San Antonio: Is it true the story of the Alamo?
San Antonio gives off a far west aroma, john wayne movie, lasso bulls, giant barbecues and large barrels of beer. Everything in Texas seems to want to confirm stereotypes: those who confirm that to a South American life is confused with his cattle. in the middle of all that, the interesting Spanish mission of El Álamo and its controversial germ history of a national imaginary of villains and heroes. have we been told the whole truth?
San Antonio, at least its center, it has some beautiful corners. The River Walk is a pleasant walk through the channels of a river in which hotels and restaurants come together. At night the lights on its trees and boats are turned on and during the day the grills of the Big Food stores are lit.. The weekend we spent there also had two distinctively American characteristics.: the rodeo season began and the Lakers played with the Spurs. The first thing we realized when going out to breakfast we found hundreds of people waiting behind the fences on Alamo Street.
Not feeling alone in the midst of so much loneliness
Then began the parade that kicks off the rodeo season. Pieces of footage of everyone's life were shown one by one: cowboys with their cattle; the cavalry corps; a group of Mexicans dressed as Pancho Villa… And people went crazy especially when their veterans paraded, Your army, their border police… United States I have understood that it is many things, some seem formidable to me and others tumors of a sick society on their back. Perhaps its greatest plural is its armed forces and they should pour their emotions there so as not to feel alone in the midst of so much loneliness..
after the parade, we approach the "fort" of the Alamo, mythical place of ethics and aesthetics with my friend Ana Linares. The film turned that old Spanish mission into a symbol of the awakening of a nation that defended new values that Hispanics, and therefore Mexicans, hoisted. It may be partly true, the Anglo-Saxons brought certain liberties in which the Latins digressed, but there is an intentional forgetfulness in the history of the winners towards their infamous, cruel and genocidal treatment of indigenous peoples. Ie, the advanced US Constitution of 1787, the oldest in the global village still in force, It was a formidable legal text for the wave of immigrants who occupied the country.
The gringo chronicles have no witnesses
The Alamo is in any case an interesting visit, where the siege of General Antonio López de Santa Anna and Pérez de Lebrón is explained in detail, and the Numantine defense of heroes of the American popular imagination such as Davy Crockett, Bowie o Travis. In any case, there are many historical doubts about what happened.. The appearance of some alleged diaries of Lieutenant Colonel José Enrique de la Peña, Mexican military man who fought in the Texas War of Independence, denies Crockett's heroics. According to this version of the Mexican military, the American "surrendered, He asked for mercy and was shot by Santa Anna with the rest of the prisoners». Pena was there, his story is in the first person. The gringo chronicles have no witnesses.
There are also many historians who deny that the siege was key to the subsequent defeat of the Mexican troops by the Texan hosts led by Sam Houston.. Here, according to sources, there are two stories: Americans claim that the siege caused 900 dead and wounded in Mexicans, while Mexican historians encrypt the losses in 60 and 250 wounded. "That unexpected and supposed punishment suffered by the Mexicans would have contributed to their subsequent defeat", say the American chronicles to further elevate the heroic sacrifice of their own at the Alamo.
It was Santa Anna's mistakes that caused the defeat
"It was Santa Anna's mistakes that caused the subsequent defeat of the San Jacinto River. He had so many soldiers after the taking of the Alamo that he even divided his troops into different fronts. When the Mexican general was also arrested, the Treaty of Velasco was produced, which established the independence of Texas, its border on the Rio Grande and was the seed of the subsequent war between the US and Mexico that ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which the Mexicans lost half of their territory inherited from the Spanish conquest (current California states, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and part of Colorado, Oklahoma y Wyoming).
The other thing that rediscovered the city for me, I forget easily, is that the Spanish colonization of America did not end at the Rio Grande. It seems that Hispanic America ends in Mexico, I guess because of the influence of the language. Nothing closer than speaking the same language and nothing further away than not understanding a "hello", a "goodbye" or a "you're an asshole". The Spanish were also the first Europeans to conquer or evangelize territories such as California, Texas, Florida, New Mexico…
Some of his missions are downright beautiful. After El Álamo we went to see what they call The Queen (the Queen of Texas missions), that along with five other missions around the state were named a World Heritage Site and make up a very interesting route. The San José mission is a walled enclosure that was founded in 1720 by the Franciscans. Church, especially its facade, they have a special beauty and you can see the rooms built for 350 Coahuiltecan indigenous people who lived there. In the middle of that beautiful construction, as in the Alamo, the often forgotten history of Spain was also better understood.
