I really like what my friend and colleague, Dr. Blandina "Bambi" Cardenas said about this piece on Facebook who expresses perfectly what I think IS the most important takeaway from this piece:

"As I read this article, I am reminded that Porfirio Diaz, the 30 plus year Mexican Dictator would cover his face with cream and powder to appear less brown and more European. At the peak of his power, he could not conquer the self hate that too often comes from living in a society dependent on racial discrimination to function. Michael Jackson, at the peak of artistic adulation, still had to fight the demons that made the color of his skin a cross to bear. The horror of racial, gender or sexuality oppression is that too often the victim accepts the verdict and internalizes the distortion of all that he/she is. The only way to free oneself from that tyranny is to know your roots and thus gain strength from them. Valuing yourself does not require devaluing somebody else."

In short, we should not only love ourselves but pay attention to that rejected self, the "I" behind the "I," which is ultimately that bond that we have with Creator. This is ourselves in our fullness of which our heritage, ancestors, and bloodlines are acknowledged and reconciled into a deep, loving sense of beingness that guides our doingness, imbuing life with deep purpose to create a new and better world that is our destiny as peoples who "are still here," and always have been.

-Angela Valenzuela

'We're Still Here' — 10,000 Years Of Native American History Re-Emerges

Texas Public Radio | By Norma Martinez

Published March 14, 2019 at 8:28 AM CDT

On March 5, 1731, Spanish friars essentially handed the keys to San Antonio’s missions to the Native American families who lived there. Just four days later, 56 residents from the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands landed in San Antonio, sent by Spain’s King Felipe the Fifth to establish the first official government in the province of Texas. And with that, thousands of years of Native American history in San Antonio began to disappear.

It was called the Acto de Posesión. The Act of Possession. It was a key moment in San Antonio’s history.  Three of San Antonio missions — Espada, Concepción, and San Juan Capistrano — would be owned by the native populations who lived, loved, worked, and died on the land.

It’s a piece of history American Indians in San Antonio are trying to recover.

Though the city celebrated its tricentennial in 2018, thousands of years of history existed before Spanish soldiers and friars stepped foot in Yanaguana — the Land of Spirit Waters, as San Antonio was known to the natives.

On March 9, the Mission San Juan commemorated the Acto de Posesión with a Founder’s Day celebration, featuring cultural entertainment, traditional foods, and native vendors. But the event was more than just a commemoration. It was an effort to re-write a narrative.

The event was hosted by American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT). Karla Aguilar, the group’s development coordinator, said Native Americans have been living in the region for millennia. “San Antonio grew around these Indian pueblos which were the missions,” said Aguilar. “These Indian pueblos were comprised of nomadic tribes that had been in the region for 10,000 years.”

Aguilar, who’s also a member of the Auteca Paguame tribe of the Tāp Pīlam Coahiltecan nation, said generations of San Antonians have been shamed out of their heritage. “To this day, people would rather identify their ancestral lineage as Canary Islander rather than Native American because there’s this underlying prejudice against being Indian, or la indiada,” she said. “Everything’s been taught to us from a settler’s perspective.”

State Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla embraces her mixed background — the mestizaje — which goes back centuries in San Antonio. “The intermingling of the races was very present in my family’s narrative of who we were and why we had the high Indian cheekbones, and why our families were — as my grandmother used to say it — como los frijoles pintos. Algunos güeros, algunos morenos, algunos con pecas. Like a bunch of pinto beans. Some of us were light, some of us were dark, and some of us had freckles.”

Tafolla said the Eurocentrism present in much of Texas and San Antonio history must be shaken off in view of a larger picture, as it is a place “seeped in history, where there are bodies in this ground that were buried a thousand years ago, and there are structures in this ground that are millennia old.”

Those bodies in the ground? At the Mission San Juan, there have been two reburials of human remains, which were unearthed during a 1967 utilities dig.

  Ramón Juan Vasquez is AIT’s executive director. AIT was founded to recover those Native American remains, which had been scattered in laboratories across the U.S. It took over 30 years to get most of the remains back home. Vasquez thought the struggle to recover the remains ended in 1999, when they were reburied at Mission San Juan. But it wasn’t. “(L)ast year I had to travel to UC Davis pick up 26 human remains, bring them home, reunite them with the remains that are at the Center for Archaeological Research (at the University of Texas at San Antonio),” said Vasquez. “The Texas Archaeological Research laboratory (at the University of Texas at) Austin has 11 human remains that were taken from Mission San Juan in the 1930s. SMU sent three that they had in their closets.”

