize on the Crockett legend, contributing to doubts over the
book’s authenticity. But it’s possible to argue something quite different—that
in fact it was the scholarly doubts which reveal the enduring and troubling
power of the Crockett legend. After all, Peña’s story of Crockett’s death
is simply an accurate reflection of the realities of war, and its brutal and
destructive effects for those who participate in it; that might not gel with
the Disney ballad version
of Crockett, but it locates him within the histories to which he was
undoubtedly connected.
Moreover,
focusing on the small section of Peña’s diary devoted to Crockett only
replicates our American tendency to think of the Alamo solely in terms of the
Anglo combatants and the Texas Republic. Whereas the most ground-breaking and
impressive side to Peña’s book is precisely that offers a Mexican perspective on
the battle, the war between Mexico and the Texas Republic, and that whole
contested and crucial era in North American and border history. For example, Peña’s
role as an aide to Colonel
Francisco Duque of the Mexican army’s Toluca Battalion meant that he saw
extensive action on the front lines during the siege of the Alamo, as that
famously heroic battalion led one of the chief columns of assault on the
besieged fort. On a very different note, Peña took part in the Mexican
army’s chaotic retreat to Matamoros after Santa Anna was captured at the Battle
of San Jacinto; that retreat was so infamous that its commanding officer, General Vicente
Filisola, was charged with cowardice for ordering it, and Peña
published an anonymous newspaper article (signed “An Admirer of Texas”!)
critiquing Filisola and the army’s conduct in the war’s closing stages. These
and many other details open up very different sides to the Texan war of
independence, and reveal the historical importance of this long-lost,
controversial, and compelling Mexican memoir.
Next Cinco de
Mayo post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Mexican American figures, voices, histories and stories you’d highlight?
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