This is the year that Latinos could reshape Texas
A camino largo, paso corto. The Spanish proverb means: Long journey, short steps.
As if to illustrate perfectly, 2020 will mark the first time in 200 years that Latinos return to their role as the largest population of the Lone Star State, a role they held, transforming the landscape and history itself, from 1720 to 1820.
But this year marks more than reclaiming history. It also brings with it the burdens and powers of the future. In this year’s elections and beyond, Latinos will, with their actions or inactions, determine the fate of the second-most populous state in the American democracy. Latinos will determine the outcome, too, for the world’s 10thlargest economy. Texas will certainly commemorate its independence from Mexico in 2036. But the more urgent years to commemorate are 1720, 1820, the 1920s and 2020. The year is now.
It has been a long road back, one that all too few Texans really know. It began during a world war, far away in the 18th century. Close to home, the sun never set on New Spain, centered in Mexico. The day began in Cuba and ended, tomorrow, in the Philippines, to which the gold-laden galleons sailed from Acapulco en route to the Iberian Peninsula. But in Europe in 1719, war raged: Spain seized Sardinia and Sicily and faced
Great Britain, the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire.
The story takes many turns, but stick with me. The roads to our future were truly shaped by this conflict.
The war of the Quadruple Entente in Europe meant trouble in the Americas. A Spanish force set out from Cuba to invade the Bahamas. The French captured Pensacola, stopping a Spanish invasion of South Carolina. And deep in the woods of East Texas, a small French patrol on a nearly inconsequential errand captured a Spanish mission but, more importantly, triggered a mass panic of Spanish priests and converted Native Americans who fled west.
The viceroy in Mexico City, Baltasar de Zúñiga Guzmán, had to protect his territory — and Madrid’s gold — at any cost. So he tapped a soldier-turned-cattle baron, José de Azlor y Virto de Vera. He had shrewdly married into nobility and spun that into 3 million acres of ranch lands that sprawled across the northern Mexican state of Coahuila.
Better known as the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo, he set off to war in 1720, with 500 troops, an army of civilian settlers and 10,000 horses, cattle and sheep. Yet as winter turned to spring, the Rio Grande grew swollen and angry. Brave soldiers jumped into the river.
Ultimately, the war in Europe ended before Aguayo made contact with the French. But the significance of the Spanish force was not to be found on the battlefield. It was to be found in their colonization of Texas. Before Aguayo’s arrival, there were but one presidio and two missions in all of Texas. As he returned to his ranch, he left behind four presidios and 10 missions. The French never returned.
In her magnificent book, “El Norte,” published last year, historian and journalist Carrie Gibson revealed that American history was not just simplistically the steady march of English colonists westward, but Spaniards north and west to the Carolinas, Texas, California, Oregon and even Alaska.
“Much of the Hispanic history of the United States has been unacknowledged or marginalized,” she wrote. “Given that this past predates the pilgrims by a century, it has been every bit as important in shaping the United States of today.”
Aguayo blazed a mark all across Texas. His trail became a
camino real, a royal road, much of it cut by his huge herd of grazing horses, cows and sheep. Today it is better known as Interstate 35; if you look carefully at its side roads, say in San Marcos, you can see it. Aguayo left his biggest mark, though, on
San Antonio. The beautiful limestone mission, with its walls, gardens and soaring Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo remains a living reminder.
He also left behind a garrison of 170 men. In 1773, San Antonio became the capital of Spanish Texas. It benefited from the garrison’s protection and business and trade routes headed east along the trails Aguayo blazed, according to Jesús F. de la Teja and John Wheat, writing in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, in 1985. They added, “Bexar had enjoyed a prominent role in the political affairs of Texas, as the oldest and largest population center.
Two hundred years ago, the final Spanish census recorded 2,000 people in the capital, with more than 50 percent claiming Spanish descent and 15 percent saying they were Native Americans, including from Mexico. These colonists mixed and mingled freely spreading the mestizo culture.
But this was the last time, for centuries, that Latino people would be a majority. By 1836, they and everyone else in Texas were outnumbered by the immigrant newcomers: Americans. The ensuing two centuries for the people who settled Texas have, of course, seen every twist and turn in that road that Aguayo blazed. Becoming a tiny minority meant being the object of all kinds of oppression, violence and struggle. Minorities rarely start racial violence in American history, yet they are frequently its targets.
