A THANKSGIVING THROUGH TEXAS, A LAND OF CONFLICT

By Juan Montoya

It's not often we get a chance to take a trip out of the Rio Grande Valley with our kids and the annual Thanksgiving traditional get together at Bastrop with the extended family provided us just that.
Even though I had worked in San Antonio with the Light, I had never really done the tourist thing and actually visited the Alamo, the so-called Cradle of Texas liberty.
So, heeding the suggestions of our 12-year-old daughter (funny how they always seem to dictate the course of events) we took a detour up Interstate 37 and visited San Whilmas and took a photo at the Alamo.
The questions started out at once: Why did the Texans stick around even after they were told by Sam Houston and Anson Jones to quit the Alamo because it could not be defended against Santa Ana's killing machine.
The Mexican Central government had already declared American immigrants who came across the Sabine without permission and who were now declaring independence from the host county as pirates to be executed if they did not desist.
And so the Alamo fell. Travis, Bowie and Crockett were among the dead, as were numerous Tejanos who rebelled against the central government in distant Mexico City.

Now, standing before it in the light mist with the milling crowds waiting to enter and taking photos of the venerable facade, it makes it all come real. 

On the way back from Bastrop after the family festivities, we took the route through Gonzalez. Gonzales is most famous because it was the site of the first skirmish of the Texas Revolution. In 1831, the Mexican government gave the settlers a small cannon for protection against Indian attacks. 

At the outbreak of settler hostilities, a contingent of Mexican soldiers was sent from San Antonio to retrieve the cannon. On 2 October 1835, Texians under the command of John H. Moore confronted them. The Texians had fashioned a flag with the words "Come and take it". The Texians successfully resisted the federal troops in what became known as the Battle of Gonzales.

Next on the tour was the Bahia del Espiritu Santo Presidio. The presidio and mission there was moved in 1749 to the north bank of the San Antonio River near the site of present Goliad in Goliad County, and the presidio to the south bank. The missions of Nuestra Señora del Rosario and Nuestra Señora del Refugio, twenty-seven miles away at the site of modern Refugio, were sometimes grouped with Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo, and all three were called the La Bahía missions.

There is a somber side to the story of conflict and bellicose relations between the Texans and local Mexicans here, too.

In the town square, in the yard of the county courthouse, stands the Hanging Tree. It was called so because right after the accused was convicted in the courthouse, he was led out and summarily hung from the branches of the ancient live oak there.

Many of the hangings were nothing else but lynchings, notably the hangings during the Oxcart War where newly arrived Anglo settlers coveting the lucrative teamster trade dominated by Mexican ox-cart drivers, simply hunted them down and hung them.

The Texas State's Historical Association's Handbook of Texas History says this about that dark episode.

"The so called 'Cart War' erupted in 1857 and had national and international repercussions. The underlying causes of the event, historians believe, were ethnic and racial hostilities of Texans toward Mexican Texans, exacerbated by the ethnocentrism of the Know-Nothing party and the white anger over Mexican sympathy with black slaves. 

"By the mid-1850s, Mexicans and Tejanos had built a successful business of hauling food and merchandise from the port of Indianola to San Antonio and other towns in the interior of Texas. Using oxcarts, Mexicans moved freight more rapidly and cheaply than their Anglo competitors. Some Anglos retaliated by destroying the Mexicans' oxcarts, stealing their freight, and reportedly killing and wounding a number of Mexican carters. 

"An attack on Mexican carters occurred in 1855 near Seguin, but sustained violence did not begin until July 1857. Local authorities made no serious effort to apprehend the criminals, and violence increased so much that some feared that a "campaign of death" against Mexicans was under way"

According to the plaque beneath the Hanging Tree, many of the persons hung there had been Mexican oxcart drivers. It wasn't until the Mexican Ambassador to the United States protested that Texas sent  a contingent of .Texas Rangers to quell the disturbances that the war finally abated.

But there is an uplifting note in Goliad, also. This is the place where Ignacio Zaragoza was born. Zaragoza is best known for his defense of Puebla during the French Intervention in Mexico. He was in charge of Puebla's defense and beat the French mercenaries (Zuaves) sent by Napoleon III  in May 5, 1862.

The statue on the top of the hill at El Presidio was given to the State of Texas by the City of Puebla, Mexico. It features a young-looking bespectacled Zaragoza (he died at 33, one year after he defeated the French) and at its base is this inscription: "Mexicanos: Los hijos de este generación nacimos libres así nos conservaremos o moriremos en la demanda." – Ignacio Zaragoza.
"Mexicans: The sons of this generation were born free and free we will remain or die demanding it." – Ignacio Zaragoza.

The house where Zaragoza was born is a amll house located just outside of the presidion front doors. His father was a captain in the Mexican army and was ordered to leave after the toubles started with the Texas Revolution.

Just before your get to Goliad, a few miles north lies the city of Cuero. Cuero's claim to fame is its beautiful Victorian architecture. There are numerous homes that have been refurbished and give the city a distinctive antique look. It also calls itself the "Turkey Capital" of the U.S. and is the sister city of Worthington, Minn., with which they hold an annual contest to see whose turnkey can run a Turkey Trot down both town's main streets each year.

We asked at Rose's Mexican Restaurant whether there were any nuseums and they directed us the next block over to the Chisolm Trail Museum.

This was intriguing because the Chisolm Trail actually begins in Brownsville (by Hope Park), and we have nothing but a metal marker at the site. 

But we also remembered that this is the hometown of Roy Benavidez, a Medal of Honor winner who

visited Brownsville many years ago in support of former Nebraska governor Bob Kerry's run for president. Kerry we another Medal of Honor winner.

We found a statue of Benavidez on the outskirts of town near the new Walmart and the high school football stadium (the Gobblers).

Almost forgotten, it includes an inscription of his Medal of Honor Proclamation which lists the astonishing exploits of Benavidez (a half Yaqui Indian). Among other things, in saving a 12-man reconnaissance unit, he received more than 34 bayonet and gunshot wounds. When he came to Brownsville, he said that he had more than 60 pieces of shrapnel still lodged in his body.

It was fitting that when we returned to Brownsville, our route took us past a statue erected in memory of our own Medal of Honor winner Jose Lopez.

With Benavidez in Cuero and Lopez in Browntown, this made for some weighty bookends to end our historical tour this Thanksgiving.