The Lone Star

So Chicano intellectuals greeted Disney's recent bomb The Alamowith scribbled scorn. No surprise there: after all, previous cinematic treatment of the 1836 siege—such as John Wayne's 1960 The Alamoand the 1915 D.W. Griffith-supervised photoplay Martyrs of the Alamo—portrayed Mexicans as little more than brown-skinned lechers and buffoons while transforming the 186 American marauders huddled inside the San Antonio mission into Manifest Destiny martyrs. And the Alamo itself is perhaps the most wrongfully lionized skirmish in American military history, a fundamental myth that legitimized the anti-Mexican sentiment festering within the American psyche to this day.

But most Chicano scholars who have published articles decrying The Alamo are botching a valuable opportunity to make the film's faults relevant to all Americans by obsessing over the same criticism volleyed against Davy Crockett, William Travis and the rest of the slain for decades—that they were evil white men. Typical of the critics is Chicano writer Dagoberto Gilb. In an April 9 commentary piece for the Los Angeles Times, the Austin-based author decries that The Alamo is little more than a $140 million spanking against Mexican-Americans. “For Mexican-Americans, the Alamo, even at its best, is about [white people] not us, about how heroic 'they' are, in the land where we both still live,” Gilb grieved. “The real battle over the Alamo was about Mexico defending its national boundaries against North American insurgents, giddy with Manifest Destiny, who decided to make an illegal grab for land.” Another writer on www.latinola.com was a bit blunter: “The story of the Alamo is not a story of a fight for freedom. It is the story of a fight for slavery.”

True, true and true. But Gilb and his fellow reviewers are choosing the wrong issues to carp over. For one, Alamo director John Lee Hancock actively pushes the Alamo-as-incipient-imperialism interpretation of history: one of the film's first scenes shows Texans scheming to secede from Mexico long before the battle, while a latter shot captures a Mexican character opining, “Santa Anna just wants to rule Mexico. These desgraciados want to rule the world.” And unlike Wayne and Griffith's depictions, Hancock doesn't engage in too much racism—that is, if you overlook that every Mexican woman depicted is either married to a white man or is looking for some gabacho love.

This modern-day Alamodoes a much-fairer re-creation of the past than previous filmic attacks. And that's the problem. In the drive to be as authentic as possible, Hancock ignores the fascinating story of one of his main claims to evenness, that of the Tejano aristocrat Juan Seguín.

Seguín is a tragic character study, a descendent of Texas' original Spanish settlers who joined the Texan cause for independence only to ultimately encounter betrayal by the very republic for which he sacrificed. As portrayed by the sleepy-eyed Spaniard Jordi Mollà, Seguín is a wary-but-willing warrior so accepted by the Texan rebels that he can refer to Jim Bowie by his Spanish name “Santiago” and not fear a lynching. Seguín's hatred of General Santa Anna and alliance with the Yankee rebels bewilder his fellow Hispanics, who argue that Mexico should be his logical ally; Seguín thinks otherwise, telling a friend, “Any enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine.”

Hancock did not distort history in depicting Seguín—he was indeed one of Santa Anna's earliest critics, and the fathers of Texas' independence accepted him as an equal, even awarding Seguín with San Antonio's mayoral seat afterward. Disney executives reputedly asked that The Alamo's producers devote screen time to Seguín in an effort to show Latinos that The Alamowasn't racist, so the film ends with a coda correctly noting that Seguín led the funeral procession for the Alamo dead.

But this conclusion mistakenly leads the casual viewer to believe that Seguín lived his life well after the war. Hancock doesn't mention that Seguín was looking for a new country to live in only six years after the Alamo triumph, driven out by white enemies jealous that a Mexican was their superior. He fled to Mexico, where officials forced Seguín to fight against the Texans or face imprisonment. Seguín tried to return to Texas after the 1848 Mexican-American War only to meet continued harassment. Embittered, he retired to Mexico, where he died in 1890.

Years after his banishment from his homeland, Seguín recounted in his 1858 memoirs, “I embraced the cause of Texas at the report of the first cannon which foretold her liberty; filled an honorable situation in the ranks of the conquerors of San Jacinto, and was a member of the legislative body of the Republic.” But Seguín then lamented that the new Texans made him feel like “a victim to the wickedness of a few men . . . a foreigner in my native land; could I be expected to stoically endure their outrages and insults? . . . I sought for shelter amongst those against whom I fought; I separated from my country, parents, family, relatives and friends, and what was more, from the institutions, on behalf which I had drawn my sword, with an earnest wish to see Texas free and happy.” The man's pain was memorably dramatized in the little-seen 1982 television movie Seguín—but The Alamodoesn't bother with such historical subtleties.

To keep the entire Seguín story out of theaters—and for Chicano critics to not mention this—is a dereliction of historical responsibility. Racist depictions on film will occur forever—but not the opportunity to reveal obscure aspects of the past proving that government betrayal is an American sport beloved by the powerful and as common as unlawful land grabs.

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