{"id":3075,"date":"2020-12-20T08:50:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T08:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=141429"},"modified":"2020-12-20T08:50:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T08:50:40","slug":"the-new-battle-of-the-alamo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/20\/the-new-battle-of-the-alamo\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Battle of the Alamo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Bexar County coordinator for the Texas National Movement, Karl Gleim, poses in front of the Alamo Monument after the monthly wreath laying in San Antonio, Texas. Alexander Thompson\/Reporting Texas<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On a balmy evening in November, a somber, slow-moving 68-year-old man removed his wide-brimmed cowboy hat and placed it over his heart. Moments earlier, Karl Gleim had laid a wreath in front of the most famous building in Texas. To Gleim, the wreath laying was a sacred act, one the retired state worker has participated in monthly for the last three years as a member of the Texas Nationalist Movement.<\/p>\n

Under the guise of making the Alamo more visitor-friendly and inclusive, officials want to erase the Battle of the Alamo from the minds of future generations, Gleim said. The San Antonio City Council and George P. Bush, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, want to turn the Shrine of Texas Liberty, Gleim said, \u201cinto a United Nations-run, progressive lesson on the evils of Anglo imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proponents of the Alamo redevelopment plan\u2014which the City of San Antonio and the Texas General Land Office agreed to in 2018\u2014say Gleim and likeminded Texans are misinformed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say I\u2019m trying to erase Anglo-Saxon history, but we\u2019re not,\u201d San Antonio City Councilman Roberto Trevi\u00f1o said. \u201cThe full story of the Alamo hasn\u2019t always been told. For too long many Mexican-Americans have felt disconnected and victimized by the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battle over how to redevelop the Alamo and remember the site\u2019s history has provoked death threats and emerged as a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre among Texas\u2019s network of grassroots conservatives, some of whom believe Bush, whose mother is from Mexico, planned to erect a statue of Mexican dictator Santa Anna at the Alamo. Bush called the rumor \u201cpatently false\u201d and \u201cflat out racist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight is a flashpoint in the national conflagration about whose version of history we should officially sanction. It\u2019s a fight over how to honor, if at all, men who putatively fought for liberty, yet enslaved and killed people of color.<\/p>\n

At the Alamo in 1836, Lt. Col. William Travis commanded a group of about 190 men\u2014mostly Anglo settlers of what was then the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. The group included Davey Crockett, the most famous American in the world at the time, and Jim Bowie, American folk hero, famed knife fighter, and slave trader. They faced off against at least 1,500 Mexicans under the command of Santa Anna. They fought to the death.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe men died,\u201d Gleim said, \u201cdefending the most Texan of ideals\u2014liberty and freedom.” These ideals, he added, are again under vicious attack by those Gleim sees as wanting to rewrite history.<\/p>\n

Conservative Texans like Gleim are not standing down.<\/p>\n

In December 2019, heavily-armed activists gathered<\/a> in Alamo Plaza to protest the relocation of the Alamo Cenotaph, a 60-foot tall marble statute erected in 1939 to honor the Alamo defenders. Moving the Cenotaph 500 feet south, city officials say, is essential<\/a> to redeveloping in a way that reflects the site\u2019s 300 years of cultural history. The Alamo was founded as a Spanish mission in the early 18th<\/sup> century and was an important site to Native Americans<\/a>. The Cenotaph overpowers the area, officials argue, and represents only one moment in history.<\/p>\n

In May 2020, dozens of self-styled modern-day Alamo defenders\u2014many with weapons at the ready\u2014again made a show of force at the site. The day before, someone had written \u201c[down with] white supremacy,\u201d and \u201c[down with] the ALAMO\u201d in red spray paint on the Cenotaph.<\/p>\n

And in September 2020, dozens of Texans\u2014many members of a group called This is Texas Freedom Force<\/a>\u2014offered fiery testimony as the Texas Historical Commission debated moving the Cenotaph. The commission denied the city of San Antonio\u2019s request to do so.<\/p>\n

