Remembering the Alamo

April 6 - April 9, 2013

We're in San Antonio for a couple of days. We're staying in an RV park called Blazing Star which is on the outskirts of town. And the outskirts are WAY out. San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the US and it covers a really big area. When one of the local TV stations gives weather forecasts it has to divide the city into four quadrants with different forecasts for each quadrant! And the traffic is horrible. But we've enjoyed ourselves anyway.

We spent a day touring the Alamo. My eastern-centric American History classes left me weak on Texas history. I'm determined to change that on this trip. Here's what I learned about the Alamo. Texas was a largely undeveloped part of Mexico. Spain, and later an independent Mexico, recruited settlers to come to Texas, luring them with low cost land grants and low taxes. Many people from the US, Ireland, and Mexico took them up on the offer and settled in Texas, intending to become citizens of Mexico.. After gaining their independence from Spain, Mexico had its own internal struggles over whether or not it would become a republic. When self-proclaimed dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna suspended the constitution and the rights of the Texans (Texians), the Texians declared their independence from Mexico, creating the Republic of Texas. 

General Santa Anna was determined to quell this rebellion and brought his army to Texas. He conducted a siege on the Alamo, a former mission that had been taken in an earlier battle by a group of Texian and Tejano volunteers. The siege lasted 13 days before the greatly outnumbered freedom fighters (including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie of hunting knife fame) were all massacred  when Santa Anna's troops stormed the walls and breached the barricaded mission. Having vowed that he would "take no quarter," every Texian and Tejano perished in the fight. But their sacrifice was used as a battle cry, "remember the Alamo," in subsequent battles for Texas independence.

This is about all that is left of the original Alamo, but the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have done a pretty good job of reconstructing the rest of it and presenting its history. It's a bit disconcerting, though, to discover that this monument to liberty is smack in the middle of downtown San Antonio, surrounded by wax museums and other tacky tourist attractions.

 Behind the Alamo is the wonderful San Antonio "Riverwalk." In an effort to prevent flooding from the San Antonio river, a series of canals were constructed through the center of the city. Restaurants, shops, and hotels line the lengthy, below street level waterway. It is lush and lovely.