[On March 6th, 1836
the Alamo, a San Antonio fort and part of the newly independent Texan
Republic, fell to Mexican forces. That battle became a rallying cry for the
remainder of the war between Texas and Mexico, and so this week I’ll AmericanStudy
a handful of the ways the Alamo
has been remembered. Leading up to a special weekend post on Tejano culture
and legacies!]
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Rebellion de Texas: Manuscrito Inedito [Unpublished] de 1836 por un Oficial de Santa Anna.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 Alamo
memory tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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