Edward Rothstein: Remembering the Alamo Is Easier When You Know Its Many-Sided History
With apologies to all Texians — as they were once called — before visiting San Antonio, I really didn’t remember the Alamo. I retained a vague impression from youth in which heroism, independence and Davy Crockett were major elements, and Mexicans were the bad guys, but that was about it. It was like a childhood fairy tale, barely recalled.
That’s fine for myths: they are not really meant to survive with photographic realism. That is one way they have such a broad effect on the mind and culture, creating impressions, molding perceptions, shaping expectations. That’s also why every demythologizing movement has an element of aggressive triumph over myth’s power, as if a mesmeric trance were being overturned.
But when it comes to the Alamo — particularly here in this Texas city where this old Spanish mission turned fort attracts nearly three million visitors a year — the history and its mythical meanings have been wrestled over almost as much as the blood-soaked terrain was in preceding centuries. “Remember the Alamo!” was the old battle cry; in recent decades the fight was over just what was being remembered.
Even now, the Alamo is often looked at by local Latinos as a relic of Anglo imperialism, with Mexico losing Texas in a land grab. For its advocates, though, the Alamo reflects a stubborn Texan drive for independence won from Mexico in 1836, just as that nation was losing its way in the mire of coups and tyranny. In this view, the Alamo is a tragic counterpart to Lexington and Concord, leading to the Republic of Texas — and ultimately bringing the entire Southwest into the orbit of the United States.
This also puts the Alamo at the center of a larger drama in which American history itself is the contested arena, a drama now shaping how American museums present the past. Dare we celebrate our past if it turns out, when seen in the harsh light of American middle age, that it was not as golden as we once imagined? (Jamestown, Va., in commemorating its forthcoming 400th anniversary, apparently thinks not.) But dare we mourn our past if it turns out that things were not as bad as they were elsewhere and held the promise of something far better? The Alamo’s current incarnation — its central exhibition was mounted by its curator, Richard Bruce Winders, in 2005 — may provide some perspective on the opposing traps of sanitized idealism and cynical self-disgust....
Read entire article at NYT
That’s fine for myths: they are not really meant to survive with photographic realism. That is one way they have such a broad effect on the mind and culture, creating impressions, molding perceptions, shaping expectations. That’s also why every demythologizing movement has an element of aggressive triumph over myth’s power, as if a mesmeric trance were being overturned.
But when it comes to the Alamo — particularly here in this Texas city where this old Spanish mission turned fort attracts nearly three million visitors a year — the history and its mythical meanings have been wrestled over almost as much as the blood-soaked terrain was in preceding centuries. “Remember the Alamo!” was the old battle cry; in recent decades the fight was over just what was being remembered.
Even now, the Alamo is often looked at by local Latinos as a relic of Anglo imperialism, with Mexico losing Texas in a land grab. For its advocates, though, the Alamo reflects a stubborn Texan drive for independence won from Mexico in 1836, just as that nation was losing its way in the mire of coups and tyranny. In this view, the Alamo is a tragic counterpart to Lexington and Concord, leading to the Republic of Texas — and ultimately bringing the entire Southwest into the orbit of the United States.
This also puts the Alamo at the center of a larger drama in which American history itself is the contested arena, a drama now shaping how American museums present the past. Dare we celebrate our past if it turns out, when seen in the harsh light of American middle age, that it was not as golden as we once imagined? (Jamestown, Va., in commemorating its forthcoming 400th anniversary, apparently thinks not.) But dare we mourn our past if it turns out that things were not as bad as they were elsewhere and held the promise of something far better? The Alamo’s current incarnation — its central exhibition was mounted by its curator, Richard Bruce Winders, in 2005 — may provide some perspective on the opposing traps of sanitized idealism and cynical self-disgust....