Prominent state politicians\u2014including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick\u2014have proclaimed their opposition to changing the Alamo in any way that would take the focus off the 1836 battle. Gleim appreciates the support, but he is not convinced his side will win.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, like the Alamo defenders in 1836, Gleim told me, \u201cTexas patriots have crossed a line in the sand and are prepared to take a stand for freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Coordinator Karl Gleim places the Texas National Movement\u2019s wreath in front of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Alexander Thompson\/Reporting Texas<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On the afternoon of May 30, a group of Black Lives Matter supporters yelled at a row of San Antonio police standing in front of the Alamo Cenotaph. The death of George Floyd had driven hundreds of thousands around the country to the streets in protest against racial injustice. San Antonio was no exception.<\/p>\n

San Antonio native 43-year-old Brandon Burkhart, a white man, stood a few feet behind the police with several dozen members of This is Texas Freedom Force. Heavily armed, the men had heard that protesters aimed to damage the Alamo, Burkhart said. He later told me the protestors\u2019 goal was \u201cto destroy Anglo-Saxon history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing 6 foot 4 inches tall and weighing north of 240 pounds, Burkhart struck an intimidating figure. As the president of This is Texas Freedom Force, a group that \u201cpreserves Texas History and protects Texan’s Rights,\u201d according to organization\u2019s website<\/a>\u2014Burkhart is passionate about Texas and what he sees as threats to Texans\u2014namely the removal of Confederate monuments and government infringement on the right to own guns. Perhaps the most pernicious threat to the Texans, Burkhart contends, are the liberal politicians who want to rewrite the history of Texas\u2019s most sacred site.<\/p>\n

Burkhart has been an outsized presence at dozens of public meetings on the Alamo redevelopment. In 2018, he was thrown out of an Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee meeting for yelling at committee members, including San Antonio Councilman Robert Trevi\u00f1o. \u201cTrevi\u00f1o,\u201d Burkhart said, \u201cis nothing more than a Mexican army sympathizer.\u201d (Trevi\u00f1o told me he has received at least a dozen death threats due to the Alamo redevelopment plan.)<\/p>\n

After sharing his opinion of Trevi\u00f1o, Burkhart encouraged me to visit This is Texas Freedom Force\u2019s Facebook page. (Facebook deactivated the page in November.) The page was replete with photos of guns and memes that make clear the group\u2019s cultural perspective\u2014\u201cShooting someone who says \u2018I\u2019m from California,\u2019 should be considered self-defense\u201d; \u201cTexas Lives Matter, no one cares about the color of your skin\u201d; \u201cTexans\u2014Women love us, Antifa fears us.\u201d The group\u2019s website offers T-shirts for sale\u2014one with the slogan \u201cI came to party like it\u2019s 1836\u201d\u2014and for $40 you can have a membership card and a Velcro This is Texas Freedom Force patch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to keep fighting for our history,\u201d Burkhart said, \u201cno matter who gets in our way.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in September, San Antonio resident Ruben Cordova pointed up at the Alamo Cenotaph. \u201cCalling the Alamo a shrine of liberty reflects a misunderstanding of why these men were fighting,\u201d he said. Cordova, an art historian who curated<\/a> The Other Side of the Alamo: Art Against the Myth<\/em>, at San Antonio\u2019s Galer\u00eda Guadalupe in 2018, motioned for me to walk to the other side of the monument.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were fighting for Mexican land and the right to enslave black people on that land,\u201d Cordova said.<\/p>\n

Many Texans refuse to confront this history because the site is part of the creation myth of Texas, Cordova said, but the words of the Republic of Texas\u2019s founding fathers are clear.<\/p>\n

