TEJANOS FOUGHT FOR TEXAS INDEPENDENCE

By Gilberto Hinojosa
(Ed's. note: The recent controversy over who should be recognized in Texas school books has spurred interest in the lives of those Tejanos who did make the cut like Jose Antonio Navarro. Unfortunately, Sonia Montemayor didn't make it, although Cesar Chavez did. Here, a noted historian attempts to place a context of the Tejano role in Texas history.)

SAN ANTONIO – Late February marks the birthday of Jose Antonio Navarro, a Tejano leader who backed the movement for Texas independence from Mexico. Indeed, Navarro, and Jose Francisco Ruiz, an uncle, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Their support for this cause highlights Tejanos' regional identity and their interests, which were distinct from those of other Mexicans.
Navarro and Ruiz were among numerous Tejanos who risked their lives for their families and homeland. In the process, they played important roles in the 1835-1836 conflict that changed the course of history.
Still, Tejanos did not fare well after the Texas Revolution. Anglo newcomers took over their lands and relegated Tejanos to laborers, basing their actions on the Mexican loss of the revolution. Texans retold the story of the epic battle of the Alamo with an anti-Mexican and, by extension, an anti-Mexican American bent that "proved" all Mexicans were "evil."
In this context, Tejano support for the Texas independence movement appears to have been mistaken.
It wasn't.
A complete examination of the pre-revolution conditions validates the Tejanos' opposition to the centralist rule advocated by Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana and their support of the Texas cause.
Tejanos, along with the (Native American) Indians who established the missionary-led towns, were the original settlers of New Spain's far northern Provincia de Texas. They set up farms irrigated with water from the San Antonio River and established ranches downriver. Their livestock holdings from those ranches constituted their real source of wealth.
But hauling livestock products or driving cattle and horses to Saltillo and other northern Mexican markets limited the profits Tejanos could reap from their efforts. Additionally, the goods Tejanos bought at Saltillo were made very expensive by an officially protected monopoly of Mexico City merchants.
Tejanos thus lacked a strong economic unifying infrastructure with other northern Mexican communities. As a result, they did not develop an indissoluble affinity and loyalty to the colonial heartland and the new Mexican nation.
The frontier province of Texas developed into a true border as the American colonial economy moved closer to New Spain – even before the settlers on the westward movement crossed the Sabine River.
A century before, Spain had considered the Texas province a buffer zone between New Spain and expanding French interests in the lower Mississippi Valley. Yet, this aspect of Texas settlement can be overstressed.
Texas was also a frontier extension of the New Spain's heartland and the colonizers here – Indians, mestizos, Canary Islanders – acted out of their own need for economic security, permanence and advancement.
The transition of Texas from a frontier to a borderland occurred because of the American Revolution. During the 1770s, Tejanos sold horses and cattle to middlemen in Louisiana who represented the American rebels. This link with Louisiana changed the direction of the economic infrastructure forever.
After the American Revolution, Tejanos continued the drives to Louisiana despite the Spanish government's prohibition. Indeed, the prohibition pitted Tejanos against Spanish authorities, reinforcing the separate identity that had developed over time.
Given this ongoing conflict, faraway Spanish authorities, many Tejanos had supported Mexico's independence from Spain in the early 1800s and later backed Mexican leaders who advocated organizing the new nation as a federal republic.
Thus, Tejanos opposed President Santa Ana's efforts to govern Mexico principally as a centralized state. And they joined Anglo Texans in their rebellion against Santa Ana when he ruptured the economic ties between Texas and United States. Santa Ana was disrupting the stability that Tejanos had enjoyed for more than a century.
Navarro's home in San Antonio reflects the stability and tenacity of Tejanos to survive through adversity. San Antonio and Texas was the Tejanos' homeland, and they defended it with their lives and honor.
(This article first appeared in The San Antonio Express.)