The Black Legend’s politically motivated main objective was to disparage and demonize all Spanish enterprise in America. Sadly, it has worked well. Its damaging effects are still felt even today. The following focuses on the two obsessive forces discussed above that feed each other: (l) the recording of mainstream U.S. history only from an Anglo Saxon perspective, and (2) the deliberate and long-time disparaging of Spanish Mexicans (Hispanophobia).
The nearly absolute re-write of Southwestern history in an Anglicized mode has created two related problems. First, it has given Anglo Saxons a false sense of ownership of early U.S. Southwest history. U.S. citizens have been conditioned to think that the English founding fathers “established” all fifty states in the U.S. in the same way that Massachusetts was settled.
That is nothing more than another version of the big lie approach. The theory goes that if you repeat untrue statements long enough, people will start believing them. The ploy has been used very effectively by those who’ve had a free hand in writing U.S. history since 1836.
Friendly Betrayal Essay 4
(Dealing with Long-term Misinformation)
The long-term spinning of misinformation in the writing of Texas and Southwest history has been very successful. For example, most of the U.S. general public believes that if anyone uses Spanish as their language of choice, they must be recent immigrants.
Sadly, the one-sided mainstream telling of history has deprived millions of Spanish Mexican descendants of learning the true story of the key role that their ancestors in New Spain played in the history of the Southwest and U.S. history in general. That is why both my earlier novel, “Nights of Wailing, Days of Pain” and this book are meant to fill in the missing pieces at the bottom of the U.S. history panorama.
For over 150 years, most historians have written history with a flawed assumption. Plainly, they write history as if nothing worthy of historical significance had ever happened in Texas and the Southwest. The U.S. founding fathers weren’t even born when Santa Fe, New Mexico was settled.
San Juan Bautista (The Gateway to Texas), San Antonio, Nacogdoches, La Bahia (Goliad), or the Villas del Norte along the Lower Rio Grande area was already settled before the 1776 U.S. war of independence.
Yet, mainstream history writers in the U.S. have tried to make the Southwest part of New England. For generations, they have attempted to reconstruct the states of California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas as part of the 13 colonies. That is something that the Southwest never was, is not today, and never will be.
More significantly, the Spanish had a key role in the exploration of much of present-day United States. Just because these explorers spoke Spanish and not English should not diminish their integral part they play in U.S. history. Not only that, but some of the descendants of these intrepid souls have lived within the boundaries of the U.S. for over 300 years.
Said another way, the Spanish were the first Europeans to explore the entire east coast from Florida to Maine, including Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay area. They established the first European communities in what is now the Carolinas. They recorded their travels along the Mississippi River, a waterway they named El Rio del Espiritu Santo in 1519.
They established the first European settlements in the region of what are now the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and of course, Florida and Texas. In addition, the Spanish carefully explored the Pacific west coast from Baja California to Alaska; they were the first Europeans to establish the initial European settlement in what is now the state of Washington.
Further details as to the robust discovery, settlement, and territorial management efforts of the Spanish abound. Coronado led an expedition from the Texas Panhandle to the modern state of Kansas. De Soto explored much of the Southeast.
To manage the vast territory, over 60 individuals served as New Spain viceroys before 1821. Thirty Texas governors served between 1691 and 1821. Between 1776 and 1821, eleven military leaders administered Texas as commandants general of the eastern provinces.
Leaders such as Miguel Hidalgo, Morelos, Aldama, Allende, Ortiz de Dominguez, Jiménez, Gutiérrez de Lara, and others wrote about and led the fight for justice, liberty, and independence in New Spain. In other words, Spanish Mexican descendants of the first citizens of the Southwest have their own founding fathers. Spanish-surnamed founding fathers in U.S. history must be given the same respect as that given to Anglo founding fathers.