 The reburials at Mission San Juan are just part of the battle to rewrite a narrative. Vasquez says a larger cemetery exists where over 2 million tourists tread each year - on the grounds of the Cradle of Texas Liberty, the Alamo. 1,377 people are buried there. Their identities are recorded in the Alamo Book of Burials, which covered the years 1703 to 1885.

Vasquez asserts there needs to be a concentrated effort to acknowledge the burial ground — the campo santo — at the Alamo. He suggested arguments against the recognition comes down to racism. “(T)he reason is, as ugly as it sounds, because it’s nothing but dead Mexicans and Indians buried there,” said Vasquez. “And if it was a Catholic cemetery of Irish and German Catholics, they would have protected that cemetery a long time ago. If they thought that Davy Crockett was buried there, there would have been a fence around it a long time ago. But because it’s nothing but dead Indians and Mexicans, what else can I say? I mean, prove me wrong.”

The San Antonio Missions Cemetery Association and the Tāp Pīlam Coahiltecan nation are asking the Texas Historical Commission to designate that portion of the Alamo as a historic Texas cemetery. But it’s not a designation the Alamo Trust, a nonprofit that manages the day-to-day operations at the Alamo, wants to recognize. In a letter to the Texas Historical Commission dated January 18th of this year, the organization’s CEO Doug McDonald, writes that in the group’s opinion, “...a ‘historic cemetery,’ as defined by Texas law, does not exist on Alamo property.”

Ultimately, Vasquez wants the story of San Antonio to expand beyond that of Spanish soldiers and friars and Canary Islanders, which he acknowledges are beautiful narratives. “But I still believe that our story as a Coahuiltecan people is the greatest American story when it comes to perseverance. We’re still here.”

Norma Martinez can be reached by email at norma@tpr.org and on Twitter @NormDog1

Every American needs to take a history of Mexico class, by Dr. Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Excellent piece! Harvard University professor of the history of science and the study of Mexico, Dr. Gabriela Soto Laveaga, makes a compelling case for why every American should learn about the history of Mexico—presumably in K-12, as well as higher education. After all, our histories are intertwined. It would help us to have a broadened perspective in debates on immigration, race relations, the U.S.-Mexico border, and why so many of us advocate for bilingual education. 

It's pretty incredible that one can earn a college degree and still know precious little about Mexico or Mexican history. Even well-educated people know little more than knowing how to order tequila or Mexican food in a restaurant, as if symbolically consuming Mexicans in this way makes one culturally competent. 

These mindsets are transborder and hemispheric, too, with many Americans regarding Mexico and Latin America as little more than a playground for tourists designed to cater to mostly Anglo Americans, as well as Anglicized ones, who may be of any hue. This posture translates into the gobbling up choice property throughout Mexico, elevating gentrification to a global scale. 

In places throughout Mexico like San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, one pays for property in U.S. dollars and at least half the city is Anglo. I have many friends from Guanajuato, including from San Miguel, and they can't afford to live there because Anglos have raised the cost of housing as a result of what they call, "colonización," the Spanish term for gentrification (and colonization) that makes it difficult for them to live there, impelling them to migrate to the U.S. 

Once here, they're targeted by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). Then they become the targets anew of gentrification as their apartments get bulldozed in East Austin, forcing them to vacate and move to the outer rings of the city and county, resulting in long-distance commutes to largely either construction, domestic, or service-sector jobs working in restaurants and hotels throughout our city. Many of these persons have advanced degrees in Mexico that unfortunately count for little here. We work precisely with families like these at our Saturday academy, Academia Cuauhtli.

Instead of being entitled and self-serving and teaching future generations to be so oriented, let's do take up Dr. Soto Laveaga's plea for greater understanding based on a long-overdue, clear reading of the history of Mexico and the Southwest. 

As the Mexican American experience itself suggests, we shall acquire an enhanced understanding of social relations, policies, politics, culture, and how to be better neighbors with a community whose future is caught up with our own in ways big and small. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Every American needs to 

take a history of Mexico class

Learning the history of Mexico can help Americans better understand themselves.

