Michael Stravato for The New York Times
In 1857, Mexican-American freight
haulers were hanged on an oak tree
at the courthouse in Goliad, Tex.
Posted on 07/19/2003 4:11:14 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Michael Stravato for The New York Times
In 1857, Mexican-American freight
haulers were hanged on an oak tree
at the courthouse in Goliad, Tex.
GOLIAD, Tex., July 16 — In history books, the killing of more than 300 Texan rebels by Mexican troops here has long been known as the Goliad Massacre. But to many residents of Goliad, with its 18th-century Spanish fort and towering monument to the dead, that brutal episode in its history is still open to interpretation.
At the heart of the dispute, largely between Anglos and Mexican-Americans, is the porous definition of who is a Texan and what is Texas history at a time when Hispanics are growing in number and influence.
Some of Goliad's Mexican-American residents prefer "execution" to "massacre" in describing what happened here in 1836 because of Mexican law at the time, which was explicit in meting out de facto death sentences for foreigners taking up arms against the government.
"For so long in Texas history classes it's been drilled into us that Mexicans were the demons and Anglos the enlightened heroes," said Emilio Vargas III, an assistant principal at the Goliad elementary school and a descendant of Canary Islanders who settled here in the 18th century. "On this point we're no longer going to accept it without a fight."
Such talk has shaken Goliad, where the population of 2,000 is almost equally divided between Hispanics and Anglos, with a small black minority. The dispute has included the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the Presidio de la Bahía, the site of the killings 167 years ago, when American and European settlers were engaged in a war to pry Texas from Mexico.
Responding to letters and protests from parishioners and residents in Goliad, the Diocese of Victoria two years ago stuck with the long-used interpretation of events and refused to describe the killings as an execution. The church has owned the Presidio, a fort that operates as a tourist site and includes a chapel, since 1853.
"I'm aware of the sensitivity of the issue, but it's historically been called a massacre, and we don't feel qualified to change the name," Bishop David Fellhauer said.
The bishop's view might have signaled the end of the dispute, but tempers have continued to flare around Goliad, with many residents refusing to accept the church's position.
Benny Martinez, president of Goliad's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that many Anglos "still hate Mexicans and using `massacre' is a subtle way for them to express it." Mr. Martinez said he ruffled feathers at a meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in April when he said that the 1836 killings should be described as an execution.
Bishop Fellhauer and Newton M. Warzecha, director of the Presidio de la Bahía, consulted historians when a group of residents from the General Zaragoza Society, a Latino rights organization, sought to change the fort's description of events.
Few experts dispute the brutality of the killings: Mexican forces shot hundreds of Texans on river roads near the Presidio, burned their bodies and left the remains to vultures. Documents from the time show that even among high-ranking Mexican officers there was ambivalence over carrying out the orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to kill the Texans, who had surrendered after a battle.
"Those men might have fought to the death if they thought their lives would not have been spared," said Ron Tyler, a history professor at the University of Texas and director of the Texas State Historical Association.
The different views illustrate a rift between old-school historians and a newer group who assert that Hispanics were marginalized — sometimes brutally — after Texas gained independence from Mexico.
"The cliché that victors write the history is too simple for Goliad," said Andres Tijerina, the author of several works on 19th-century Texas. "Would we be surprised today if the U.S. government executed a group of pirates, or terrorists, as they're known in modern language, who were found operating on American soil?"
Mr. Tijerina and other historians who say "massacre" is too clumsy and insensitive a term call attention to the methods Anglos used to suppress Mexican-Americans in Goliad in the decades that followed Texas independence and statehood.
Near the courthouse here is a large oak, called the Hanging Tree. A plaque describes the Cart War of 1857, when Anglos attacked competing Mexican-American ox cart drivers, stole their freight and hanged 70 Mexican-American drivers on the tree.
"There's no mention of that violence when the fort does its re-enactments," said William Zermeno, a retired postal worker who lives a few hundred yards from the Presidio, where hundreds of people gather each March for re-enactments of the 1836 killings.
