IS IT ROBERT E. LEE YOUTH CENTER'S TURN TO BE RENAMED?

By Juan Montoya

By all accounts, the board of trustees of the Texas Southmost College might entertain the proposal to remove the name of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from its youth center in the civic center complex and rename it after local historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

When that will happen is up in the air as the COVID-19 crisis has forced its board to hold is meeting via Zoom.

But at least one member has confirmed that he might introduce that proposal on the agenda at the first available opportunity.

"I think that we could get some of the members of the board to consider changing it," said Dr. Tony Zavaleta recently. "I think that changing it to honor Americo Paredes would be a good idea."

Paredes, who was born in Brownsville on September 3, 1915 spent his academic career in The University of Texas at Austin.

In 1967 he helped found the Center for Intercultural Studies of Folklore and Ethnomusicology there.

During the 1960s he also fought determinedly for creation of a Mexican American studies program in spite of discouraging anti-Mexican attitudes within the university. A colossus in the anthropology and English departments, he was named the Ashbel Smith Professor of English and Anthropology at the beginning of the 1980s and then the Dickson, Allen, and Anderson Centennial Professor in 1983.

Because of his outstanding skills and contributions in the field of folklore, in 1962 Paredes received a Guggenheim fellowship and five years later was invited to teach at the University of California, Berkeley as a distinguished visiting scholar. From 1968 to 1973 he served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore in which many of his 60-some scholarly articles were published.

Lee, on the other hand, was the general who headed the Confederate States of America, which declared war on the United States and ignited the Civil War over states' rights and defense of the use of slavery in the South. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

But that was not Lee's only link with South Texas.

He was with Gen. Winfield Scott of Brazos-Santiago in 1846-1847 during the Mexican-American War when President James Polk raided Zachary Taylor's general staff. He never went to Matamoros or northern Mexico at that time, but Grant was removed from Taylor's command and transferred to Scott's army and both sailed to Veracruz for the final assault on Mexico City.

They both served in the Army with Scott during the war, Lee by this time a seasoned Captain of Engineers during Scott's advance from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was assigned to reconnoitre ahead of the army, and distinguished himself on several occasions by his personal bravery and ability to find and map alternate and poorly defended routes of advance.

He became one of Scott's most trusted aides and was brevetted three times, to Major, Lt. Colonel and Colonel, for conspicuous bravery and meritorious service.

Grant was a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant of Infantry assigned as Quartermaster to his regiment that was also attached to Scott's column. He managed to see action in several key battles and performed bravely and well. His actions were sufficiently conspicuous that he was brevetted twice, to First Lieutenant and Captain.

Lee's next brush with South Texas was in 1860. Before the war, President James Buchanan (from March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861) ordered him to the U.S.-Mexico border to "catch (Juan Nepomuceno) Cortina" after he had taken over Brownsville in September 28, 1859  and just as he was  just finishing up retaking Harper's Ferry and capturing John Brown after his rebellion over slavery.

Lee went to San Antonio, and started for the Valley on April 15, 1860. He first went to Eagle Pass based on erroneous information that Cortina was there. He wasn't. He then went on to Laredo, then to Rio Grande City.  When he finally arrived in Brownsville, he was told told Cortina was "across the river," and crossed the Rio Grande with his troops to find him, but didn't.

He left for San Antonio with nothing to show for his labors on May 16, 1860. without ever seeing Cortina in person.

Then the Civil War started and two days after Lee was offered command of the Union army which he turned down. Three days after his native state, Virginia, seceded from the Union and on April 23, 1861, he entered the Capitol in Richmond to accept command of Virginia's forces.

During the war, when the Lee and the entire confederacy relied on contraband cotton making its way to overseas markets under a Mexican flag through the Mexican port of Bagdad, Major General Commander of the District of Texas J.B. Magruder wrote on May 22, 1864, from Houston to now-Tamaulipas Governor Cortina that it "gives me great pleasure...that you have made arrangements with Colonel (Santos) Benavides...to protect the cotton trade across the Mexican border by way of Laredo, Tx."

How ironic that the man Lee was sent to destroy would have played a role in keeping the lifeline of money flowing into confederacy coffers, and using the tariffs and customs duties to send his brother Jose Maria Cortina to give them to President Benito Juarez who was being chased across northern Mexico by Maximilian, the ally of the confederacy. 

Historians have deduced from Lee's postwar letters and statements which abound with evidence that he thought of himself most often as a Virginian and a white Southerner, and had antebellum loyalties that included owning slaves which had taken him away from the United States and into the Confederacy.

Even after the war after CSA president Jefferson Davis was captured dressed as a woman and Lee testified before U.S. Congress, he held on to the beliefs of white privilege and racial superiority over the former slaves.

The Davis Memorial rock monument at Washington Park has been removed. It's time to remove the name of the youth center at TSC to remove the "heritage" of a human being owning others and making them his slaves.