Members of the Sons of the Republic of Texas gather in front of the Alamo Cenotaph monument in San Antonio to commemorate the 184th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 2020. (Tamir Kalifa for The Washington Post)

By Gabriela Laveaga | Washington Post | July 22, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The recent backlash over a new book on the history of The Alamo is not about partisanship nor misapplied critical race theory. It is, however, about denying who we are as a nation. More than an erasure of historical fact it is another example of the ongoing and dangerous practice of cherry-picking parts of our past to fit prepackaged national myths. This is not a new practice nor is our society the only one to rewrite history to suit current political winds. Yet denying a serious, factual analysis of our past sabotages the ability to achieve a more just and equal society. If we start our national origins story with historical falsehoods, we will continue to repeat and expand these fictions to make the initial lie make sense.

One way to right this tendency is by studying the role of Mexico and Mexicans in the making of an American identity. It will not solve a concerted effort to refuse historical truths, but it may help us develop critical skills to identify the problems with teaching a single story of American history. Why Mexico? Among other reasons, Mexico lost more than 50 percent of its territory to the United States. Put starkly, much of our country was once Mexico. Analyzing the origins of this territorial gain places current debates about immigration, the border and even what languages can be taught in schools in a broader perspective.

Essayist and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz understood the value of this decades ago when he wrote, “by coming to know Mexico, North Americans can learn to understand an unacknowledged part of themselves.” That unacknowledged part is complicated. Let’s use just one example, the Mexican American War or the U.S. Invasion, as it is known in Mexico, to illustrate how this pivotal event could be taught in American classrooms to expand how we study the actions of our then still-fledgling nation.

While the history of The Alamo is not as consequential for Mexico, Mexican schoolchildren learn that when their country granted Anglo-Americans permission to settle in the sparsely populated territory of Tejas these settlers agreed to abide by the laws of Mexico and were encouraged to learn Spanish, convert to Catholicism, intermarry with Mexicans and, eventually, renounce slavery.

Instead, Anglo-Americans defied all of these expectations. They started by blowing past the cap on the number of Anglo-Americans who could settle in Mexico. That enabled them to outnumber Mexicans in its northern territory. The Americans then refused to follow the laws of the land; in response, Mexico sent troops to patrol its borders, understanding that a faction of Texans were intent on fostering secession from Mexico.

That is the backdrop for the 1836 siege of The Alamo: a country intent on quelling a rebellion of lawless foreigners who had overstayed their welcome in Mexico.

Yet the fate of Texas would not be decided on the battlefield but in Washington, D.C. In 1837 the U.S. recognized Texas as an independent state, fueling the anger of its southern neighbor. A few years later in 1844, James K. Polk ran his presidential campaign on the annexation of Texas, which many in Mexico still considered a rebel territory that was part of their nation.

Part of the dispute was where Texas claimed to draw its border, at the Nueces or the Rio Grande, which would give it an additional 150 miles of territory.

This geographic detail is important. Polk, determined to push for war, claimed that a border skirmish involving Mexican and American troops spilled “American blood on America’s soil.” But this claim was false; the battle happened in this disputed territory. A young congressman from Illinois, future president Abraham Lincoln, objecting to Polk’s lie, introduced the Spot Resolution of 1847, which laid out the evidence that the fight did not happen on American soil.

What if schoolchildren learned to examine Lincoln’s resolution and protests against what he thought was an unjust war? This broader context would show students that national stories are not tidy, they are messy and sometimes brimming with illegal, or at least problematic, acts. It would also teach students to interrogate presidential actions and claims, not simply accept them as fact.

In the past few months, diverse battles over what will be taught in our classrooms have a common denominator: pushback against a triumphalist narrative, which glorifies the actions of one group over another. Studying the Mexican American War can also teach us about the changing roles of race in our country. Specifically, how some ethnic groups that enjoy broad acceptance today were once reviled, such as, for example, the Irish.

One of the most symbolically powerful events of the war is mostly forgotten in the U.S. today. But Mexicans see the U.S. execution of a predominantly Irish regiment — the Saint Patrick’s Battalion — for treason, as a key event in the war.

