Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas

PREFACE

I n h i s e s s ay “Native Latin American Contribution to the Colonization and Independence of Texas,” which appeared in the April 1943 issue of Southwestern Historical Quarterly and was first read at the 1935 meeting of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Harlingen, Texas, the Stephen F. Austin biographer and prominent Texas historian Eugene C. Barker attempted to explain the problem of incorporating Tejanos (Texans of Mexican heritage) into the fabric of the Texas Revolution story: I should have liked to talk more about individuals: about Bastrop and Martinez and Antonio Saucedo, the first political chief, who preceded Múzquiz. About Múzquiz, himself, who belonged to an ancient family in northern Coahuila, where a town is named for the family. About Miguel Arciniega, a reserved old gentleman whom Múzquiz thought perhaps too loath to believe evil of his fellow man. About the Verramendis, interwoven with the Navarros, and into whose family Bowie married. About the Seguins, father and son, and the Ruízes. And about Antonio Padilla, who, as Secretary of State in Saltillo, rendered Austin and the first colonists invaluable service, and who later became a resident of San Antonio. But here again it is hard to be concrete; one sees them weaving in and out of the picture; one feels a very definite friendliness. Specific facts are not wanting, but they are too fragmentary to lend themselves to orderly narrative. For a good many years I have sought to interest my graduate students in these early Mexican residents of San Antonio. I wish that we might compile an authentic biographical record, showing their services in the formative period of Texas history. I hope that someone may be interested in carrying on such a study. For whatever reason, Barker’s graduate students remained uninterested . Although the individuals cited by him have articles in the New Handbook of Texas, to date only Juan Seguín and José Antonio Navarro have been subjects of published biographical works. Also, PREFACE x i v · p r e f a c e in addition to the men mentioned above, the De León family has been the subject of Carolina Castillo Crimm’s research efforts, and José María de Jesús Carvajal, whose career principally took place along the Rio Grande border region as a Mexican caudillo, has been the topic of a major biography by Joseph Chance. Much remains to be done. Despite his apparent friendliness toward the subject matter, Barker himself betrayed the biases of generations of Texans brought up to believe that Mexican heritage and being Texan were not entirely compatible. Even in applauding their efforts, Barker could not fail to frame the men he spoke of as “early Mexican residents of San Antonio .” Well, the ancestors of some of these men may have been early residents of San Antonio, but by the 1820s San Antonio was past its “early” history. And, although those he mentioned may have resided in San Antonio, they were no mere residents. Moreover, although adhering to a certain logic, lumping Padilla, the Coahuila secretary of state who supported Anglo immigration, with the others brings out a second subtle bias—that as “Mexicans,” San Antonio residents and Saltillo residents were pretty much the same thing. And what about those Tejanos who lived in other parts of Texas? The De León clan from Victoria, Rafael Manchola and Carlos de la Garza from La Bahía/Goliad, and Vicente Cordova from Nacogdoches all were major participants in the events of the Mexican and revolutionary period. Well over 1,500 Tejanos lived in the East Texas woodlands and the South Texas prairies. These communities, along with San Antonio, were a century old when Anglo-Americans began to arrive in the 1820s. Their residents included the descendants of men who fought Apaches, Comanches, Wichitas, and Frenchmen, drove cattle to markets south into Mexico and east into Louisiana, and built the first churches and public buildings in Texas. For Barker and most Texas historians who followed, Tejanos remained minor characters in the drama of the Texas Revolution, and they remained Mexicans. Accepting and perpetuating the ethnocentrism of an Anglo-American population that quickly gained demographic superiority and socioeconomic hegemony over Texas in the 1830s, the concept of Texan was tied to race and ethnicity. White European and Euro-American Anglophone immigrants easily became Texans. Dark skinned, Indo-American, Spanish-speaking natives were Mexican. To counteract this bias, which had social...