Remember the Alamo? A battle brews in Texas over history versus lore
BYJENNIFER BARGER
“What happened at the Alamo again?” asked my cousin, who was visiting from Missouri. It was sometime in the early 1990s and we were in San Antonio, lined up to see the best-known tourist attraction in Texas.
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The 1836 conflict actually took place in what was then Mexico. Anglo settlers, lured to the steamy, snake-filled state of Tejas by the promise of farmland and autonomy, were rumbling for independence from the increasingly centralized Mexican government. Nearly 200 of these Texians (as both Anglo and Hispanic rebels were known) occupied the ruins of Mission San Antonio de Valero, nicknamed “the Alamo” after the Spanish word for cottonwood.
Outmanned and outgunned by the Mexican army under President Antonio López de Santa Anna, the rebels were nearly all slaughtered, their bodies burned on pyres in the adjacent plaza. The Texians lost that battle, but soon after won their war for independence after defeating Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto and cementing the newly formed Republic of Texas in April of 1836.
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Now, an ambitious $450 million plan to restore and recalibrate the UNESCO World Heritage Site has spurred a new battle over how to remember the Alamo. The Alamo Plan puts forth expansive, expensive ideas: Preserve the fragile chapel; close surrounding streets to car traffic; build new museums to tell the site’s centuries-long history and to house artifacts, including a cache donated by rock star Phil Collins. But it’s all become obscured in a fog of politics, claims of poorly authenticated relics, and gun-toting protesters. It’s a story as big—and as messy—as my home state.
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It’s no surprise that the Alamo Plan’s proposed changes have ignited ongoing debates, political posturing, and even armed protests. Historians seek a more nuanced story about why the Texians were fighting (yes, for freedom, but they also sought the right to keep their slaves, then illegal in the rest of Mexico). Indigenous Americans want recognition for the mission era and their ancestors buried onsite.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/san-antonios-new-battle-over-the-alamo
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