Starting tomorrow, the silver screens will be afflicted with a Disney mega-production on the Alamo. Presumably, jingoism will be slathered in the tasteful way one can expect from Michael Eisner’s firm. In an apparent bow to political correctness, however, the Tejanos (the original Mexican settlers of Texas) will be shown supporting the rebels (an act they still rue to this day, as they were later driven out of their lands by the Anglo settlers).

The Alamo is an illustration of the starkly diverging memories of Anglo and Hispanic Texans. The Senegalese poet (and later president) Leopold Sédar Senghor’s ironic poem “Nos ancêtres les Gaulois” relates how French colonial schools in his country tried to teach African schoolchildren they were descended from Celtic Gauls, and beyond that the intrinsic absurdity of the colonial project. It seems Texas is not far behind, and I would be interested in knowing how many people cheer for Santa Anna’s army when the movie screens.

In what may be a coincidence, the supposedly respectable academic and media darling Samuel Huntington penned a viciously anti-Hispanic screed that just drips with the smug contempt of the self-described Anglo-Protestant. In his opinion, Mexican immigrants are not assimilating and are a future fifth column that threatens the integrity of the country. Other know-nothing demagogues said much the same thing about earlier waves of German or Irish immigration. I am not sure which regrettable trait of Mexican-Americans Professor Huntington finds most loathsome, the fact they are not Anglo or that they are not Protestants…

For all the brouhaha, one thing is seldom mentioned. According to one of my Texan cousins, the Texas War of Rebellion (1835–1836) was primarily waged to defend slavery, as Santa Anna had just extended, in a dictatorial act of oppression, the Mexican ban on slavery to Texas. One can only conclude the mythology surrounding the Alamo is merely a successful version of what Southern revisionists are trying to achieve, i.e. transmogrifying slavers into noble defenders of freedom.