BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

First of Two Parts

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 30, 2021) — Those old enough to remember the 1950s can identify three icons that became cultural myths: Marilyn, Elvis, and Davy Crockett. What kid didn’t fall under Disney’s spell and want to heroically fight the Mexicans with Fess Parker at the Alamo?

THE PLANET caught the fever. We had some Disney merchandise, including the Topps trading cards and the Marx Alamo play set. Decades later in the mid-2000s, we hosted Parker on radio’s “The Dan Valenti Show.” Parker plugged his vineyard in California, but not before THE PLANET steered him into the Disney Alamo. It ranks in the Top 10, maybe the Top Five, of our nearly 4,000 such broadcasts.

The myth states that St. Davy and his Tennesseans valiantly joined William Travis, Jim Bowie, and their ragtag bunch to fight and die for liberty, American values, and apple pie.

What a Crock(ett).

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The myth eerily anticipates today’s cultural war, the far-left woke vs. the rear-right neocons with reason, facts, and logic occupying the middle. THE PLANET‘s readings and research into history long ago taught us to doubt the myths surrounding the Alamo. A new book, Forget the Alamo, bears out our hunches.

Are you ready the the truth about the Alamo?

The narrative of history too often belongs to the victors. In the Alamo’s case, after nearly slipping away unnoticed and forgotten which should have occurred, the losers rewrote the tale. Actually, as a rhetorical technique, the best we can do with historical narrative is to ferret out as many facts as possible then insert the facts into the timeline. Accurate historical analysis them becomes a connect-the-dots puzzle. The more dots (facts) the truer the picture.

In their exhaustively researched book (2021, Penguin Press), coauthors Byran Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford lay out the facts.

• Spain had controlled Mexico since the days of the Conquistadors, the dudes who brought disease, pillage, and Christianity to the “greasers” (a term describing Mexican laborers who greased wagon wheels). The imperial reign included the vast land of present-day Texas.

• When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, the Mexican Revolution began. For the next 13 years, Mexicans fought and won their War of Independence. The imperial reign collapsed in 1821. Texas was now part of Mexico.
• In the meantime, many Tejanos — Americans mostly from the Deep South — had “invaded” Texas with one purpose, to search for new land to grow cotton. The Deep South had a captive customer in England’s ravenous hunger for cotton.

• The nascent Industrial Revolution capitalized on American Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin (a machine that removed the seeds from cotton 50 times faster than human hands). Good ol’ American greed took over, and cotton growers flooded into Texas to grow their crop in the area’s perfect heat and soil.

• The Tejano’s cotton plantations required also needed slaves. Lots of slaves. Without slavery, present-day Texas would not exist. To secure slavery, the American immigrants declared themselves a sovereign nation.
• However, the Tejano’s moral vacuity ran into a problem. Mexico, which still considered Texas theirs, forbade slavery.
• The Tejanos, Texicans, and Crocketts at the Alamo didn’t die for liberty. They died to protect slavery.

• Before invading Texas, Mexican ruler Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna sought permission of his Congress, writing: “There is a considerable number of slaves in Texas … who have been introduced by their masters under cover of certain questionable contracts, but who according to our laws should be free. Shall we permit these wretches to moan in chains … in a country whose kind laws protect the liberty of man without distinction of caste or color?”

Forget Disney and John Wayne. The facts can now truthfully answer the question: Which side fought at the Alamo for the noble cause of freedom? Yes, the Mexicans.

The authors put it this way: “If Santa Anna’s approach spelled doom for the Anglo colonists … it meant freedom for Texas slaves, still a full 10 percent of the population.”

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The panorama bears striking resemblance to today’s cultural wars, the ones ripping apart the quilt of America.

Our story picks up with Part Two in the next edition of THE PLANET

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“The Alamo’s place in history will probably be that of the most lavish B picture ever made … B for banal” — Newsweek, on John Wayne’s 1960 film.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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