A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico: José Antonio Navarro and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition (review)

Among the many services rendered by José Antonio Navarro to his native land over a long and active life, none is more honored in Texas today than the steadfast loyalty he exhibited as he faced the death penalty for treason to Mexico. Captured with the doomed Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1841, Navarro faced incriminating evidence that seemed overwhelming. He had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, and he had entered New Mexico with an enterprise intended to turn that province into an extension of the rebel Texas Republic.

The Library of Texas is to be congratulated for deviating from its practice of producing expertly edited new editions of classic Texas books to publish this remarkable collection of documents concerning Navarro's trial for treason. Andrés Reséndez, who demonstrates his own expertise in editing this volume, realized upon first seeing these papers in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library that they contained "dramatic proceedings that raised moving and profound questions about Navarro's loyalty" (p. ix). Most importantly for Reséndez, author of the superb Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Navarro's plight was emblematic of the "conflicting loyalties and wrenching dilemmas" (p. xiii) faced by thousands of people along the shifting borders between Mexico, the Texas Republic, and the United States—perhaps nowhere more poignantly than in Navarro's beloved San Antonio de Béxar.

There are some surprises for most readers in this book. Reséndez proves through his deft analysis of the complex record of the trial, the sentencing, and the subsequent appeals that the leaders of the Mexican government, most notably President Antonio López de Santa Anna and Minister of War José María Tornel, were determined that the death sentence handed down by Navarro's initial court-martial in Mexico City be carried out. He was saved from the firing squad, not by the grace of the dictator, but by a convoluted military justice system that insisted that the Supreme Military Court's commutation of Navarro's sentence to indefinite incarceration could not be overturned, even as a furious Tornel suspended the judges responsible for this decision.

As illuminating as these newly published documents are, however, the story is incomplete. The key decision from the Supreme Military Court, only small portions of which appear in other parts of the record, is missing from the Beinecke's collection and apparently lost. However, other pieces of the puzzle of Navarro's tortured fate could and should have been included. Reséndez cites, but does not quote directly, a letter from Navarro asking amnesty from Santa Anna. This and other wrenching pleas from the imprisoned Navarro, available in transcripts at the University of Texas at Austin, would have powerfully illustrated Reséndez's point that Navarro was "forced to confront his old national demons" (p. xii) in Mexico—and shown that Navarro came perilously close to denying a freely-chosen Texan nationality.

Another important piece of information referenced by Reséndez (p. 119, n. 20), but not included, is President Mirabeau B. Lamar's instructions to his first designated representatives in Santa Fe: William Dryden, John Rowland, and William Workman. A pertinent issue therein—whether the majority of New Mexico's population would be considered "Indians" under the Texas Constitution—was no trivial matter, as Reséndez acknowledges.

Finally, for a "bilingual" edition, this volume has some odd omissions. Though Reséndez provides Spanish and English versions of his own preface and introduction, only the first sixteen of eighty-two endnotes are translated into Spanish. Nor is there a Spanish translation of Lamar's instructions to Navarro and...