By the way...

The town of Seguin, where we went to that chili cook-off last weekend, was named after a Tejano hero of the Texas rebellion against Mexican rule. If you read his story, you'll get a look at the true complexity of early Texas history.



When we drove into town Friday night, just before sunset, we drove past the central square and I saw this monument. I said "Well, there's Juan", and Denise said "Valdez?" I was like "What? You've never heard of Juan Seguin?" Then I remembered she's a foreigner and all, and we must forgive these little lapses in knowledge... That and the fact that she mispronounces everything. Anyway...



Juan Seguin was a great hero of the Tejano (Latino Texan) rebellion against Spain and then the further rebellion against Mexico that we associate with the Alamo. Most folks don't think too much about the first part of that, but many Tejano families like the Seguins were deeply involved in that struggle against Spanish rule long before Anglo folks started coming into the territory in the 1820s.

Seguin led a band of twenty-five Tejanos who favored the revolt against the dictatorship that Santa Anna had established and fought on the Texan side at the battle of the Alamo. Seguin was saved when he was chosen to carry the message through lines to Sam Houston saying that the Texans "shall never surrender or retreat." Seguin got the message to the other soldiers on the Texan side and then returned to the Alamo but it had already fallen to Santa Anna's army.

He later commanded an infantry company and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto , where Texas Independence was finally won. Seguin was elected to the Texas Senate in 1839 and became mayor of San Antonio in 1841. Thing is, as more Anglos came into the country (then an in dependant republic) and expropriated land from Tejano families. More than a million acres of Tejano land was expropriated by Anglos in the decade after the Alamo. They did this by refusing to recognise old Spanish land grants and killing people if they wouldn't sell. There was a saying then that "If a man wouldn't sell his land, his widow would". Seguin and other Tejano leaders found themselves increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place, increasingly a hated minority in their own nation.

He became a hated figure among Anglos in Texas for his passionate defense of Tejano rights and eventually was forced from office on charges that he was aiding the Mexican army that invaded Texas in 1842. He fled to Mexico to "seek refuge amongst my enemies," where he was arrested and forced to enlist in the Mexican army as an officer. He later served against Texas and the United States in the Mexican-American War.

Seguin periodically returned to Texas after that, being elected to two terms as Justice of the Peace of Bexar County in 1852 and 1854 and as County Judge in Wilson County in 1869. He eventually went back to Mexico and settled in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, where his son Santiago was mayor. He died there on August 27, 1890. His remains were returned to Texas in 1974 and reinterred in his namesake town, Seguin, during ceremonies on July 4, 1976.



When I went to see his grave site there were two Mexican guys sitting under the shade of the trees sipping beer from brown paper bags. It turns out Seguin's grave is just down the hill from a public housing complex, and just up the hill from a huge baseball complex and the Guadalupe river. It's a beautiful site. I couldn't help but feel the irony of the setting. I wonder what he'd think of Texas now, as the Tejano population grows and more and more Anglos scream about immigration? It's funny how things work out.