History Textbook and Movies: Remember the Alamo!

Paul Simon chided me for judging historical films by their promotional blurb, and not by their content. Let me make amends as we "Remember the Alamo!" The films in "The Real West" series are not well documented and would annoy people of Mexican origin. The two-part "American Heritage" movie is a documentary in which Mexican sources, especially José Enrique de la Paña, are quoted because there are virtually no documents from the Anglos in the Alamo. The Mexican commander Santa-Anna appears as a glory-crazed imitator of Napoleon. "The Napoleonic legend" infected a number of Latin American (as well as a few American) leaders, who chose to forget the fate of Napoleon. Many Latin Americans were given the first name "Napoleon"; I have known some of them. Even so, Santa-Anna appears as a more attractive figure than he does in Lesley Bird Simpson's Many Mexicos.

Several Texan historians appear in the "American Heritage" documentary, and they all lament the almost total distortion of the facts in the movies which made the Alamo famous worldwide: the 1955 Walt Disney film and the 1961 film featuring John Wayne. The historians agree that the movie-fed myth is so powerful that they are powerless to correct it; all they can do in their history classes is to suggestive an alternative. I visited the Alamo in 1938 (a century ater the 1836 siege), when it was in pretty poor state. Largely as a result of the films, the whole area has now been spruced up, and it is the pride of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

The real James Bowie was a blackguard, and the others were a mixed crowd. The movies made much of the killing of David Crockett, who emerges as the hero. The taking of the Alamo provided the blood and thunder of canons which rejoice movie makers, but disturbed me. All 189 defenders were killed. Only one woman and her child are certain to have survived. The Mexicans lost some 600 men. The sacrilegious use of the word "sacred" because of its use as a fortress bothered me. The sacred mission founded by peaceful Franciscans was secularized in 1792 and later put to all kinds of uses. The documentary and the movies made no mention of the loving Franciscans; they make poor movie material.

The documentary covered the protests of chicanos and Mexican Texans against the historical distortion in the movie and the accepted version of the story. This is significant, because when Santa Anna seized the town of San Antonio, many local " Mexicans" had mixed feelings; some took refuge in the Alamo. This ambiguity seems to prevail today. The Texan Mexicans have mixed loyalties and are a group to themselves.

Ronald Hilton - 3/7/02