<html>
<body>
<font size=3><br><br>
Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas<br>
Forget the Alamo!<br><br>
By DON SANTINA <br>
April 8, 2004 <br><br>
Yet another film version of the story of the Alamo is about to
descend on<br>
a movie theatre near you. Due to production delays, we have been
watching<br>
trailers and previews for over four months. According to the hoopla,
the<br>
defenders of the Alamo fought for "liberty" and
"freedom" and--as their<br>
noble commander says in a film clip-- to "show the world what
patriots are<br>
made of." A stirring ad run during the Superbowl intoned that, at
the Alamo,<br>
"Ordinary men will become heroes."<br><br>
The perpetuation of this myth of the Alamo is a dishonest
exploitation of<br>
our history. The fact is that the defenders of the Alamo fought for
white<br>
supremacy and slavery. This latest Hollywood edition of the Alamo story
is<br>
not much different than the last half dozen or so Alamo movies, such as
the<br>
1937 Heroes of the Alamo. The most recent Alamo film saga was John
Wayne's<br>
lumbering effort in 1960, complete with a ponderous musical score and a
cast<br>
of thousands. All of these films inevitably fall into a category known
as<br>
White Man Movie Fiction.<br><br>
WMMF, as it is more commonly known, does not allow a non-white
actor in a<br>
movie unless the character is a servant, a comedian, or a criminal.
The<br>
result is that the white man is always the central focus, or hero,
of<br>
whatever action or event is being portrayed, regardless of historical
fact.<br>
The first western movie, the all- white Great Train Robbery of 1903, set
the<br>
tone for this fictional mythology of America's story of the
Frontier.<br><br>
We know that-in the Old West trail drives--at least one out of
every five<br>
cowboys was black. Yet hardly any black characters have been portrayed
in<br>
the thousands of western films made during the past 100 years. Have you
seen<br>
any black guys on horses with Gene Autry, Roy<br>
Rogers, John Wayne, Jimmie Stewart, or Gary Cooper? What about
television<br>
serials like Gunsmoke and Bonanza? Search for black cowboys in
Kevin<br>
Costner's Wyatt Earp and Kurt Russell's Tombstone.<br><br>
You get the drift.<br><br>
The earliest major promulgator of WMMF was the highly esteemed
director<br>
D.W. Griffith, who was a Southerner. Griffith--like Hitler favorite
Leni<br>
Rienfenstahl--is excused for his blatant and pervading racism by
film<br>
savants because of his technical innovations and artistic contributions
to<br>
the film industry. <br><br>
No one wants to be reminded that Griffith's epic 1915 film The
Birth of a<br>
Nation, which was based on a fictional and inflammatory retelling of
the<br>
Reconstruction period, contributed to the massive rebirth of the Ku
Klux<br>
Klan in the 1920's. We also want to forget that lynchings increased
and<br>
pogroms were carried out against black people throughout the South
whenever<br>
Griffith's movie was shown. The white supremacist massacres of black
people<br>
in Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma have been directly linked to
local<br>
screenings of Griffith's movie.<br><br>
D.W. Griffith also made one of the first-if not the
first-fictional movies<br>
of the Alamo story, The Martyrs of the Alamo. The through line for
Griffith<br>
here is the White Man As Hero; Non-White Man As Bad Guy. If White Man
Dies,<br>
He Dies For a Good Cause; If Non-White Man Dies, Good Riddance.
