Forced Re-education Camps
Howdy y'all,
We're having a great time in Texas. We left Houston, the big oil city. We are now in cowboy territory, San Antonio, and the sacred ground of the Alamo.
Every nation has its origin story. Rome has Romulus and Remus, Texas has the Alamo; both are mostly fiction.
We visited Austin, where I lived for three years back when the kids were very young.
Among the stories I heard then is that Texas has the tallest state capitol. When I lived in Rhode Island, I heard that it has the second tallest state capitol. So, about to write a witty comment contrasting the 2nd largest state and the smallest, I checked the Google first. Both "facts" are wrong. Louisiana, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, and Florida all have taller capitols than Texas, although Texas is 14 feet taller than the US Capitol. The Rhode Island Capitol is in 24th place. So much for local legends/misinformation and attempted witty comments.
Texas likes to refer to the "Six Flags over Texas". (The amusement park company is named after this Texan phrase, but no longer displays the Confederate Stars and Bars as of 2017). The six flags are Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, USA, and ... the Confederate States of America. I wondered if that last one still flew at the capitol. Directly on the capitol, no, but the "Stars and Bars" does fly on the State Archives building across the street.
The Seal of the CSA, is still engraved on the Texas Capitol, however only true history buffs would recognize it. I doubt it will ever be removed.
Most folks today probably don't recognize the actual Confederate flag, known as the Stars and Bars. It closely resembles the US flag, with three horizontal red and white stripes, and a blue canton with seven to thirteen white stars. The flag commonly called the "Confederate flag" today was never the official flag of the Confederacy, and was barely known to most Americans during the Civil War, north or south, The Confederate Battle flag or Beauregard flag, was only used by the Army of Northern Virginia, and retired after its defeat.
The Confederate Battle flag, aka the Redneck Swastika, was resurrected by the Klu Klux Klan terrorists around 1900. It is blatantly a flag of racism, hate and ignorance, and is the symbol of the "Lost Cause" .
The story of Texas starts with Spanish Franciscan monks opening forced reëducation camps (aka "missions") to convert the indigenous peoples to useful Spanish citizens who would pray Catholic, learn to work European trades like weaving, brick masonry, and farming, wear Spanish clothes, and contribute to the Royal Treasury. A casual reading of the reëducation camps development generally focuses on the one or two "gentle" Franciscan monks who helped these local indigenous people. San Antonio had five such Spanish reëducation camps, starting in 1718. Four of these camps are now part of the San Antonio Missions National Park; the fifth is better known as the Alamo and is under State of Texas control.
Seldom discussed is these one or two "gentle" Franciscan monks per forced reëducation camp were accompanied by between 50 and 500 armed soldiers, who lived in their own "presidio" or fort. Many of these soldiers "married" local indigenous girls by the monks, which to me sounds similar to the situation of enslaved African women in the Anglo parts of the South. Indigenous objections to these involuntary religious marriages sometimes required activation of the troops to quell dissent.
Must be a fun wedding vibe when a gentle "servant of god" requests "Speak now or forever hold your peace" and armed soldiers are threatening the bride's father and brothers.
These "gentle" monks sometimes suffered from "Imperfect Conversions".
This was the only sign (out of dozens) that had any reference to the forced nature of indigenous incarceration
Sure sounds like escaped inmates being hunted down and recaptured. A National Park Service document discusses that each of the five San Antonio missions having a few hundred indigenous inmates, up to a maximum of 400, similar in size to African forced labor camps for sugar and cotton farther east. Unlike the eastern forced labor camps, record keeping of the indigenous inmates was very poor, so accurate numbers and names of inmates and tribes are not known. The five forced reëducation camps were along the San Antonio river, not unlike the forced labor camps along the Mississippi River.
The "gentle" monks never attempted to learn the indigenous languages and never recorded any linguistic details: all inmates were required to learn Spanish in order to be fed. Essentially no information of the culture, languages or even which tribes survived. Surprise, surprise.
The construction of the Spaniards did not hold up to time. Mission San Jose, known as the "Queen of the Missions", is the largest, most decorated, and most reconstructed. Less than 100 years after it was built (started 1721) it apparently needed significant reconstruction, which was not completed. The Texas War of independence 1835-1837 caused further damage. Tourists, souvenir hunters, and locals needing building materials further damaged it.
A variety of local groups, together with the WPA, did major reconstructions in the 1930s. The signage indicates that much of the reconstruction is not historically accurate, but notes that since the ersatz-reconstruction is now so old (70-80 years) it, too, is "historically important". The Mission is now presented as how the Origin Story would like it have been.
The smallest, least damaged, and least visited forced reëducation camp was Mission Concepcion. The murals below are just about the only remaining art which survived the depredations.
All the Spanish American colonies, except Puerto Rico and Cuba, gained independence by 1830. The San Antonio Missions were "secularized" (sold off by the Spanish Crown) between 1793 (the Alamo) and 1830. The "missions" were not successful, unlike "plantations". The forced labor camps in Anglo America grew more profitable crops (cotton and sugar for export) than the San Antonio forced reëducation camps, which grew corn and wheat mostly for local consumption, not export.
Of course, the highlight of San Antonio, and essential to the Origin Story, is the Alamo. Texas proclaims the valiant heroes would never surrender.
The Alamo forced reëducation camp was in bad repair in the 1800s, but still had a low wall around the 5 acre perimeter. The chapel itself had no roof. The short story is a group of 150-200 Texians tried to surrender (refused), then tried to defend (unsuccessfully) the not-very-strong Alamo from siege, bombardment, and attack from the 1,000-6,000 strong Mexican army of Santa Anna. Santa Anna had already declared that Texians were the same as pirates, immigrants illegally in Mexico attempting to separate the Tejas province from Mexico. Pirates, as was the custom then, were summarily executed. There would be no survivors, and there weren't, except for a few non-combatant women and children.
This wiki article about the battle seems fairly balanced. Most articles put the Alamo defenders on pedestals, and in Texas going to the Alamo is almost considered a mandatory hajj to a sacred shrine. Like most religions, no dissension is allowed.
Happy Trails,
Krem and Barbara.
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