Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo which began on February 23, 1836. The event is an important part of the foundation myth of the Republic of Texas so, consequently, of the State of Texas which succeeded it. I’m sure that much of what I’m about to write would be considered rank heresy by good Texans.
There were actually three different groups involved in the Texas Revolution of which the Battle of the Alamo was one of the signal incidents: Texians, Tejanos, and Mexicans. “Texians” were Americans who had moved west, many promoting the cotton culture. Tejanos were people of Spanish descent, indigenous descent, and mestizos who had lived in Texas for generations. The Tejanos were not well-treated by the Mexican military, whose officers were mostly Spanish or French aristocrats, and so joined with the Texians in revolution against the Mexican government which was rapidly centralizing its own authority.
Most modern-day Americans know little of the cotton culture other than slavery or what they saw in Gone With the Wind but slavery was not its only malignant feature. Cotton, due to the considerable water requirements for its cultivation, is very hard on the environment. A few decades of cotton monoculture exhausts the soil. That’s why cotton cultivation was continually on the move, first from George to Alabama and Mississippi, then to Texas, New Mexico, and California. They had to move to find land capable of supporting cotton cultivation after wrecking the old fields. The environmental problems of cotton cultivation are as much a problem in Egypt and India of today as they were in the Alabama and Mississippi of 150 years ago.
So slavery, despoiling the land, an aristocracy, and continually expansionist. There is a lot not to like about the culture being promoted by the Texians.
The Mexicans were worse, if anything. They represented the far away government in Mexico City, they were royalists and aristocrats, they treated the Tejanos quite harshly following the first revolution twenty years previously, but they opposed slavery which was something.
Consequently, the way I see the Battle of the Alamo is that the Texians defending the Alamo gave their lives bravely for a cause which was at the best questionable. That’s what’s being commemorated.
That’s largely the way I see history. Not a story of inexorable improvement and the victory of good over evil with white-hatted heroes and evil, mustache-twirling black-hatted villains but events in which there are no obvious heroes or villains, merely people. Not much of a rallying cry but that’s what I remember when I remember the Alamo.
Was cotton that big a deal in Texas? I could see it in far east Texas, but no where else. Cattle was the principal product, as I recall.
I had forgotten that there that many ‘native’ Mexicans living north of the Rio Grande when the Texians started arriving, and did not know at all how badly Santa Ana treated them. Santa Ana is lucky that he wasn’t killed out of hand when he was captured considering what his troops did not just at the Alamo but elsewhere in his campaign to subdue the rebellion.
Cotton has been a major component of the Texas economy since the 1820s, when the Texians began arriving there. Texas presently produces more cotton than any other state. Areas with significant production include East Texas, the Panhandle, and West Texas around San Antonio.