Newcomers Beware of Alamo Lies

There is a lie that needs to be straightened out! This lie involves the bones entombed in a small marble casket in the downtown San Antonio San Fernando Cathedral. On a sign at the entrance to the church, there is a marker that claims that the ashes of so-called Alamo heroes Jim Bowie, David Crockett, and William Travis are contained in a marble coffin on the left side to the entrance of the church. This appears to be false as many historians believe that so many bodies were burned after the Alamo battle that it would be impossible to make such a claim. It is generally believed that the ashes at San Fernando Church are those of buried church members.
There are so many falsehoods associated with the Battle of the Alamo that one should look upon this claim with great skepticism. And guess who made the claim that these ashes were Alamo defender ashes? Why none other than pro-slavery advocate and boot licker Juan Seguin. Juan Seguin, the man that the town of Seguin is named after, was a notorious advocate of slavery and apparently a political buffoon. This explains why racist apologetic historians have tried to make a hero of him. The tourists and newcomers to San Antonio should be warned that what they are seeing and hearing is completely false and a bunch of racist lies.
There is no telling whose ashes are in that tomb, but most historians believe that they are definitely not those of the Alamo defenders! Juan Seguin would have had a motive in making up the lie that these were the ashes of the Alamo defenders. His motive was his desire to be accepted by the white settler elite that was solidifying their control of Texas. Sometimes racism is so bad that those who are the victims of it what to identify with the racists rather than with their oppressed ethnic group. Juan Seguin was attempting to “get in bed” with these racists.
In addition to being a slaver who sold slaves at $1 per pound, James “slave neck” Bowie was also a confidence man (con artist crook) who used faked land grants to sell property in Texas and other nearby states. Bowie was a real crook, slaver, and criminal, not a hero! Local Civil Rights veteran Carlos Richardson once put it well when he said, “One cannot hold the banner of freedom in one hand and whip of slavery in another and be called a hero.” Bowie fought hard to defend slavery, which has little to do with the mythical idea of “Texas Independence,” but a lot to do with the racist settler desire to create a slave empire in Texas. The Battle of the Alamo was not just about Texas Independence, but about white settlers keeping their slaves. Slaves were brought into Texas against a Mexican decree that abolished slavery in 1829, by Afro-Mexican president Vincente Guerrero.
What did “Texas Independence” mean for slavery? It meant independence to own slaves! It cannot be dismissed, that Bowie and many of the early Texas settlers wanted to escape the anti-slavery sentiment in other parts of the U.S. by going to the frontier (Texas). These same slave owners would eventually be granted status into the Union as a slave state in 1845. In fact, the U.S. Mexican War sought to expand slavery for imperial ambitions. Much of Texas history centers on the issue of slavery, not “freedom and independence.”.
When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was defeated he was forced to return all property to the Texas settlers, which at the time included escaped African American slaves that ran to Mexico. All of the lies and untold truths seem to be aimed at the tourist industry. The tourist industry fabricated tons of lies in the 1800s in order to create business opportunities. Another reason for inventing these falsehoods is the fact that racists were at work in the creation of hero status for the Alamo fighters. Hatred of Mexicans and other non-English people fueled the lies. Myth is the power behind the colonial matrix of imperial ambitions. This resembles the “weapons of mass destruction” lie that was invented for the War in Iraq!
Davy “Indian killer” Crockett never fought to the death on top of an Alamo wall, but was executed after the battle. According to historians, Travis never drew a line in the dirt, and there were at least 17 survivors at the Alamo and hence 17 messengers of defeat. This contradicts the false Hollywood image of there being no “messengers of defeat.” There were plenty of messengers screaming the news that white racist settlers at the Alamo were defeated. We all know how racists act when they loose a fight! Remember the Alamo mythmakers tried to compare the Battle of the Alamo with the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in Greece (made popular by the recent movie called “300”), but that is a real stretcher. Historians tell us that there was never a “horde” of Mexican soldiers in the tens of thousands, but only about 1,800 Mexicans involved in the actual attack against about 187 slavers. Reportedly, Santa Anna lost about 550 men, which is within the military limits of the day for a siege. At Thermopylae, the Greeks and their allies fought some 400,000 troops! Now that was a battle!
Most of the Alamo history is perhaps one of the best tall tale lies ever told with racist intent. These lies are part of a colonial matrix of myth making that is designed to buttress a racial ideology and the culture of racist conquerors. The Alamo defenders were any and everything but heroes. As the truth becomes known the Battle of the Alamo will begin to diminish in history as a battle for freedom.