The Pronunciamentos of May

This May was notable for two Pronunciamentos grandly declaimed in the contemporary public square i.e., via mass media. The first incident was the Mayor’s mother, Rosie, who in a Helen Thomas-style New York Times interview reminded the electorate of her flaming radical past. She said of the Alamo defenders: “When I grew up, I learned that the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them.”

I suppose that is one way to look at it if you are as far left as Rosie. However, I have credibility problems with anyone who helps found La Raza Unida then shouts “racism” at opponents with no sense of irony.

The men of the Alamo were tough hombres. I am sure they drank a lot as it was the custom of the time (for a number of reasons). Red Rosie’s description of them as “crooks” is an example of the usual left wing gratuitous insult. It is one of their long cherished methods of “debating” and quickly employed when they don’t know what they are talking about. It’s rather like throwing up dust to distract, if not blind, opponents. They fill the many lacunae in the scrub lands of their knowledge with Saul Alinsky approved insults.

I don’t know how many of the 185 fighters at the Alamo were slaveholders. I rather doubt there were many. Slaves were expensive and economical only on large plantations which operated on industrial scales. Texas was not ready for that sort of agriculture. The Spanish, no strangers to slavery, used slaves until 1829 when it was abolished. In early days settlers brought some slaves but being interested in mostly small homestead farming they employed only a few. I must say that after Texas Independence slavery did expand as transportation and communications encouraged larger agricultural operations.

Ok, we have taken care of “drunks, crooks, and slaveholders”— that leaves “imperialists and land stealing.” For many years, the land of which present day Texas is made was part of a “territory” controlled by the Spanish colonial rulers of Mexico. After his father died in 1821, Stephan F. Austin, in obedience to his mother’s wishes, sought to bring 300 settlers into his father’s Mexican grant. That, however, was the year Mexico obtained its independence and the Mexican legislature immediately voided all land grant deals. It took four years of wrangling for Austin to get his final authorization in 1825.

Relations between the colonists and the Mexican government were up and down but Austin’s amazing negotiating skills, not to mention lucrative trade, kept his colony in good stead with the central government. In 1833, Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón took power in Mexico. He was not a constitutionalist, but an admirer of Napoleon and yearned to form an army based on Napoleonic principals.

At first Austin supported him, but the restless colonists grew evermore wary. Revolution was in the air, the fumes wafted from the continued success of the American Revolution and the seething movements in Europe. But, in 1835, Santa Anna abolished the Constitution of 1824 and assumed dictatorial powers. That really set the pot to boiling. Texas colonists figured that any oaths of allegiance they had sworn were negated—they did not bargain for military dictatorship. Spotty revolts and disturbances cropped up like little thunderstorms. Santa Anna used his new army to harshly suppress them but his patience ran out. He decided to attack and drive out the most troublesome Anglo settlers.

There were only approximately 30,000 Anglo settlers in Texas. So there were not many able-bodied men available. Some decided to resist but we all know what happened at the Alamo. 185 fought to the death against Santa Anna’s three- to five thousand-man army. But what really infuriated the Texans was the slaughter at Goliad of 350 unarmed prisoners. It was at Santa Anna’s expressed command. They were shot or bayoneted on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836. Resistance tightened.

Santa Anna set out to destroy the Texas army under Sam Houston. Houston had retreated ever eastward trying to find a place to make a stand. Santa Anna followed with an army of about 1,400. He thought he had cornered Houston at the San Jacinto River. Santa Anna decided to wait for more troops to catch up. He and his army took a break and let the Texans sweat.

Houston did not.  Instead he and his 900 man army attacked, completely surprising the Mexican army. They took bloody revenge as confused Mexican troops tried to surrender with “Me no Alamo, me no Goliad.”

Santa Anna was captured wearing silk underwear. Humiliated, he signed two treaties in which he agreed to withdraw his army and (privately) to push through recognition of the Republic of Texas. As part of the private treaty he was given an armed escort back across the border.

However, he reneged and never recognized the Republic of Texas; well, not until after another war with Mexico which ended in 1848. Thus Red Rosie’s assertion that Texans were “landgrabbing imperialists” has some tangential validity. The U. S. decisively defeated the Mexican Army time after time. They took and occuipied Mexico City. There no force could oppose them. They took virtually empty Mexican lands, among which were California, Arizona and New Mexico. They also made the Rio Grande the final border between the U. S. and Mexico.

I think, all in all, that is a pretty good run for a bunch of “… drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists.”

Finally the President of Mexico visited in May making a Pronunciamento. He rudely criticized Arizona’s law on Mexican illegals. This does not deserve much in the way of comment. One merely needs to point to Mexico’s own treatment of illegals from Central and South America. As to racism, Mexico’s treatment of indigenous Indians speaks for itself.

Really, Señor Presidente, hypocrisy has a very bad smell.