With all due respect to the founding fathers in the thirteen English colonies east of the Mississippi River, our Spanish founding fathers oversaw the development of New Spain for over 300 years before the arrival of the Anglo immigrants from the U.S. into what is now California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
As a result of a treaty between Spain and the U.S., New Spain’s northern boundary extended to the 42d parallel from the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean. However, that is another of many treaties that the U.S. did not comply with. Suffice it to say, that such exploration and settlement of a major and integral part of what is now the United States is well documented. With all this wealth of information, where is the fair and balanced writing of U.S. history?
Some people in the U.S. may be surprised to learn that in Texas and the Southwest, Spanish has been spoken for nearly 500 years, while English has been spoken for less than 200 years. In a much broader sense, New Spain in the U.S. is over twice as large as New England. Spain is the mother country in the Southwest, not England. There is no Plymouth Rock here.
The often told story goes that the Anglo Saxon immigrants took over land that was unclaimed and unwanted by the Spanish Mexican government in New Spain. That is a preposterous claim! Contrary to that popular opinion, New Spain’s northern territories were not uninhabited lands, free for the taking by encroaching Anglo Saxons from the U.S. That common assumption is as weak an excuse as the reader’s neighbor knocking on the front door to tell them that because the reader’s backyard is vacant; the neighbor is claiming it as their own.
The Spanish Mexican marks are etched onto the land itself -- its people, the Spanish language, and its unique Mexican-based essence. The distinctively recording of history with only an Anglo Saxon slant has engendered wrong beliefs for a long time.
In their way of thinking, the standard by which they measure the history of the Southwest is the terribly ethnocentric Anglo Saxon Manifest Destiny movement to the Pacific Ocean. Try as they may, historians with a built-in pro-Anglo bias are unable to entirely extract the obvious permanent signs. They have a television series mindset where the only thing that matters is the arrival of Anglo Saxons.
Friendly Betrayal Essay 5
(The invisible Spanish Mexican founding traits of Texas)
To be sure, mainstream historians are forced to benignly recognize the presence of our Native American ancestors, because there is no way they can erase their existence in America for over 10,000 years. However, for the most part, over 300 years of Spanish European history is deliberately skipped as if it never happened.
Where is the justice in U.S. history writing? “Friendly Betrayal” seeks to fill in that large void. However, who are these forgotten people? Why is this type of book necessary?
In answer to the first question, Spanish Mexican pioneers are the first citizens of Texas and the U.S. Southwest of European origins and Native American blood. Before we proceed, it is important to address the main difference between Spanish and English immigrants from Europe.
For the most part, English arrivals shunned Native Americans. They did not seek inter-marriage nor achieve a significant co-existence to the degree achieved by Spanish Europeans. On the other hand, Spanish arrivals did freely integrate, inter-marry, and blended in with the Native American population who had lived in America for thousands of years.
After a shaky start, our Spanish and Native American ancestors established the vibrant bro
wn-skinned Spanish Mexican people of the Southwest we have today. Said another way, if one is Mexican, one is Native American; they are one and the same.
As discussed above, if western books and movies typically present Hispanics in the Southwest as irrelevant, they also project Native Americans as savage and uncivilized. That is unfortunate and very unfair. There is something to admire from people who have effectively used their environment to thrive in a harsh land for thousands of years.
That fact doesn’t seem to matter because Native Americans have long been measured using the wrong standard. In other words, Anglo Saxon European standards are used to determine the level of civilization. It is thus noticed that Native Americans survived for thousands of years before the arrival of the usurper Anglo Saxon race from Europe. Resilient Native Americans must not be under-estimated.
Incidentally, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas eloquently wrote about the lack of dignity and respect toward Native Americans. Basing his views on strong evidence collected from so-called uncivilized societies, he proposed that as regards the basic definition of education, the first Americans surpassed many of the respected ancient civilizations of Europe. Equally, this man of great intellect tried to level the playing field in the sixteenth century, but his pleas were ignored. What a difference it would have made if his observations and quest for justice had been heeded.