War heroes weren’t exempt. El Paso’s Marcelino Serna got shot twice in France during World War I, killing 46 Germans and winning the Distinguished Service Medal as well as the French Croix de Guerre. But he was denied the Medal of Honor because he was Mexican. Sugar Land’s Marcario García won the Medal of Honor for killing Germans during World War II but couldn’t get served at a restaurant in Richmond.
Being born in the U.S. didn’t bring protection either. The 1918 execution of 15 Mexican-American boys and men by the U.S. Army, Texas Rangers and ranchers at Porvenir made that clear. The 1920s presaged trouble to come. In the 1930s, 2 million people were deported for being of Mexican descent and as many as 60 percent, by some estimates, were American citizens. The 2019 El Paso massacre, in which the gunman echoed the words of President Donald Trump, proved the same. This time 22 people were killed.
Yet there have been many moments along the way that have pointed to hope: the steady, stubborn, struggle for civil rights by Latino veterans and activists, such as the G.I. Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The late, legendary Henry Gonzales got called a communist and promptly proceed to punch that guy out. Now we are here, in an era of deep ethnic and racial division, presided over by a president bent on making not just immigrants, but Latinos in general, a second-class population. A dirty word.
But that’s not going to happen, as long as Americans don’t let it, because for now, at least, this is still a democratic republic. In 2020, 13 million Latinos will vastly outnumber Anglos in Texas, by more than 1 million, according to the state demographer. Anglos will number just under 12 million. Everyone else — Latinos, African Americans, Asians and others — will constitute a majority of over 18 million.
This isn’t a zero-sum game. Intermarriage continues. So ours collectively is a culture of adaptation and even absorption, not the old model of assimilation. Young Latinos are generally bilingual or speak mostly English, according to the Nielsen Corporation, and Latinas are finishing high school at higher rates than Anglos. So the greatest thing that Latinos can do at this point, for themselves and their country, is to complete the process by taking the reins of political, social and economic power. That’s a responsibility now, not an entitlement.
In Texas, Latino electoral turnout has often lagged overall turnout. But that means that there are 4 million eligible Latino voters who have never voted, voted rarely or not voted recently, according to Albert Morales, senior political director at the polling and research firm Latino Decisions in Washington, D.C.
Latinos are upset enough to vote now because of the recent waves of discriminatory new rules and laws. In Texas, that has meant Senate Bill 4, the “show-me-your-papers” law allowing police to ask about immigration status.
“They were livid. That triggered anger,” Morales said of recent focus groups. “They’re tired of being pushed around.”
“The way that Texas responds to this new demographic change will come down to whose perspective is centered: who is included in the definition of
‘us,’ ” Michelle García wrote in the journal Guernica last fall. “For its own survival, Texas will have to confront and dismantle a well-entrenched social order. This isn’t simply a matter of policy with racial equity written in. It is an existential reckoning.”
Luckily, there are many Anglos of good will, too, who believe in the rule of law, not of force. Together we can turn the tide on those not of good will — of whom there are plenty. About 40 percent of Republicans in Texas think that the state’s increasing diversity is a cause for concern, according to the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.
Four in 10 Latinos in America have been discriminated against, criticized for speaking Spanish and told to “go back where they came from,” according to the Pew Research Center. When I was teaching college, I had a Latina student who got spit on when Trump was inaugurated. Then she was told to go back to her country. She was from The Woodlands.
Beyond politics and society, this is about economic power, too. Latino and Latina professors are paid, on average, less than their Anglo counterparts at the University of Texas at Austin. Nevertheless, Latinos spend more than $1.3 trillion nationally each year, according to Nielsen, more than the gross domestic product of Australia or Spain.
Texas will predictably have an official commemoration in
2036, the bicentennial of independence from Mexico. But that is the wrong year. The year is now. It was a long road, but now you’re home. Welcome.
Bienvenidos. A camino largo, paso corto.
Parker, author of “Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America,” is a contributing columnist for the Houston Chronicle.