The Daughters, who are required to prove their lineage to the founders of the Texas Republic, have been fighting a rear-guard action against a city hoping to renovate the area around the Alamo. The building most Americans know is merely the chapel of the old mission. A study committee met earlier this month to start drafting plans, hoping to show more of the original design and to include information about the mission’s history before the battle. The Daughters are reluctantly taking part.
This dispute has P.C. over-tones. Does the shrine commemorate Col. William Travis and Davy Crockett, or does it stand for the long and proud history of the Spanish conquest of the American Southwest? “Most Mexican-Americans see it more as a shrine to racism than as a shrine to liberty”, says Avelardo Valdez, a sociologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
And what about Native Americans? In February the city yielded to an appeal by the Inter-Tribal Council of American Indians and rerouted its annual Fiesta parade away from the street that runs directly past the mission. The reason: the street may pass over the graves of Indian converts to Christianity who were buried around the Alamo during its long history as a Franciscan mission. The street is temporarily closed. “We can’t ignore the history of people who lived here before 1836,” says city councilman and mayoral hopeful Bill Thornton. “We can’t ignore a Catholic cemetery … the names of the people buried there read like a phone book of San Antonio today.” Move over, Davy Crockett.
