The Alamo, and its overlooked history of slavery, could be declared a world heritage monument
To some, the Alamo, the San Antonio fort where Texans died while fighting off the Mexican army, is a symbol of liberty and Texas pride. To others, it’s a monument to slave-holders and racism. “Remember the Alamo,” the famous saying goes—but how you remember is just as important.
A United Nations committee is expected to announce this weekend whether the Alamo will receive UNESCO World Heritage status, putting it in the same league as Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, and the Statue of Liberty. The decision could also enflame a decades-long debate over what the Texas fort symbolizes. At a time when Confederate flags have sparked controversy around the U.S., some wonder why a fort defended by whites fighting Mexicans for the right to own slaves deserves international recognition.
The Battle of the Alamo was part of the Texas Revolution, in which American settlers in the Mexican state of Texas fought for secession from the increasingly centralized and autocratic Mexican government. In early 1836, a small group of Texas volunteers at the Alamo held off the Mexican army for 13 days before being defeated (and executed). The battle cry “Remember the Alamo!” became a symbol of victory in future battles, when the Texans defeated the Mexican army. Texas became an independent republic, and nine years later, it was annexed as an American state.
In the early 20th century, the Alamo was seen as a symbol of Texas pride and Americans fighting for freedom. The story, and the heroism of frontiersman Davy Crockett, was mythologized in movies and taught to schoolchildren.
The reality is a lot more complicated, says James Crisp, a historian at North Carolina State University who’s written a book about the myths and the reality of the Alamo. “Even though the Texans were fighting against a certain kind of tyranny, they were also fighting for an independent republic where slavery was legal,” Crisp told Fusion.
Some of the men defending the Alamo were slaveholders, and many of them weren’t even Texans: they were Americans paid by New Orleans merchants who saw the potential for big profits if the state seceded.
Although slavery was part of the Texas revolution, it wasn’t one of the main issues revolutionaries were fighting for. Unlike Confederates, who explicitly said they were fighting for slavery (despite the bogus “state’s rights” argument dreamed up years after the end of the Civil War), the Texan revolutionaries were more interested in local autonomy, including the right to bear arms, English being a legal language, trials by jury, and free trade with other countries, Crisp said.
“The early depictions of Texas history was good guys against bad guys, white guys against brown guys, democracy against tyranny,” Crisp said. “Then, there was a counter-story switching good guys and bad guys—the Americans were all racist, taking the Mexicans’ land. Both of those stories are way overly simplistic.”
And the Alamo is more than just a battle of 13 days—it was a Spanish mission for more than 100 years before it became a fort. San Antonio was built around it.