In the 1840s, the Irish, fleeing famine, arrived destitute, hungry and, as political cartoons of the era show, in droves to the United States. Relegated to low-class jobs and living in crowded ethnic ghettos, the Irish were portrayed as undesirable immigrants with less-than-average intelligence, who were prone to criminality.

Yet when the call went out for an additional 50,000 troops to invade Mexico, immigrants — many of them Irish — answered the call with the hopes of achieving acceptance in the U.S. It did not take long, however, for many Irish to realize that they were fighting an unjust war started on false pretenses. As Catholics, they also sympathized with Mexicans who were appalled at the desecration of churches by the invading American army. Switching allegiances, a battalion of Irish deserted and fought on the Mexican side. While most were captured and hung for treason, today in Mexico you can find memorials to the Irish, considered heroes of the war. Not every Mexican schoolchild will know about The Alamo but they will all know about the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, when a group of unwanted immigrants rose up against a falsehood. In other words, the questions we ask of the past matter.

At the war’s end the U.S. gained the future states of California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and portions of Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana from Mexico. To carry through with the belief that it was a God-given right to expand from “sea-to-shining sea” Mexicans were transformed into strangers on their own land. The new courts and laws helped take away the rights of Mexicans, setting a legal precedent for making them second class citizens, penalized for speaking Spanish or simply gathering in groups.

To be sure, mandating a history of Mexico class for a fuller understanding of our current society implies that we will have teachers trained and willing to teach a factual past. So far, we have mixed results in that area.

Despite these challenges, expanding our curriculum will enrich the understanding of the next generations of Americans. Borderlands scholar Gloria Anzaldua described the U.S.-Mexico border, a product of the Mexican American War, as an open wound, the marker of a collective and traumatic history that continues to have an impact on the present lives of communities and individuals. Problems, whether these be workers’ rights, migration, declining ground water at the border, economic development or drug trafficking affect both countries and cannot be solved with unilateral decisions. Unilateral histories also do not work.

The past few years have shown us that to remain purposefully ignorant of history is dangerous for democracy. If we move to erase uncomfortable pasts then we remain tethered to fictions.

Gabriela Soto Laveaga is professor of the history of science and the Antonio Madero Professor for the study of Mexico at Harvard University. She is working on a book on agricultural research and water in Sonora and the Punjab.  Twitter

Austin American-Statesman Editorial: Forget, for a moment, the Alamo. Remember the First Amendment.

It is incredibly encouraging to read what we are reading now in the Austin American Statement by the editorial board itself on the heels of the Forget the Alamo book authored by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford.

Their book is supported by decades of research by Tejano (Texas-Mexican) historians whose work absolutely deserves greater public recognition. The Alamo itself needs to be an honest recounting of the truth of what that battle meant, particularly with respect to the Texians' self-proclaimed right to own slaves.  

It also says something that Tejano historians who have fought for this very recognition, dedicating their lives to the topic, that this recognition finally happens when it comes from the writings of three white men. They are well-meaning, talented writers, for sure, and I count Jason Stanford as a friend and colleague. However, if we're dead honest, this should have already happened decades ago. 

Perhaps someday, hopefully for my grandchildren, going to the Alamo won't be such a humiliating, enraging experience. Hopefully, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution will also survive for another generation.

-Angela Valenzuela

Editorial: Forget, for a moment, the Alamo. Remember the First Amendment.

By American-Statesman Editorial Board

Silencing journalists and scholars, chasing dissent from the public square, distorting history to serve an ideological narrative — it’s the stuff of autocrats, and now, the reprehensible behavior of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Texans of all stripes should be deeply troubled by Patrick’s announcement last week that he used his authority, as the state’s No. 2 elected official, to cancel a virtual panel discussion he didn’t like at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, a public institution supported in part by taxpayer dollars.

The topic was a new book about the Alamo, but that is beside the point. It’s not the lieutenant governor’s job to decide which ideas can be shared and debated at a public forum. It’s not his job to tell Texans what to think. 

The book at the heart of this controversy, “Forget the Alamo,” casts a critical eye on Texas’ founding fathers, suggesting their desire to keep slaves helped fuel their push for independence from Mexico, which opposed slavery. That account — supported by decades of scholarship, largely by Latino historians whose work deserves greater public recognition — runs counter to the simplistic tale that generations of Texas students have learned in school, the story celebrating the white heroes of the Alamo while largely ignoring the contributions of Tejano allies and the thorny role of slavery.