It is time to dispel another popular myth in U.S. history advanced by the same biased history writers. Contrary to popular opinion pushed by Anglo Saxon writers for many years, there is no such thing as U.S. Native American tribes and Mexican tribes. When it comes to indigenous tribes living in the borderlands, family groups do not stop at the border whether they are Navajos, Apaches, or Spanish Mexican families. They are one and the same people related by blood and extended family.
It is indeed simultaneously humorous and sad to watch and listen to white, Anglo Saxon Protestant Arizona officials who are puzzled. It seems that they just now learned that their Berlin Wall-type of iron fence will unfairly separate indigenous tribes of Native Americans who now live on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border. Astonishingly, surprised state officials only demonstrate their level of lack of knowledge. There is no excuse for their ignorance.
Arizona state officials and many here in the state of Tejas are clueless as to the fact that the borderlands region is an area that was home to many ethnically related groups of human beings who were unfairly separated by the permanent Mason-Dixon Line at the U.S. Mexico border. As mentioned above, hundreds of blood- and linguistically-related tribes roamed a wide area of Northern New Spain that encompassed Texas, present-day Central and Northern Mexico, the Sonora and Chihuahua Deserts, and all of the well-known Southwestern U.S. states whose terrain Mexico lost to the U.S. in 1848.
After spending close to eight hundred years driving the Moors out of Spain, the Spanish landed in Española in 1492. The story is well-known so we don’t have to retell it here. What is important is to understand that within 50 years, large cattle ranches were already operating in Central Mexico. This was the initial laboratory where the ranching and cowboy phenomena were invented. These skills were later carried to Texas and the Southwest where they were used and improved by our Spanish Mexican ancestors. Friendly Betrayal tells the story of these earliest Europeans who came to settle the area now known as Texas and became the first citizens of Texas.
Friendly Betrayal Essay 6
(The Pre-1836 Texas people)
Early Tejano leaders were peninsulares (those who had been born in Spain) or criollos (Spanish people who had been born in Mexico). Their rancho families also included mestizos (those who were both Spanish and Native American), mulattoes (those who were Spanish and Black, and Native American and Black), and indigenous people (Native Americans).
For example, in South Texas, the same Spanish Mexican families settled both sides of the Rio Grande in the mid-1700s. Many of their ranchos and pueblos extended south of the river, beyond the present U.S. Texas-Mexico boundary.
As citizens of New Spain, the first Tejanos swore allegiance to the king of Spain. Answering the call for independence by Father Miguel Hidalgo in 1810, Lt. Colonel Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara achieved independence for Texas in 1813. Unfortunately, this first freedom phase in Texas came to an abrupt end at the Battle of Medina on August 18, 1813. All Tejanos became loyal Mexican citizens when Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821.
As the only native-born Texans, Tejanos were key participants in the Texas War of Independence in 1836. Because none of the Anglos were born in Mexico, the native-born Tejanos are the ones who legitimized the Sam Houston revolt as a “revolution”. They became citizens of the 1836 Republic of Texas. When Texas was admitted to the union in 1845, Tejanos in Texas became U.S. citizens. After the U.S. Mexico War of 1846-48, South Texas became part of Texas.
Sadly, the new political boundary became a permanent Mason-Dixon Line that forever split families in two. Tejano families on Mexico’s side of the Rio Grande remained Mexican citizens. Even today, many families on the borderlands have relatives on both sides of the political boundary.
Early Tejanos belonged to a rare breed of people. They heavily relied on their Roman Catholic faith. Strong of body and mind, they were men and women of principle and discipline.
They settled the northeastern region of Northern Mexico known as Texas, Colorado, Nuevo Mexico, Arizona, California, and parts north. That is why culturally, the Southwest will always be part of “Old” Mexico. Ironically, the Mexican ambience ironically attracted the first non-Hispanic whites from the U.S. to the area in the first place.