Many people in Goliad find history hard to ignore. The town was founded in 1749 as a missionary outpost and was later known as La Bahía del Espiritu Santo. In 1829, its leaders changed the name to Goliad, a phonetic anagram of the surname of Miguel Hidalgo, the Roman Catholic priest who is known as the father of Mexican independence. Texans of Anglo and Mexican descent gathered here in 1835 to sign a declaration of independence.
Some people here think it folly to dwell so much on the past.
"No wonder our town is not growing," said Rajesh Bhakta, an immigrant from India and manager of the Antlers Inn on Goliad's outskirts. "Who wants to invest in a place with all this unseemly fighting over long-ago affairs?"
Some friction is unavoidable in a place where it is almost impossible not to cross paths. Mr. Zermeno and his wife, Estella, also an outspoken "execution" proponent, attend the same church as Mr. Warzecha, the administrator of the Presidio and a staunch member of the "massacre" camp. They often avoid one another.
"I don't know if it's bad conscience on their part, if they feel guilty," said Mr. Warzecha, who grew up in the nearby ranching town of Cuero. "My best advice to them would be to just go on to better things."
There are few signs of appeasement from either side on the matter of the past. But divisions are not insurmountable. Anglos and Hispanics mingle freely in Goliad and intermarriage is becoming common. Robert Parvin, a photographer who had an ancestor killed at Goliad, came to the aid of the Zermenos this week after Hurricane Claudette damaged their home.
" `Massacre' is so engraved in people's minds that we don't realize this is not a semantic issue but a moral one," Mr. Parvin said. "When you boil this thing down, it's about power, one group having more than the other. How long is that supposed to last?"
And what is the story of the captioned photo? Seems like a non-sequitir in that they mention nothing about the 1857 incident in the article...
(hisotry professors, please correct me)
It is important to note that settlers in Texas were not foreigners, but had given up citizenship in other countries (a large number from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the United States) and had taken an oath of Mexican citizenship for a grant of land BEFORE Santa Ana (the BRUTAL dictator) took power. Texicans had a somewhat independent government. Santa Ana, however, declared himself "Emperor" and attempted to repeal all Texas land grants and remove a democratic legislature - hence the Texas War of Independence.
A large percentage of those who fought against Santa Ana were Latino.
It was a massacre.
Any bets on why illegal immigration is condoned in Mexico? (nothing to do with economics, everything to do with Mexican nationalism)
My (3x)grandfather was among a small handfull that escaped the executions carried out several days later (the Mexican army were bad shots and had to reload giving some prisioners time to flee and jump into the river)
Below is a first hand account by another escapee as to the terms of surrender:
Gen. Urrea himself rode out in front of his lines accompanied by several of his officers and the soldier with the "white flag."
Col. Fannin and Major Wallace went out to meet them, and the terms of capitulation were finally agreed upon, the most important of which was, that we should be held as prisoners of war until exchanged, or liberated on our parole of honor not to engage in the war again at the option of the Mexican commander in chief.
There were minor articles included in it, such as that our side arms should be retained, etc. When the terms of capitulation had been fully decided upon, Gen. Urrea and his secretary and interpreter came into our lines with Col. Fannin., where it was reduced to writing, and an English translation given to Col. Fannin which was read to our men.
I am thus particular in stating what I know to be the facts in regard to this capitulation, because I have seen it stated that Gen. Santa Anna always asserted there was no capitulation, and that Col. Fannin surrendered at discretion to Gen. Urrea.
This assertion I have no doubt was made to justify as far as possible his order for the cold blooded murder of disarmed prisoners. Gen. Urrea, I believe, never denied the fact of the capitulation, and I have been informed when the order was sent him by Santa Anna to execute the prisoners, he refused to carry it into effect, and turned over the command to a subaltern.
I have always believed myself that Gen. Urrea entered into the capitulation with Col. Fannin in good faith, and that the massacre of the prisoners, which took place some days afterwards, was by the express order of Santa Anna, and against the remonstrances of Gen. Urrea.
