Still not sure how to tell the Alamo story
SAN ANTONIO — “It’s a mess,” Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was telling me on a drizzly weekday afternoon.
It wasn’t the wet streets the Mexican general was referring to as we stood in the door of Davy Crockett’s Cabin, a new gift shop he runs just off the lobby of the historic Menger Hotel. (The masked general standing beside me, wearing on this day jeans and a Crockett T-shirt, was actually San Antonio native Martin Vasquez, a weekend Alamo and San Jacinto battle reenactor who also plays Texians and Tejanos when the other side runs short.)
The mess Vasquez had in mind was the scene before us: canvas construction barricades blocking off the live oak-shaded portion of Alamo Plaza, traffic cones channeling a lane toward the Menger, a torn-up street between the hotel and the Alamo, a red ticket booth that looks glaringly out of place, the controversial Cenotaph towering over the plaza and, of course, the same tawdry tourist attractions facing the iconic chapel that attracts 3 million visitors annually (including a sizable number on a drizzly day).
I was a bit surprised, not having
visited the shrine since before the pandemic. It was partly the gray day, I suppose, but the whole cluttered scene felt tired and small.
Vasquez also was referring to what we couldn’t see: the yearslong bickering about what to do with the Alamo, a cacophony of voices coming from the Texas General Land Office, the city of San Antonio, elected officials and “the self-appointed gatekeepers of Texas history” (to borrow El Paso writer Richard Parker’s words). They seem to be re-enactors themselves, recreating the so-called Second Battle of the Alamo, the turn-ofthe-20th-century feud between two powerful Texas women, Clara Driscoll and Adina Emilia De Zavala, about how the Alamo should be restored and remembered.
“We really don’t know what they’re doing,” Vasquez said, referring to the city and the GLO, “and even when we’re told what they’re doing, it could change.”
A barricaded Alamo Plaza was horrible for business when his shop first opened, he said. Now that one lane can get through, it’s a bit better. “Since March 1, it’s been decent,” he said.
If only George P. Bush, the state land commissioner since 2014, saw similar hopeful signs. As Parker tells the tale in a smart piece in last week’s Politico, Bush envisioned himself the savior of the shrine that his office oversees. Despite his personal political heritage, he did not foresee a Third Battle of the Alamo with an uber-ambitious lieutenant governor who probably envisions dropping the adjectival qualifier in the not-too-distant future. Dan Patrick speaks for the traditionalists who suspect Bush is seeking to de-emphasize the Alamo martyrs’ story in favor of Spaniards, Mexicans and Native Americans.
Shortly after the young land commissioner took office, he proposed a $450 million makeover that would expand the Alamo story beyond the brief but consequential battle. The plaza would be closed to traffic. A 130,000-squarefoot museum would tell the story from the construction in about 1718 of Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) through the Spain’s decades-long efforts to Christianize and “civilize” Native Americans. It would explore the significance of Mexico’s war for independence from Spain and the arrival of American colonists, including slaveholders, who would serve as a military buffer, so to speak, between interior Mexico and the Comanches.
Under the GLO plan, the 60-foot-high Cenotaph, erected in 1936 during the Texas Cenetennial, would be shifted to a less conspicuous site. Also, believe it or not, Ripley’s Haunted Adventure and its tawdry tourist neighbors would disappear.
Bush got into an all-butinevitable fight with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the group that had managed the Alamo for more than a century. He maintained that the Daughters weren’t up to overseeing a historic site and had allowed what was left of the three-centuriesold structure to deteriorate. When he relieved the group of its day-to-day management responsibilities, the Daughters sued. The Land Office settled, allowing the Daughters to keep the archives and paying the organization $200,000 in legal fees, but the management change remained in effect.
Bush also contracted with a Philadelphia-based design firm to come up with a comprehensive plan. To give visitors a better sense of the original boundaries of the compound, the Philly architects proposed erecting a plexiglass wall encompassing the whole plaza.
An out-of-state design firm, no more Daughters – the “self-appointed gatekeepers” already were grumbling when Bush proposed moving the Cenotaph. To the gatekeepers, moving the monument was tantamount to disrespecting the Alamo martyrs, whose names are inscribed beneath graven images of the most prominent. The Texas Historical Commission subsequently ruled that the Cenotaph will stay where it is.
One of the louder gatekeepers posted on Facebook that Bush, whose mother was born in Mexico, was planning to erect a statue of Santa Anna on the plaza. He had no such plan and labeled the claim “flat-out racist.” That retort prompted the lieutenant governor, as loud and combative as a Texian cannoneer, to contend that by calling the man a racist, Bush himself was being racist.
Patrick thus assumed the post of chief Alamo defender. It’s not a bad place to be for an opportunistic would-be governor, even as Bush’s political career seems to be in a holding pattern for the moment. Maybe he’ll run for attorney general, maybe for a third term as land commissioner.
Bush’s hazy political future reminds me of the Alamo itself. With the bicentennial celebration of Texas independence not far off, we’re still not sure how to tell the Alamo story. The plaza, and our plans, may be as cluttered in 2036 as they are today.
Or maybe it was just the weather last week. Jerry Patterson, Bush’s predecessor as land commissioner (and an ardent opponent of his fellow Republican), says I’m being too dour. In an email, he mentioned signs of hope: “the end of the Cenotaph fight, no matter which side you were on;” new personnel with the Alamo Trust and with the city; the newly installed 18-pound cannon replica emplacement that serves as a useful marker for the original southwestern boundary of the Alamo fortress. “I’d also note that much of the progress is unseen research and remediation of the chapel and long barrack,” he wrote.
During his tenure as land commissioner, Patterson was instrumental in persuading British rocker Phil Collins to donate his massive Alamo collection to the state on condition that Texas would either build or find a place to house it. Patterson has been told that construction of an interim museum will begin very soon. That’s another hopeful sign, he notes, since Collins imposed a deadline when he donated his collection.
We’ll see. Genesis fans will recall Collins lyrics that may be Alamo-apt today: “If you hang in long enough, you’ll do it/Just hang in long enough.”