Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas by Jesús F. de la Teja (review)

Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas is primarily a compilation of Jesús F. de la Teja's previously published essays, assembled with an introduction so that the author's specialized works might reach a broader audience. Focused on colonial San Antonio—which de la Teja labels as the "most successful settlement" in colonial Texas—this book is primarily geared toward specialists (p. 36). Historians of San Antonio, Texas, and Spanish colonial history will appreciate having these articles and an extensive bibliographic essay in one volume to assist them with their research. The book may also be useful for a graduate or undergraduate class on southwestern history.

De la Teja has compiled ten of his essays in one book to educate others on the colonial and early-nineteenth-century history of Texas before the arrival of Americans and the incorporation of Texas into the United States. The author sees that the history of Tejanos (people of Mexican descent who were born or settled in Texas during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) has been ignored by both Mexican historians, who view Texas as no longer part of Mexico and therefore not worthy of extensive examination, and U.S. historians, who find anything before the struggle for Texas independence in the 1830s irrelevant to American history. He aims to encourage historians to include more information about Spanish Texas and Tejanos in their textbooks and to address what he refers to as perspectives from "south to north" rather than solely "east to west," as most narratives currently emphasize in Anglo-American colonial history (p. xi). He argues that understanding early Texas and the border region is critical to comprehending the history of the United States and Mexico today.

The essays proceed somewhat chronologically, allowing the reader to acquire some sense of the development of San Antonio and Texas from "the 1710s to the advent of Anglo-American hegemony in the 1830s" (p. 2). De la Teja approaches his subject from a variety of angles, providing rich details on the settlement, environment, military character, demographic change, and even leisurely pursuits in the area, which show continued connections to Spanish and indigenous cultures.

The strongest articles in this book are chapter 3, where de la Teja describes military settlement and settlers' interactions with Apaches and other Native groups in San Antonio de Béxar, and chapter 6, which focuses on marriage and is a rich social history of how the caste or casta system worked in early San Antonio. I can imagine using this latter article to foster a rich discussion that will help students understand the factors that went into determining an individual's casta status and how frequently it could change depending on marriage, socioeconomic status, and the arbitrary decisions of government officials.

The author has added two other sections of interest in this book. In the preface, which has not been previously published, de la Teja reveals the trajectory of his career and discusses how and why he wrote each article. Graduate students might appreciate the author's detailed description of his path, as it sheds light on the importance of learning from and working with other historians to interpret and understand the past. De la Teja also includes the art of nineteenth-century French painter Theodore Gentilz before each chapter and on the book's cover. De la Teja appreciates how respectfully Gentilz depicted nineteenth-century Tejano life and feels it is important to include a visual narrative in the text.

One of the book's flaws is that, at times, it is repetitive. Some of the same background details—and in one case, a long quotation—are provided in multiple chapters. De la Teja's writing style is very clear but at times a bit dry, and the work is very specialized. For example, de la Teja...