In Texas, our intrepid ancestors are popularly known as “Tejanos”. To be a “Tejano” or “Tejana” early in Spanish Mexican history was to have great faith in God and be known as deeply independent and self-sufficient. Used at one time as a somewhat derogatory label, the term soon gained respect as a badge of honor. Beginning in the early1700s, they were the first to make a new start in the wild frontier of Northern Mexico known as Texas. For this key reason, descendants of Southwest Spanish Mexicans should not be confused with other sister Hispanic (Spanish American) groups that immigrated later to the United States.
Tejanos, other Spanish Mexicans, and Native Americans are not immigrants to the U.S. They never immigrated to the United States since they were already here when Texas became a U.S. state in 1845. Then in 1848, the Southwest was subsumed into the U.S. by military force and the entire population of Native Americans and Spanish Mexicans (Mestizos) in the region became U.S. citizens.
Where did Tejanos and Spanish Mexicans in the Southwest come from? They came here from various cities in Mexico, such as Monclova, Saltillo, Monterrey, Queretaro, Zacatecas, and Veracruz. Today, they represent our extended family in Mexico.
Friendly Betrayal Essay 7
(Mainstreaming the Spanish Mexican roots of Texas)
As discussed earlier, why is this book necessary? In short, because the Anglo campaign against anything of a Spanish or Mexican nature in U.S. history has been very successful. Even many descendants of the first Southwest pioneers choose not to discuss their heritage for fear of being taunted and ridiculed for holding on to their culture.
To the present day, being descended from English colonial settlers in New England is admired, while being descended from comparable Spanish colonial settlers in New Spain (Texas and the Southwest) is not. Therein is the problem. It is time to fix it.
Current attacks against Hispanics are not new. Rather, they are based on old prejudices and grudges against Spanish people were already well-established when Anglos immigrated to Texas. Such hatred has its roots in the Black Legend discussed in an earlier essay. Anglo arrivals in the New World merely brought it to America as extra baggage.
Wearing their Mayflower mentality, Anglos saw themselves as landing on the Massachusetts Coast when they first crossed over the Sabine River and into Texas. They were surp
rised that a multitude of vibrant, thriving Spanish Catholic communities already existed here.
Unwilling to assimilate, Anglos began to treat all brown-skinned Spanish Mestizo people as inferior. As regards the level of disdain for Hispanics, a senator with that in-group’s bigoted frame of mind once complained on the U.S. Senate floor in 1848. He grumbled that the U.S. taking over half of its neighbor sovereign nation of Mexico’s territory would have been better if they could rid it of its mongrel race, referring to the already blended Spanish and Native American (Spanish Mexican) population in Mexico.
In the 1850s, Anglos succeeded in herding Native Americans into reservations. However, ridding Spanish Mexicans from the Southwest proved difficult proved to be nearly impossible. Reluctantly, they tried other means, such as using legislation to rob them of their land, ethnic cleansing drives, exclusion in education and social activities, thereby creating a white “Class Apart” that exists to this day.
In this time of hateful rhetoric, racist Tea Party members and Anglos holding racial extremist views like those in Arizona have resurfaced old hatred campaigns against anyone who is not white, Anglo Saxon Protestant. They see the speaking of Spanish in the U.S. as disloyalty and the reference of Mexican and Native American culture as unpatriotic. In short, Hispanics have replaced communists as a target on the Conservatives dart board bull’s eye.
However, Southwest Spanish Mexicans (Mestizos) should not feel singled out in incurring Anglo wrath. Regrettably, ever since they left England, Anglos have a dismal track record when dealing with non-white people they have displaced, murdered, and abused when taking over their lands. When Anglos took over America, they refused to let Native Americans be Native American. They first tried total extermination. When that didn’t work, Anglos then herded Native Americans like cattle into unsafe, unsanitary death camp-like reservations.
Friendly Betrayal Page 18