The well-documented book is not, as Patrick alleged on Twitter, a “fact-free rewriting of TX history.” And it’s not solely about history. The book by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford also probes the present-day politics around the storytelling of the Alamo, suggesting Patrick used “manufactured outrage” over the Alamo restoration plan to undercut Land Commissioner George P. Bush, whom he viewed as a political rival. 

Patrick’s push to cancel the book discussion went beyond preserving an idealized narrative of Texas’ founding fathers. It silenced an examination of Patrick’s own efforts to capitalize on that narrative — efforts that could cost Texas taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars if Patrick follows through on his pledge for sizable state funding for an Alamo museum, housing what the book’s authors argue is a collection of Alamo memorabilia of dubious authenticity.

For months now we’ve heard Republican gripes about “cancel culture,” a catchall condemnation for everything from the repackaging of Mr. Potato Head to the efforts by social media companies to reduce the spread of conspiracy theories on their private platforms. Simmering with faux outrage, Republicans have appeared on TV, penned guest columns and fired off fundraising emails — absurdly complaining to the masses that they were being muzzled.

But what Patrick gave us last week was a textbook case of real censorship, a clear case of the government stifling free speech. Patrick abused his authority as a member of the State Preservation Board to cancel an event at a public institution because he disagreed with the message. The only silver lining is that Patrick's effort backfired spectacularly, drawing national attention to the topic and driving book sales through the roof. The publisher, according to one of the authors, has ordered two more printings.

Forget, for a moment, the Alamo. Remember, instead, the First Amendment. Remember that it was the first enumeration of Americans’ protected rights for a reason: The free exchange of ideas, even difficult or unpopular ones, is the oxygen that keeps democracy alive. We cannot govern ourselves if our government leaders dictate what’s fact and what’s not, what can be discussed and what’s forbidden.

And yet our state leaders keep trying. Last month Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill creating the “1836 Project,” a thinly disguised propaganda campaign about “why Texas became so exceptional in the first place.” He also signed a bill limiting the ways that race and current events can be discussed in public schools, tapping into the ginned-up debate over critical race theory — a topic he's urged lawmakers to revisit in the special session, alongside the supposed censorship of conservatives on social media.

Abbott and GOP lawmakers have repeatedly tried to curtail an honest, nuanced examination of our state’s history, opting for indoctrination over discourse. This, on top of a barrage of bills last session in which the Legislature tried to dictate a range of decisions, from personal medical care to police funding levels, that Texans and local communities should be free to make for themselves.

Enough already. Patrick is free to disagree with the authors of any book. Better yet, he’s free to challenge the authors to explain and defend their findings. Either way, Texans deserve to have the discussion. The lieutenant governor had no right to shut it down.

"Texas needs a rebranding away from racially charged myths," by Chris Tomlinson

Back in 2019, Chris Tomlinson, Houston Chronicle Staff Writer and co-author with Bryan Burrough and Jason Stanford of just published book, "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth," makes it abundantly clear for people who may not read or know history or in the more common situation, were taught the wrong history, Texas needs to seriously look at its false brand and how distorted and harmful it is.

Not that historians haven't been regularly exposing the ugly truth of Texians' struggle for freedom to enslave others, but rather that this triumphalist myth of the American West may finally be in decline. This precise de-centering of whiteness is why we see this political frenzy to eliminate not just critical thought, but also to defend whitewashed versions of Texas and U.S. history, as well.

Once one learns the truth of Texas history, including slavery, genocidal campaigns, and wars of aggression against Mexicans and Native Americans, our mythic source of pride is appropriately tarnished. Admittedly, changing one's suppositions is no small thing. Yet still more corrosive is the wish to indoctrinate everyone based on the alleged supremacy of white people.

As we commence this week with Texas' special legislative session, we must push back against any proposal that would limit our youths' access to these dark corners of history that our state has occluded for much too long.

Do treat yourself to Tomlinson's interview on MSNBC with Joy Reid yesterday in "ReidOut."

