by Juan Batista
Chapter 11:
The Final Breakaways?
Two final efforts to break away from Texas…
In the farthest western reaches of the states, outside of the southwestern panhandle, lived another population that has much more in common with New Mexico than they had ever had with Texas. Its most distinctive characteristic is that it is Latino majority, old time Catholic (meaning socially conservative but politically liberal), compared to slightly further east where the population is mostly white Evangelical Protestant and includes some midsized cities, especially Amarillo and Lubbock.
At the top of the northern panhandle, this territory is two counties wide. Three counties down, it widens to three counties wide starting with Parmer, Castro, and Swisher counties. Two counties further down, the strip narrows slightly because of the presence of mostly white Lubbock, then opens up again to three counties wide. As the state border turns a corner, this strip widens to four counties wide. Finally it narrows again to a single county, Crockett.
The area is almost entirely rural. Most towns, including the county seats, are less than 2,000 people. Often the smallest settlements are fewer than a hundred people, and a typical county may only have a few. The closest thing to a major city is Odessa, with about 130,000. This would become the last state to successfully break away from Rick Perry’s Texas. And ironically, it would include Perry’s own hometown of Paint Creek. Paint Creek has been disgusted with Perry for a long time now.
The new state really was gerrymandering at its finest, including every Mexican-majority county but excluding Anglo-majority areas. It formed a long narrow snake, with a small population of not even 200,000. But this still fit the constitutional requirement for new states of at least 60,000 people. Republicans howled and wanted to see it stopped, but the law was clear. Texas could divide into five states at any time. Since Texas Republicans were so tied to Texan identity, they stubbornly resisted the idea of the state being divided and did not try to put forth their own proposed states. All that was needed was congressional recognition, easily done. Not even the President’s recognition was required, and Obama was happy to stand aside and avoid any flack, while still reaping the benefits of a filibuster proof Senate. House leader Nancy Pelosi saw her chance for the supermajority and, to her credit, took it.
The small town officials hardly even bothered debating their new constitution. Rio Grande’s was used as a model. The name of the state was equally lazy, West Texas. A lone college professor suggested West Tejas, a good Spanglish name. But business leaders, again, worried about alienating outside white businessmen. It mattered little. Most of the locals would call it West Tejas anyway.
The constitution and statehood passed with not so much as a roar as a shrug. Turnout was low, but it was approved by a two to one margin.
Eight Democratic senators had now been added to the US Senate…
In the center of Texas is the German Hill Country. This is a cluster of counties north of San Antonio and west of Austin, stretching in a trapezoidal shape roughly from next to Del Rio up to Concho east next to Austin and then back to north of San Antonio. Germans have made this their home since the 1840s, and also once made it a stronghold of atheists, agnostics, early socialists, communists, the occasional anarchist, and leftists and freethinkers of all stripes. Many of these Germans came as refugees from failed political uprisings in Germany. Better educated and more ideologically driven than most immigrants, some of them even tried experiments in communal living, sharing work and all property and wealth in common.
Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels was one of many German educated nobles influenced by politically radical democratic ideals. With some other German colonist leaders he saw an opportunity to build an independent nation in the German Hill Country, one based in New Braunfels. Prince Carl’s descendant uncovered evidence the immigrants even planned to ship in weapons from Germany. US officials discovered and seized the weapons, and the colonists’ plan for a new nation faded.
Such a country way back in the 1840s would have been amazingly modern, opposed to slavery, favoring equal rights regardless of race, engendering respect for Blacks and Mexicans within its territory, and seeking to always deal with American Indians by treaty, avoiding violence whenever possible. The early German Freethinkers signed the Treaty of Meusebach with the Comanche Nation, pledging friendship and that both groups could travel freely in each other’s territory.
When the Civil War began, most Germans were avidly pro Union, and voted against secession in huge numbers. German-Americans made up one sixth of the Union Army. Germans in the Hill Country suffered massive persecution from the Confederacy, including several mass executions for refusing to be drafted into the Confederate military.
Germans maintained a strong connection to their culture. They began the first preschool kindergartens in America, predating Head Start by over a century. Germans began the first bilingual education, not counting American Indian teachers. While most immigrants lose their mother tongue by entirely by the third generation, most Germans remained bilingual (or even monolingual German speakers) for nearly eighty years.
The First World War and anti-German hysteria changed all that. Germans across the US suffered extreme persecution, harassment, beatings, and even a few lynchings. In Texas, it became illegal to speak the German language in public. Some Germans went into hiding, changed their last names and stopped teaching their children German. In San Antonio, the Kaiser Wilhelm neighborhood changed its named to King William. German language schools across the state were shut down. Prohibition was the final nail in the coffin, shutting down German-American taverns.
Four to five generations of enforced assimilation changed the German population. For some, their German heritage means little but how they spell their last name (assuming the name has not been Anglicized.) For others, it means little but a chance to drink beer and eat pretzels during Oktoberfest, the largest in the worldwide outside Germany. Politically, some German Texans went from being freethinking radicals to, frankly, every bit as redneck as the people who persecuted their grandparents. The German Hill Country was always a Republican stronghold when the GOP was a sometime force for political equality and had a variety of views. As Republican Party turned to the right uniformly starting in the 1960s, many Germans had assimilated the same beliefs.
