The Unrecognized Heroes

If somebody were to tell you that there were Mexicans helping the fallen heroes at the Battle of the Alamo you would think that they were crazy right. Well this past weekend I took a trip to the Alamo, and I know that I did when I was told that by Dr. Winders, my class’s tour guide at the Alamo. He informed all of us and said that the ones who helped the men at the Alamo were called Tejanos because they were one of the first people to settle in the land of Texas. On the tour Dr. Winders also gave us a little more insight on all of the things that history had kept out of the books before now. For instance the man by the name of Jose Antonio Navarro was a Tejano that befriended Stephen F. Austin because they both had the same dream of building a republic in the Texas land, and keeping it away from the dictator Santa Anna. Dr. Winders told us that Navarro was even one of the men that signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. After Santa Anna was defeated and things went back to normal at the Alamo many of the new settlers came along with some more Tejanos, but had angry towards them thinking that they were part of the group that had killed the Anglo defenders of the Alamo. “The only Tejano that these new Texans looked up to as a hero was Jose Navarro”, said Dr. Winder. As the years went on the writers of history eventually disregarded any information about the Tejanos that also died alongside the Anglo fighters. For me this information is interesting because who knows what if one of my ancestors were the very first Tejanos that came to Texas.