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas needs a rebranding away from racially charged myths

Chris Tomlinson | Staff Writer | Houston Chronicle

April 10, 2019

Bob Owen, Staff-photographer / San Antonio Express-News

Every time I visit the Alamo or see Houstonians don cowboy garb for “Go Texan Day,” I wonder how much longer the long-tall Texan schtick of blazing guns, big hats, high boots and ethnic warfare will work as a state brand.

The adoption of the Western identity, after all, was an intentional rebranding of the state. In my book about my family’s five generations in Texas, "Tomlinson Hill," I describe how state leaders wanted to slough off the Southern, white supremacist identity that dominated until the 1940s when state leaders made Big Tex the new icon.

As Americans reassess our creation myths and tear down Confederate statues, Texans must also rethink our “national” brand. 

Should San Antonio spend $450 million to make the Battle of the Alamo its centerpiece? The whites who died were defending slavery as much as fighting for liberty. The Spanish mission has a 300-year history, so why should all the emphasis focus on 13 days that ended with a massacre that wasn’t much of a battle?

Does anyone still think the Texas Rangers’ genocide against Native Americans or massacres of Hispanics are things to take pride in? Cowboys are such a small part of Texas history. Dressing up as a slave overseer or a sharecropper would be a more honest statement about our economic history on the Houston Rodeo’s “Go Texan Day.”

Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

chris.tomlinson@chron.com

twitter.com/cltomlinson

Read this and learn about the not-so-hidden historical truth of the Alamo.

Specifically, in a newly-published book titled, “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth ,” co-authors Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford  paint a historically accurate picture of the Alamo story with plans to present their work last Thursday on the online platform of the Bullock Texas History Museum located here in Austin, Texas. 

Given that Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan are on the museum's board, they exercised their power and forced the director to cancel this event.  

The rub is that the less-than-flattering, albeit factual and credible, interpretation of Texas history that the battle of the Alamo was motivated in great part to preserve the institution of slavery. To understand this part of our history, one has to know that this land, that later became "Texas," once belonged to Mexico and that Mexico had abolished slavery back in 1829. For greater insight, read this post to my blog back in 2014: Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s First Afro-Indian President.

The irony is that Texas republicans decry "de-platforming" which is something they just did with these book authors and scheduled presenters, Burrough and Tomlinson, while promoting legislation that they term, the “social media censorship bill” (Senate Bill 12). SB 12 is one of the governor's priorities that failed during the regular session, however, it will resurface in the special legislative session that begins this week. 

The truth of the matter is that they want to continue whitewashing history with a falsely patriotic and triumphalist view of history that preserves the myth of "Texas exceptionalism," that either erases or rationalizes the truths of our state and nation's atrocious history of slavery, conquest, and colonization of which the story of the Alamo is clearly emblematic.

-Angela Valenzuela

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick admits he told state museum to cancel 'Forget the Alamo' book event

Taylor Goldenstein, Jeremy Blackman, Austin Bureau

July 2, 2021Updated: July 3, 2021 9:48 a.m.

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, from front, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, and General Land 

Commissioner George P. Bush ascend the stairs to unveil the 18-Pound cannon as state and local 

officials gathered for the unveiling of a new outdoor "18-Pounder Losoya House Exhibit" in Alamo 

Plaza on Friday, April 16, 2021. Marvin Pfeiffer /Staff Photographer

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Friday acknowledged putting pressure on the state’s 

history museum to shut down a virtual discussion of “Forget the Alamo,” a 

book that critically re-examines the storied history of the Texas landmark.

“As a member of the Preservation Board, I told staff to cancel this event as 

soon as I found out about it,” the Republican and former conservative radio 

host wrote on Twitter.

Patrick said that “this fact-free rewriting of TX history has no place 

@BullockMuseum.”

On Thursday, with little explanation, the Bullock Texas State History Museum 

in Austin abruptly pulled out of an event scheduled for that night on “Forget 

the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth,” which was published 

last month.

The authors decried the move as state censorship.

