Texas and the Flag

In Texas, aside from the Stars and Stripes, it's the Texas flag, not the Confederate one nor the Confederacy's battle flag (the one that's the subject of many contentions) that flies throughout the state: ad nauseum, according to the few; in pride, according to the majority. It's a problematic state, and the size along with the varied history of the state's five distinct regions presents all manner of faces to the rest of the Union.

I was born on the Texas-Mexico border, on the state's southernmost tip, a territory which faces the Gulf of Mexico and which lay in isolation during its settlement by the Spanish crown in 1747, and later on as a state of Mexico, through Texas's declaration of independence, and through the years of the Republic which succumbed to bankruptcy (until its annexation, at the behest of Texans) to form part of the Union. Even today, despite its benign winters, most Texans don't visit the Lower Rio Grande Valley with the exception of the young who come to Padre Island during Spring Break.

My double-barreled name comes from my parents: my father, Manuel G. Hinojosa, and my mother, Carrie Effie Smith. My outlook, then, is bicultural; if one takes a border as a separate culture, then it is tricultural.

The three flags one usually sees in front of banks and other commercial establishments in the Valley are the American, the Texan, and the Mexican; once in a while, the Canadian flag, but this is a bone to those northerners who winter down there. All public schools fly the Texas and the American flag, and I suppose this is no different from the rest of the states. It so happens, however, that we Texans also place the flag on our license plates, we also use it on bumper stickers, and many of our politicians mail stick-ems as part of their re-election campaigns.

As said, the various regions are fairly uniform in their use of the Texas flag rather than the Confederate one, but this was not the usual case during my childhood; the state legislature had set aside Robert E. Lee's birthday as a school-free day, and state offices would close on that day as well. Here, at The University of Texas, the Confederacy's influence (since the institution stands a few blocks from the state capitol) remains in a symbolic way: There are eight statues on the University's south mall and four of them are of confederate figures: Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnson, John H. Reagan (Postmaster of the Confederacy), and Jefferson Davis. The other two are James S. Hogg's, the first native son to serve as governor, and Woodrow Wilson's, although this last is a bit of a mystery to me since he was only nine years-old at the end of the Civil War.

We trot out the Confederate flag, along with the other five, the Spanish, the French, The Union's, the Mexican, and the Texan, during Freshman week and during Spring graduation. Freshman week is a big affair here, and since our state is most proud of having been under six flags, out they come to grace either the Texas Tower (the university's administrative offices) or what the students call the Six Pack, six classroom buildings and faculty offices on the south mall.

No matter that the French were here briefly and that during the disastrous La Salle expedition, but a flag's a flag and the state's penchant for boosterism is a subject that needs no comment. The remaining five flags are a matter of historical actuality and our topography presents all manner of evidence as to the Spanish, Mexican, Southern, and United States names of towns, cities, rivers, and mountains that dot the state.

East Texas is the most southern of the five regions; my area, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, is the least, because of its isolation. The battle flag, however...