Yet even so, a minority of German Texans held onto their progressive and even radical views. German atheists and others maintain a monument, Treue der Union (True to the Union) to those massacred by Confederates. German heritage clubs are common. Some German citizens still find the region culturally close enough to migrate to.
It was this faction that proposed the state of Adelsverein, named after the original society set up for the protection of German immigrants. (Tellingly, the name attracted no protests from Anglo racists, unlike possible new state names in Spanish.) The proposed constitution was another variation on the Rio Grande Constitution, except for special provisions for German heritage and language. Activists from the Hill Country counties found it hard going though. Not even a fourth of the residents in the area favored becoming a new state. The plans remained just that, plans.
The US Constitution also forbids new states being made out of existing states. There were some grumblings from Republicans hoping to counterbalance the new, almost certainly Democratic senators, congressmen, and electoral votes to be added. Yet no part of the state saw any serious movement towards splitting off. Ironically, Texan identity made that pretty unlikely.
Rick Perry’s political future looked to be very much in doubt. Most of the country saw him as much like Sarah Palin, a failed governor whose out of control mouth was their downfall.
In Washington DC, the arrival of eight new Democratic senators in the middle of the healthcare debate could not have come at a better time. With a filibuster proof Senate, the public option was guaranteed. Guaranteed also was allowing states to form their own public healthcare programs. All four new states joined Massachusetts
in passing Romneycare-like programs.
Medicare For All could have passed, except for one barrier. The President. Once again, Obama showed his timidity and backed away, not even wanting a vote on it. But in the end that would matter little. Healthcare is one thing government does extremely well, far better than any private system could hope to. That’s exactly why conservatives demonize it, because it proves their ideology false and purely reactionary, with no creative ideas, just hating what the other side does. Private insurance companies would largely die off, as would most private healthcare except that aimed at the wealthy. And good riddance. It’s a system that charges twice as much and provides half as much, and the reason that American life expectancy is so low and child mortality is so high compared to other wealthy nations.
Breakaway state movements gathered steam with progressives in southern Arizona and eastern Tennessee. Conservative activists also pushed for new states in southeast California and eastern Washington state. But without the loophole that the law gave states breaking away from Texas, it was unlikely any of these states could form. Fox News hyped the possibility of a new Confederacy breaking away, and then was badly burned by the overwhelming presence of white supremacists among them. Murdoch suffered heavy losses as advertisers began to flee. But just as in the losses he suffered due to Glen Beck’s race-baiting and conspiracy theories, he did not care.
The four new states suffered a rash of terrorism from the “Republic of Texas” and other militias. One militia plotted an attack on Fort Bliss near El Paso, convinced that the Mexican-American soldiers on the base were Mexican and UN troops in disguise.
Another militia tried to assassinate the Governor of West Texas with an assault by five men on his office, ending in deaths for all of the militia and two police.
Another militia member hijacked a small two engine plane and tried to ram it into the Alamo with the Rio Grande Congress in session. He missed, exploding on the federal building next door. Two postal workers and three FBI agents were killed, and many injured.
The FBI carried out a massive manhunt against the militias. Half a dozen militia members died in separate bloody shootouts with local cops or federal agents. Many militia members fled the five state regions, holding up in hideouts in national parks or other remote areas. A number of militia compounds were raided. Some of the militias proved quite pathetic, giving up easily. Some staged longer holdouts, but none over two weeks. A few committed suicide, blowing their own brains out or taking cyanide. One tried becoming the first American militia suicide bomber, strapping homemade explosives to his chest and running towards FBI agents. The agents shot him dead before he could get close, and he exploded gruesomely but harmlessly.
Homeland Security, its hands once tied thanks to a staged outcry from Fox News over a report on rightwing terrorism, was finally given the means to go after militias. Rightwing racist white terrorists have actually committed far more acts of terror against America than “”Moslem terrorists” (who are actually political and not religious terrorists.) But the media has largely failed to cover that. Too many right wingers would howl if they did.
Terrorism by rightwing white racists goes all the way back to the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. It is far more dangerous than any terrorism from foreign lands because there are powerful American elites who want to see it succeed. Never forget.
But thanks to Rick Perry’s blunders, we have four new states that are models for the rest of America, that have the best that is America, its Mexican population and other mestizo peoples, the open minded and the forward thinking, progressive people who think first about how to make the world better rather than clench their sphincters in fear at the thought of whites being yet another minority in a nation of nothing but minorities. These are people who don’t fear their kids growing up speaking two languages, gays having a family, atheists, Muslims, and pagans not having to hide their beliefs, or real persons having more rights than fictitious persons called corporations. They find other languages, food, faiths, and ways of living exhilarating to learn from, not something to fear. The sight of a turban, fez, yarmulke, veil, mosque, or temple inspires thoughts of beauty in them, not hatred. The sound of Spanish, Arabic, or Hindu are lyrical to them, not a cause for red faced anger.
This future Texas shall have halal chili, just as it already has kosher chili and vegetarian chorizo (Mexican sausage).
Thank you, Rick Perry! In all sincerity, without you putting a whole shoe store in your mouth and then being too stubborn to back down, we couldn’t have done it.