On May 4, 1836, Stephen F. Austin\u2014one of the first Anglo settlers to Texas, the first Secretary of State of the Republic of Texas, and regarded by many as the Father of Texas<\/a>\u2014wrote to Missouri Sen. L.F. Linn to request aid for the Texas War of Independence. Austin called the fight \u201ca war of barbarism and of despotic principles, waged by the\u00a0mongrel Spanish-Indian<\/a> and Negro race, against civilization and the Anglo-American race.\u201d Austin, who had worked for years to make slavery<\/a> legal in Texas, also warned of \u201cnegro insurrection\u201d and called Mexicans the \u201cnatural enemies of white men and civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the battle, \u201cremember the Alamo\u201d became a slogan for anti-Mexican sentiment in popular culture, Cordova added. The 1915 movie Martyrs of the Alamo<\/em>\u2014 produced by D.W. Griffith, the director of the virulently racist Birth of a Nation<\/em>\u2014portrays Mexicans as lecherous and evil and helped fuel the Texas creation myth, Cordova said.<\/p>\n

The erection of the Cenotaph, John Wayne\u2019s 1960 film Alamo<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and inaccurate school books<\/a> have all fueled the myth, Cordova said. It\u2019s a stubborn myth still officially sanctioned by the state, he added. In 2018 historians called<\/a> for the Texas State Board of Education to change state curriculum standards which refer to the Alamo defenders as \u201cheroic.\u201d The board demurred.<\/p>\n

Cordova also suggested that this anti-Mexican sentiment is why President Donald Trump mentioned the \u201clast stand\u201d at \u201cthe beautiful, beautiful Alamo\u201d in his 2020\u00a0State of the Union address<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After speaking with Cordova, I called Frank de la Teja<\/a>, the inaugural State Historian of Texas in 2007. When de la Teja talks about the Alamo, people don\u2019t always like what they hear. Offering a complex understanding of the most sacrosanct Texas origin myth makes people uncomfortable, he said.<\/p>\n

The story of the Alamo and the founding of Texas is \u201cnot solely a racial story, but race does play a role,\u201d de la Teja said. The men who fought for Texas independence, he said, were also fighting to keep black people enslaved.<\/p>\n

Getting Texans to take a more nuanced view of the Alamo isn\u2019t easy, he added. It\u2019s one reason past attempts<\/a> to redevelop the Alamo didn\u2019t gain traction.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpdating the Alamo to make it more significant to a broader population would be good,\u201d de la Teja said. \u201cThere\u2019s history beyond the 13-day battle in 1836.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Standing a few feet west of the Alamo Cenotaph on the evening of Sept. 22, Burkart couldn\u2019t stop smiling. The Texas Historical Commission had just voted to block the City of San Antonio\u2019s request for permission to move the Cenotaph. Some observers were stunned.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy immediate reaction was shock,\u201d Burkhart said.<\/p>\n

During the meeting, Trevi\u00f1o and U.S. Rep. Will Hurd,\u00a0the only black Republican\u00a0in the House of Representatives, passionately presented the city\u2019s case. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, several state representatives, and dozens of opponents of moving the monument also weighed in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe architects of this plan have hidden their true motives,\u201d one man said<\/a>, \u201cthey want to erase our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace Jefferson, commission member and former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, voted in favor of moving the monument. Jefferson, a black man and a Republican, said he was disappointed by the public testimony of some who \u201cquestioned people\u2019s motives instead of focusing on an objective analysis and practical concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archeologist and commission member Jim Bruseth voted against granting the permit to move the Cenotaph. \u201cThe emotional public response affected the vote, but commissioners considered the totality of the evidence,\u201d Bruseth said.<\/p>\n

The vote left Trevi\u00f1o disheartened.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis failing today,\u201d Trevi\u00f1o told reporters, \u201cputs the whole project in jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a San Antonio City Council meeting<\/a> in November, Trevi\u00f1o, was more sanguine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as the San Antonio City Council must continue to fight for the soul of this project,\u201d he said. \u201cWe owe it to the generations of people who call San Antonio home to tell their stories and assure their history is preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post The New Battle of the Alamo<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bexar County coordinator for the Texas National Movement, Karl Gleim, poses in front of the Alamo Monument after the monthly wreath laying in San Antonio, Texas. Alexander\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,230,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3076,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions\/3076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}