On the “Views” page of the San Antonio Express a few weeks ago was an extraordinary and less than honest article about misnamed Texans. In an article by Robert Seltzer, called “Forgotten no more,” lavish efforts were made to make some of the most racist “Tejanos” into contributors of the Texas cause. I guess they did contribute but how? What “Texas cause” is crucial in this argument. History tells use that after Mexico declared slavery illegal in Texas the Anglo settlers became belligerent and sought the aid of sympathetic “whitened” Tejanos. These so-called misguided Tejanos were in support of slavery just as the Anglos were. Included in this group of slave supporting Tejanos was Juan Sequin and Jose Antonio Navarro.
Why anyone would want these figures included in the history books as heroes, in their desire to help slave owners to establish a slave state, is beyond me. The Texas settlers left other parts of the United States to come to the Mexican frontier. The Mexican frontier was Texas at that time. The reason why many of them left was to escape the growing hatred of slavers and the institution of slavery. Some Tejanos, who were racist and very light-skinned, were slave owners themselves. The article was inaccurate and without full research in this regard. It seems that there are still those out there trying to perpetuate the myth that the Texas slavers were heroes. We have come to idolized them, but they were slavers who carried the banner of “freedom” in one hand, and the “whip of slavery” in the other.
Jim Bowie was a disgraceful slave owner. Bowie had slaves from his father who sold them in New Orleans. Colonel Travis of Alamo fame defended slave owners, while the Canary Islander leadership of San Antonio wanted to be considered white. This is a fact of history. So why then do some historians complain about Anglos having historical amnesia by leaving out the slave owning Tejanos? It depends on whose definition of Tejano you use. If you are using the people like Juan Sequin and Jose Antonio as examples of Tejanos then you are saying that Mexicans were white (light-skinned) Tejanos. Tejanos included Indians, Blacks, mixed-race people, and not just the descendents of Spain who wanted to be white by ignoring their Moorish roots. It is important to note that these light-skinned Tejanos were just as racist as the Anglos. Unfortunately for these wanna-be white Tejanos, who supported slavery and supported the racist white Texan slave owner regime, were betrayed. This is why they are left out of white Anglo history. The racist Anglo slavers used them politically and militarily to oppose Santa Anna in the war, but after they were finished with these Tejanos they were cast out. It is best we remember Juan Sequin as a supporter of slavery. His support of slavery would eventually lead to Texas being admitted as a slave state in 1845. Antonio Navarro and Juan Seguin opposed the dictator Santa Anna, but they also supported the racist and horrible system of slavery and the Anglo Texan cause to make Texas a slave state. Let’s look at Juan Seguin a little closer. Seguin was born in San Antonio in 1806. His first major association with Anglo slavers occurred in 1835 when he became a captain in Stephen F. Austin’s army. This took place after the Battle of Gonzales. Seguin became a staunch defender of slave owners, and showed his allegiance to the horrid institution by participating in assaults on the Mexican Army in San Antonio. One must remember that the Afro-Mexican President Vincente Guerrero abolished slavery in Texas in 1829. Navarro, in apparent attempt to gain white Anglo acceptance, also came up with a disputed pile of ashes and bones that he claimed were those of the Alamo defenders. These bones are misidentified at San Fernando Church in a small tomb by the front door. Later, Seguin would be used and abused as Mayor of San Antonio after selling out to the Anglo slave owners, and had to flee to Mexico after being chased out of San Antonio. Being a sellout to racist Anglos did not help him in the end. So why are we celebrating their contributions? I believe it is because most of us do don’t know about this forgotten history. Jose Antonio Navarro was the truest of sellouts to the racist Anglo settlers. He was one of the three signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence that resulted in the creation of a slave state. Should we call Navarro a Mexican? He was the sole “Hispanic” member of the Convention of 1845, which established Texas as a slave state. Navarro often made speeches in support of slavery, and was no hero in any community except in the white slaver community. Navarro’s belief that Texas’ best hope lay with the racist white Anglo settlers was in part due to his support of slavery. Was he a true Tejano? NO! We need to be careful not to get Tejanos mixed up with slave owning Spaniards. They were not the same.