Native<br>
Americans and Mexicans routinely fell into the Good Riddance<br>
classifications. <br><br>
Another early Western film maker, William S. Hart, continued
this<br>
tradition in his movies. One of the most notorious subtitles in
Hart's<br>
silent movie Hell's Hinges describes the villain as "mingling the
oily<br>
craftiness of a Mexican with the deadly treachery of a attler, no man's
open<br>
enemy and no man's friend." Phew!<br><br>
So what was the Alamo standoff really about?<br>
Well, for starters, let's take a look at one of the most
legendary<br>
defenders of the Alamo, Jim Bowie.<br><br>
Jim Bowie is widely celebrated in film (both Alan Ladd and Richard
Widmark<br>
portrayed him) and television (a two year run in the '50's) as a daring
and<br>
resourceful adventurer famed for the development and usage of a
long-bladed<br>
knife which became known as the "Bowie knife."<br><br>
The facts are that Bowie was much more than a back alley knife
fighter.<br>
Shortly after the War of 1812, he and his brother Rezin went into
business<br>
as slave traders with the pirate Jean Lafitte. In the 1820's they used
their<br>
profits from the slave trade to become land speculators and
eventually<br>
established a sugar plantation with slave labor in Louisiana. Ten
years<br>
later they sold that business, and the 82 slaves who worked on it,
for<br>
$90,000. <br><br>
Bowie took his share of the profits and went to "Texas"
to join Stephen F.<br>
Austin's group of Anglo colonists. He then became involved in a scheme
to<br>
fraudulently acquire land grants from the Mexican government and
ultimately<br>
garnered thousands of acres of land. As the crisis loomed between
the<br>
Anglo colony and the Mexican government, Bowie found himself on the side
of<br>
William Travis' "War Party," a group that brooked no
conciliation with the<br>
Mexican government and was dedicated to the creation of a "Republic
of<br>
Texas." <br><br>
The "Republic of Texas" was a natural outgrowth of the
Austin colony which<br>
brought slavery onto Mexican soil in 1821. In 1825, twenty five per cent
of<br>
the people in Austin's colony were slaves and by 1836 there were
5,000<br>
slaves. James S. Mayfield, a later Secretary of State for the Republic
of<br>
Texas, stated that "the true policy and prosperity of this country
(Texas)<br>
depend on the maintenance" of slavery. Like all Southern plantation
owners,<br>
these Anglo-Texans had a plan for their own prosperity based on the
free<br>
labor of slaves. <br><br>
However, the problem for the slave-owning crowd was that the
fledgling<br>
national government in Mexico City threatened to restrict or abolish
slavery<br>
on Mexican land. <br><br>
So the Texas colonists organized a convention in March, 1836 to
establish<br>
the issues for which they would do battle with the Mexican government. In
a<br>
two-week period they adopted a declaration of independence from
Mexico,<br>
declared a republic, and produced a constitution for that
republic. All of<br>
this activity occurred during the siege of the Alamo.<br><br>
The Alamo defenders fought and died for the constitution of the
Republic<br>
of Texas which declared in Sections 6, 9 and 10:<br><br>
"All free white persons who emigrate to the<br>
republic...shall be entitled to all the privileges of
citizenship.'<br><br>
"All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to
their<br>
emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in
the<br>
like state of servitude... Congress (of Texas) shall pass no laws
to<br>
prohibit emigrants from the United State of America from bringing
their<br>
slaves into the Republic with them...nor shall Congress have the power
to<br>
emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his
or<br>
her slave or slaves...no free person of African descent either in whole
or<br>
in part shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic without
the<br>
consent of Congress."<br><br>
"All persons, (African, the descendants of Africans and
Indians excepted,)<br>
who were residing in Texas on the day of the Declaration of
Independence<br>
shall be <br>
considered citizens of the Republic and ntitled to all the
privileges of<br>
such." <br><br>
Contrary to popular mythology and the spurious history of White
Man Movie<br>
Fiction, the story of the Alamo is not a story of a fight for freedom. It
is<br>
the story of a fight for slavery. It is important for us to look honestly
at<br>
our cultural and historical mythologies so that we can learn from them.
By<br>
perpetuating the old myths, we create a stagnant and dangerous
platform<br>
which prevents our cultural and artistic growth as a society.<br><br>
Forget the Alamo as it's portrayed in this movie, but never forget
what<br>
really happened. <br><br>
<br>
Don Santina is a film historian who is the author of the Academy
of Motion<br>
Picture Archive's monograph "The History of the Cisco Kid in
Film."<br><br>
<br>
<a href="http://counterpunch.org/santina04092004.html" eudora="autourl">http://counterpunch.org/santina04092004.html</a><br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>