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photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

Lpez: What we owe our Tejano ancestors and their descendants
Last Updated: July 10, 2014
By Jos Antonio Lpez

SAN ANTONIO, July 10 - For over 150 years, mainstream Texas history books
have been written as if Texas history begins in 1836. By design, conventional
Texas history books cut out or reject the foundation story of Texas, simply
because it doesnt fit the Sam Houston model.

Equally unfortunate, that restrictive method (l) tends to treat early (pre-1836)
Texas history as Spanish & Mexican foreign history; and (2) ignores the direct
connection between Native Americans and todays Mexican-descent Texans and
Southwest people. The result? Mainstream Texas history instruction omits the
very roots of Texas. That is unfair to the memory of the Spanish Mexican Tejano
founders of Texas. How can we fix this long-standing problem?

For about the last thirty years, a group of dedicated Tejano history aficionados
of both Tejano and Anglo backgrounds have tried to offer a more fair and
balanced account. However, selling that idea to a skeptical public raised on
movie myth-inspired Texas history hasnt been easy.

That said, the unveiling of the Tejano Monument in Austin in 2012 has finally
popped that balloon of ignorance. The memorial now serves as a permanent
beacon putting a spotlight on pre-1836 Texas people, places, and events. There
have been other efforts to make Texas history curriculum more inclusive (see
next paragraph). More recently, a dedicated effort supported by the Texas State
Historical Association is about to bring together Tejano history stories with the
goal of establishing a Tejano History Handbook Online.

Based on grass-roots petitions and testimony in 2010, the Texas State Board of
Education agreed that the teaching of Texas history in the classroom is
incomplete. As such, they approved the inclusion of some Spanish Mexican
people in the STAAR social studies and Texas history school curriculum. Its not
much, but its a start.

Albeit, what is the main problem with the way Texas history is taught today?
The clear answer is that mainstream Texas history at all levels tends to
pigeonhole Texas history into three distinct eras: Spanish colonial, Mexican
Republic, and Republic/State of Texas. Worse, as presented in the classroom, the
first two eras are not connected to the third (Texas history). Such an approach
implies that the people who lived during the first two eras have disappeared and
thus are treated as detached (unconnected) parts of mainstream Texas history.
The fact is that the descendants of the Spanish Mexican people who lived in the
first two eras (pioneer settlers who founded Texas) are still here today in the
form of Mexican-descent Texans.

Regrettably, generations of Mexican-descent Texas students have been treated as
foreigners in their own homeland. They know little of their ancestors history.
What are some lessons that a more open discussion of Texas history will provide
Texas children? Below is a partial list of topics that especially Mexican-descent
children in South Texas must discover, study, and get to know their impact on
(help or hurt) Spanish Mexican people of the U.S. Southwest:

(l) The First Texas Independence occurred on April 6, 1813; (2) The 1836 Battles
of the lamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto are part of a chronological chapter in
Mexicos history, not the U.S. Mexico didnt lose Texas, South Texas, &
Southwest until 1848; (3) They must learn that in Texas in 1836, the Anglo
immigrants from the U.S. were the aggressors, not General Santa Anna; and (4)
they must learn that the name lamo refers to the Presidio (no longer exists) and
not to Mission San Antonio, sister mission to San Jos, San Juan, Concepcin,
and Espada.

(5) The real story as to how the U.S. won the west by following El Camino Real
routes; (6) learn about Borderlands families that were split in two in 1848 as a
result of the U.S. Mexico War; and (7) for high school and college students,
develop lessons on the Mutualista Movement, Jovita Idar, LULAC, Mexican-
descent military veterans; Dr. Hector P. Garcia and the American GI Forum,
The Class Apart (1954 Supreme Court Decision - Hernandez v. Texas), 1964
Civil Rights Act, etc..

Other aspects of little-known early Texas history facts that Texas students must
know in higher grades: (a) The Black Legend (Leyenda Negra); (b) Manifest
Destiny; (c) Learn why and how U.S. encroachment into the Carolinas, Georgia,
Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi Valley and the Northwest
displaced existing Spanish settlements, presidios, and missions; (d) 1836 Texas
Independence negative effect on Spanish Mexican-descent Texans (Tejanos).
In summary, nowhere else in history has one ethnic group robbed another group
of its heritage to embellish their own. Yet, thats whats been done to the lamo
and La Bahia (Goliad) Presidio.

Its time to honor these magnificent historical structures for their strength,
beauty, and creativity of their Spanish Mexican builders. They must no longer be
marketed only because armed Anglo expatriates from the U.S. died there.

So, what do we owe the memory of our Tejano ancestors, founders of Texas, and
their growing number of descendants? We owe them inclusion in mainstream
Texas history. The first chapters of our states history may be written in Spanish,
but whats wrong with admitting that Texas history is truly bi-cultural and bi-
lingual? Simply stated, Tejano history is not a separate but equal history.
Tejano history is and will always be Texas history.

Jos Antonio Joe Lpez was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and is a USAF
Veteran. He now lives in Universal City, Texas. He is the author of three books:
The Last Knight (Don Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara Uribe, A Texas Hero,, Nights
of Wailing, Days of Pain (Life in 1920s South Texas), and The First Texas
Independence, 1813. Lopez is also the founder of the Tejano Learning Center,
LLC, and http://www.tejanosunidos.org/, a web site dedicated to Spanish Mexican
people and events in U.S. history that are mostly overlooked in mainstream history
books.



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