Native group says to designate Alamo as cemetery

The $450 million project to re-imagine the Alamo and expand its plaza is facing an obstacle that could be harder to overcome than the controversial plans to encircle the shrine in a glass wall or relocate the Cenotaph.

The San Antonio Missions Cemetery Association and the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation have asked the Texas Historical Commission to designate a portion of the Alamo site as a historic Texas cemetery.

The potential impact is unknown. But judging from the way it was summarily dismissed by the Alamo’s CEO, there may be trouble ahead.

Submitted in October, the cemetery request was tabled by the commission last month. It wasn’t rejected outright, however, indicating a willingness to consider evidence the site contains a historic cemetery.

The commission’s staff has been instructed to work with stakeholders “to better define the cemetery.” The commission viewed the dimensions suggested by the Native American group as too large. The staff also will work to define the protocol for handling human remains at the site, said commission spokesman Chris Florance.

The cemetery association also reached out to Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s office. Since then, archaeologist Kay Hindes of the city’s Office of Historic Preservation has been tapped to review archival and archaeological data to determine the cemetery’s boundaries.

What historians, other scholars and Native American groups know is this: Long before it was the site of a famous battle, the Alamo was where the city’s earliest citizens lived, worked, died and were buried. They were the city’s first Catholics and helped forge the city and state’s future.

The Alamo Trust, the nonprofit managing the shrine for the Texas General Land Office, objected to the cemetery designation request. In a short letter, CEO Doug McDonald was curt and emphatic. “A cemetery does not exist on Alamo property,” he said in requesting that “the designation be denied in all respects.”

McDonald referred questions to the GLO, which didn’t respond to questions Monday.

Ramon Vasquez, executive director of Tap Pilam’s nonprofit agency, the American Indians in Texas, prepared the application and has been accompanied before the commission by elder Ray Hernandez, anthropologist Alston Thoms of Texas A&MCollege Station and, in a show of support, by members of the fed erally recognized Mescalero Apache Tribe of New Mexico.

Vasquez presented evidence of a historic cemetery at the site, including copies of a Mission San Antonio de Valero burial book that documents 1,377 burials in the early to mid-1700s. There’s evidence, too, that remains were reinterred there from Valero’s original site, as was Native American custom.

“The burial practices of the Spanish Colonial Missions,” the application says, “were to bury the baptized individuals underneath the floor of the churches and extend outward into the convent and/or plaza areas.”

Vasquez cited newspaper stories in the early to mid-1900s that referred to a 2-acre burial site at the Alamo. A 2015 document from the Catholic Archives of San Antonio refers to “a map of the battle plan of the Mexican army for the March 6, 1836 attack on the Alamo. Plainly marked is the cemetery and the ruined church.”

He referred to the labeling of “burial grounds” on renderings of the Alamo plan as inadequate. “What is on a map, a pin someplace, is arbitrary,” Vasquez said.

The application admits the cemetery’s boundaries have never been identified or recorded by the Texas Historical Commission.

Vasquez speaks plainly about why the long-overdue historic designation is deserved:

“Because it was the first Catholic cemetery in the city of San Antonio. It was here before San Fernando Cathedral and before the Canary Islanders arrived. There’s 10,000 years of archaeological evidence of Native Americans on that site.”

He says the request for cemetery designation isn’t about stopping the Alamo project, but about protecting the site’s cultural assets.

“We see it as a gift to San Antonio and Texas,” he said. “It enhances the story of San Antonio de Valero. It’s also the right thing to do.”

He wonders if the request would be opposed by the Alamo if the cemetery wasn’t filled with Native Americans and the city’s other early citizens, Spaniards, Mexicans and Tejanos.

“If Davy Crockett were buried there,” he said, “wouldn’t you think this would be different?”

The Texas Historical Commission will revisit the proposal this spring.