The Bullock museum is operated by the State Preservation Board, which is 

chaired by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Patrick and House Speaker Dade 

Phelan, R-Beaumont, serve as co-chairs.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, from left, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and General Land 

Commissioner George P. Bush stand beside 18-pound cannon in a new outdoor "18-Pounder 

Losoya House Exhibit" in Alamo Plaza as state and local officials gathered for the unveiling on 

Friday, April 16, 2021. Marvin Pfeiffer /Staff Photographer

FOR BACKGROUND: Texas history museum pulls out of event on book 

re-examining Alamo ‘myth’

Patrick “thinks he has the right to force his myths on others and can’t handle 

the truth,” Chris Tomlinson, one of the book’s authors and a columnist for 

the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, said in a tweet. 

“Historians have been teaching these facts for a decade.”

The controversy appears to have sparked greater interest in the book, as it 

rose to the 28th best-selling book on Amazon as of Saturday morning; 

Tomlinson said its previous high ranking was 168th.

“Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth” was written by Bryan Burrough, Chris

Tomlinson, Jason Stanford and published in June 2021. Penguin Press-handout.

Tomlinson and one of his two co-authors, Bryan Burrough, were to discuss 

their book in an online “Craft of Writing” event moderated by Becka Oliver, 

executive director of the Writers’ League of Texas.

Margaret Koch, director of the Bullock, said Friday that the authors could have 

gone ahead with the event but decided not to.

The museum’s role “was primarily that of co-host,” Koch said in a statement. “

Although the Bullock withdrew from the event and notified the 198 pre-registered 

participants, the Writers’ League of Texas was prepared to continue the event on 

their own platform and gave the book’s authors the opportunity to do so. The 

authors declined to continue, and because they did so, the Writers’ League of 

Texas canceled the event.”

Tomlinson said they had no choice but to cancel because the event was organized 

using the Bullock’s online platform. “We did not have time to readvertise the 

event to move to another platform,” Tomlinson wrote in a Facebook post.

“De-platforming is what conservatives cry about when white supremacist groups

are kicked off social media. They say it’s un-American. Well, that is precisely 

what they did to us,” he wrote.

Burrough said in a tweet Friday: “I’ve worked all over the world for 35-plus 

years and I had to return to Texas to get my first government censorship and 

actual death threats.”

In the book, Tomlinson, Burrough and Jason Stanford assert that the 

common narrative about the Battle of the Alamo — that 180 Texan rebels 

died defending the state in its war for independence from Mexico — overlooks 

the fact that it was waged in part to preserve slavery.

Patrick and other Texas Republicans disagree with that premise and have 

described it as an attempt to politicize the state’s history.

The book has also riled conservatives by questioning the authenticity of 

Alamo artifacts collected by rock star Phil Collins.

Collins donated the items to the state in 2014, providing an early impetus

for an ambitious plan to renovate Alamo Plaza to enhance its appeal as a 

tourist attraction. State officials agreed to build a museum at the site to 

showcase the Collins collection.

The new book says documentation is lacking to show that many of the items 

Collins acquired, including a knife supposedly owned by Alamo defender Jim 

Bowie, played any role in the 1836 battle or were ever at the site.

The public-private project to renovate Alamo Plaza also envisioned relocating 

the Cenotaph, a 1930s monument to the Alamo defenders. It would have 

been moved a few hundred feet south of its current location in the plaza.

When the proposal went before the Texas Historical Commission last year, 

Patrick spoke forcefully against it, and the commission denied a permit for 

the relocation.

Patrick also took issue with elements of the Alamo project that sought to 

call attention to earlier phases of the site’s history and the imprint left by 

indigenous peoples. He said the project would “erase history” and that the 

primary focus should be on the 1836 battle — “the most important 13 days 

in the history of Texas and Western civilization.”

More recently, Patrick has derided the proposed relocation of the Cenotaph 

as an instance of “cancel culture.”

The irony was not lost on Patrick’s critics, who noted that the lieutenant 

governor has supported a “social media censorship bill.”

Senate Bill 12, sponsored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would 

have required tech companies to disclose their policies for removing content 

and to allow appeals of those decisions. The bill passed the Senate but died 

in the House.

Patrick had identified it as a priority bill last session, and Abbott has said 

he will again put it on the agenda for the special legislative session set to 

begin July 8.

About an hour before the scheduled start of the “Forget the Alamo” event, 

Patrick sent out an email in support of the bill with the subject line: 

“In Texas, we treasure our right to free speech.”

jeremy.blackman@chron.com

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com