We've Been Telling the Alamo Story Wrong for Nearly 200 Years. Now It's Time to Correct the Record
BY BRYAN BURROUGH AND JASON STANFORD JUNE 9, 2021 5:43 PM EDTImagine if the U.S. were to open interior Alaska for colonization and, for whatever reason, thousands of Canadian settlers poured in, establishing their own towns, hockey rinks and Tim Hortons stores. When the U.S. insists they follow American laws and pay American taxes, they refuse. When the government tries to collect taxes, they shoot and kill American soldiers. When law enforcement goes after the killers, the colonists, backed by Canadian financing and mercenaries, take up arms in open revolt.
As an American, how would you feel? Now you can imagine how Mexican President Jose Lopez de Santa Anna would have felt in 1835, because that’s pretty much the story of the revolution that paved the way for Texas to become its own nation and then an American state.
If that’s not the version of history you’re familiar with, you’re not alone. The version most Americans know, the “Heroic Anglo Narrative” that has held sway for nearly 200 years, holds that American colonists revolted against Mexico because they were “oppressed” and fought for their “freedom,” a narrative that has been soundly rebutted by 30-plus years of academic scholarship. But the many myths surrounding Texas’ birth, especially those cloaking the fabled 1836 siege at the Alamo mission in San Antonio, remain cherished in the state. Even as the nation is undergoing a sweeping reassessment of its racial history, and despite decades of academic research that casts the Texas Revolt and the Alamo’s siege in a new light, little of this has permeated the conversation in Texas.
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https://time.com/6072141/alamo-history-myths/?utm_source=pocket-newtab