I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day about the Alamo, that treasured symbol of Texan independence and the Texan spirit. The 186th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo was celebrated last month.
My friend informed me that the Alamo was not about brave Texans who fought to be free from Mexican domination and sacrificed their lives to this end, brave Texans who should be remembered with reverence and pride. Instead, it was about protecting the interests of rich Southern plantation owners who wanted to bring slavery to Texas.
Apparently, there was such great demand for cotton in Europe that the plantation owners wanted to expand their slave-based cotton farming into Texas so that they could make greater profit for themselves. Mexico needed American settlers in their territory to fight the Native American Comanche tribes who were brutalizing the Mexican population. Mexico was strongly anti-slavery by that time but was also politically unstable and unfocused.
The Texans sacrificed the Alamo as a military diversion so that they could obtain a decisive military victory and ultimately take Texas from Mexico, and then created the romanticized story of the Alamo as a social and political diversion to obscure the true nature and motivation that was behind the battle.
Now, being aware of the liberal, myopically critical, and somewhat anti-American viewpoint of my friend, I did a simple fact-checking web search about the history of the Alamo.
It turns out that my friend was correct. The full story of the Alamo involves slavery, corruption, greed, betrayal – essentially all the sordid elements of the human condition that has played out over and over for thousands of years.
It is likely that many of the Texans who lost their lives at the Alamo did not know that they were fighting and ultimately sacrificing their lives so that the wealthy, privileged Southern aristocracy who made their money from slave labor could expand their businesses into Texas and make more money by continuing their exploitation of slaves. These brave Texans were probably told that theirs was a noble cause in defense of the Texan way of life.
If one has any doubt about the influence of rich plantation owners in the Texan-Mexican saga, consider that Texas eventually became the number one cotton producing state in the U.S. – by far.
There have been other military and economic conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in that were tainted by special interests, most of which have turned out badly for the reputation and security of our country. Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran immediately come to mind.
It is difficult to impossible to retain our noble sense of purpose and moral and ethical balance when decisions are made by our government to satisfy the economic objectives of special interests. This leads to charges that the U.S is hypocritical, corrupt, and cannot be trusted, charges that are not entirely without merit.
However, the answer is not, as my friend appears to believe, to characterize every action taken by our government in a negative, cynical light, basing such characterization upon this country’s history, which admittedly contains many examples of ignorant, racist, bigoted, unjust, exploitive, and manipulative treatment of citizens and non-citizens alike – but this is a history shared by the world.
This refusal to recognize and acknowledge this country’s inherent goodness and generosity is a self-defeating denial of the democratic ideals upon which this country was founded. It also cedes the moral, ethical, and principled high ground to autocratic countries that wish to justify their systemic misdeeds by comparing and equating their acts to our own.
What my friend, and others of a similar mindset need to understand, is that one of the best aspects of this country is that we are free to investigate, discover and publish the truth about our history, and to learn from it.
Rather than turning away from uncomfortable truths as if the events being described never happened or choosing to make uncomfortable truths the basis for condemnation and division, we need to acknowledge that it is better to forgive our collective selves for our past sins and to accept that our history contains acts of darkness that we should take care not to repeat.
Our history needs to be written by both the victors as well as the victims so that our history will be balanced and complete. The actions and motivations of those responsible for past acts of darkness need to be fully understood and brought to light but should not be used to pass judgement or make demands on those alive today who bear a superficial resemblance to those who brought the darkness.
When we remember the Alamo, it should not be limited to just remembering the heroic acts of the Texan defenders. The history of the Alamo is much richer and more nuanced than that, and it requires that the full story be told. The same can be said about many things.