Recollections of a Tejano Life: Antonio Menchaca in Texas History

Introduction. Antonio Menchaca in Texas History

intRoduction Antonio Menchaca in Texas History Aboisterous crowd paraded through the streets of San Antonio to the city’s Alamo Plaza on the morning of 2 March 1859. Led by a band of musicians and members of the Alamo Rifles volunteer militia, the entourage included military officers, the San Antonio Fire Association, the mayor and other local officials, teachers and schoolchildren, community members, and about twenty persons with badges identifying them as the “veterans of ’36,” all gathered to celebrate the twenty-third anniversary of Texas independence. Prominent on the speaker’s platform erected for the occasion were two San Antonio Tejanos: José Antonio Navarro, one of the two Texas-born signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and José Antonio Menchaca, a veteran of the Texas Revolution renowned for his valor at the decisive battle of San Jacinto. According to a local newspaper report of this event, the speaker for the occasion, I. L. Hewitt, “was repeatedly applauded in a very enthusiastic manner, and especially in his allusions to the two venerable patriots on the platform, Col. Navarro and Capt. Manchaca [sic].”1 Hewitt extolled Navarro as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a participant in the ill-fated 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition, and subsequently a prisoner in Mexico who refused President Antonio López de Santa Anna’s offer of clemency if he would renounce his loyalty to Texas. Then the orator exalted “Capt. Antonio Manchaca, he who today bears the Lone Star flag,—Mexican born2—’Twas he who fought shoulder to 1. San Antonio Herald, 5 March 1859, pp. 3–4. 2. The use of Mexican born made Menchaca an outsider—a partner in the struggle, perhaps, but one who had to reject his own people. Of course, Menchaca, Navarro, and other Tejanos who participated in the struggle on the Texan side were the only Texasborn participants. Recollections of a tejano life 2 shoulder with the Texans at the battle of San Jacinto—True and faithful to our country then, may he long live to enjoy the fruition of his patriotism.”3 Yet amazingly, in this same speech, with both Menchaca and Navarro seated behind him on the dais, Hewitt claimed Texas’s winning of independence from Mexico demonstrated that “no enemy however countless in their numbers can force the bold Anglo Saxon to yield to a tyrant’s decrees —independent in thought and action, his political freedom he claims as his birthright.” This seeming contradiction reflects a common contention in ceremonial rhetoric around the Alamo and celebrations of Texas independence: the fight for Texas independence inevitably transformed its participants from people of various nations and backgrounds into true Texans and true Americans. Depictions of Menchaca focusing primarily on his military exploits and his “American” loyalties continued beyond his own lifetime. In the introduction to the partial publication of Menchaca’s reminiscences in the San Antonio weekly the Passing Show, his longtime acquaintance James P. Newcomb avowed that the Tejano’s “sympathies carried him into the ranks of the Americans.” Newcomb even went so far as to describe Menchaca’s physical characteristics as bearing “the marks of a long line of Castilian ancestors ,” rhetorically severing Menchaca from both his Tejano loyalties and his Mexican heritage. Similarly, the obituary of Menchaca published in the San Antonio Express declared that he was “born a Mexican” but that “when the Texas war for independence came on, Don Antonio was found upon the side of our people, a contestant for that liberty and those privileges of citizenship which are bequeathed to the American.” Claims such as these reveal a larger pattern regarding some Tejanos and others deemed loyal to the Texas or U.S. causes. James Crisp notes similar rhetorical commentaries regarding nineteenth-century Tejanos like José Antonio Navarro, whose patriotism led Anglo-Americans to claim that he was “not of the abject race of Mexicans,” but was rather “a Corsican of good birth,” that is, a European . In more contemporary times, Edward Linenthal shows that public ceremonies at the Alamo continue to mediate a message of “patriotic conversion ” whereby through courage in battle those of diverse backgrounds leave behind their ancestral heritage to become Texans and Americans.4 3. Quotations from Hewitt’s speech in this and the following paragraph are taken from the copy of his presentation in the San Antonio Herald, 5 March 1859, p. 4. The speech was also printed in the San Antonio Daily Herald, 9 March 1859, p. 2. 4. James P. Newcomb...