If Gen. Urrea had intended to act treacherously, the massacre, in my opinion, would have taken place as soon as we had delivered up our arms, when we were upon an open prairie, surrounded by a large force of cavalry, where it would have been utterly impossible for a single soul to have escaped, and consequently he could then have given to the world his own version of the affair without fear of contradiction. sdct
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CART WAR. The so called "Cart War" erupted in 1857 and had national and international repercussions. The underlying causes of the event, historians believe, were ethnic and racial hostilities of Texans toward Mexican Texans, exacerbated by the ethnocentrism of the Know-Nothing partyqv and the white anger over Mexican sympathy with black slaves.
By the mid-1850s, Mexicans and Tejanos had built a successful business of hauling food and merchandise from the port of Indianola to San Antonio and other towns in the interior of Texas.
Using oxcarts, Mexicans moved freight more rapidly and cheaply than their Anglo competitors. Some Anglos retaliated by destroying the Mexicans' oxcarts, stealing their freight, and reportedly killing and wounding a number of Mexican carters.
An attack on Mexican carters occurred in 1855 near Seguin, but sustained violence did not begin until July 1857. Local authorities made no serious effort to apprehend the criminals, and violence increased so much that some feared that a "campaign of death" against Mexicans was under way. Public opinion in some counties between San Antonio and the coast ran heavily against the carters, who were regarded as an "intolerable nuisance." Some newspapers, however, spoke out against the violence. The Austin Southern Intelligencer and the San Antonio Heraldqqv expressed concern that the "war" would raise prices. The Intelligencer also worried that if attacks on a "weak race" were permitted, the next victims would be the German Texans, and that finally "a war between the poor and the rich" might occur.
Some humanitarians also expressed concern for the Mexicans, notwithstanding "the fact of their being low in the scale of intelligence," as the Nueces Valley Weekly of Corpus Christi stated.
News of the violence in Texas soon reached the Mexican minister in Washington, Manuel Robles y Pezuela, who on October 14 protested the affair to Secretary of State Lewis Cass. Cass urged Texas governor Elisha M. Peaseqv to end the hostilities. In a message to the state legislature of November 30, 1857, Pease declared: "It is now very evident that there is no security for the lives of citizens of Mexican origin engaged in the business of transportation, along the road from San Antonio to the Gulf."
Pease asked for a special appropriation for the militia, and the legislators approved the expenditure with little opposition. Though some citizens of Karnes County, who wanted the "peon Mexican teamsters" out of business, were angry at the arrival of armed escorts for Tejanoqv carters, the "war" subsided in December of 1857.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983). John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (New York: Sadlier, 1883; 2d ed., Austin: Steck, 1935; rpt., Austin: State House, 1986). Sister Paul of the Cross McGrath, Political Nativism in Texas, 1825-1860 (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1930). Reports of the Committee of Investigations, sent in 1873 by the Mexican Government to the Frontier of Texas (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1875). J. Fred Rippy, "Border Troubles along the Rio Grande, 1848-1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 23 (October 1919).
Bottom line is there does not appear to be a clear record of these mass hangings cited in your posted article...
Texans were legal, (and content), Mexican residents, until the "Santa Anna Wind" blew across the land.
Funny thing is, the Spanish and the French came and took the land from the Native Americans, and then the Mexicans took it from them. Mexicans are as much invaders to this continent as anybody. But since we are anglos, we are evil. What crap.
They celebrate 16 September as their independence day from Spanish rule, and Cinco de Mayo (ever heard of that?) is the victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla.
But ohhhhhhh noooooooo. When the Texans kicked their asses at San Jacinto, welll, golly, now we're incensed.
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And don't give me any crap about Mexico including the native indians in their Spanish (European) Culture. Take a look at the Mayan Zapatista uprisings in the Yucatan. Ever been outside of Cancun? It's dirt-poor, and I do mean kids-playing with sticks-and-rocks dirt poor. Does any of the taxes from beer in Cancun go to these poor NATIVE bastards. Hell no. Not one chiclet.
There was a war, they lost, move on. (Or bring it on again.)
And just for the record, two of my precious grandchildren fall into the catagory of Mexican-American (by those who choose to place labels)
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