Posted on 04/11/2004 1:01:18 PM PDT by weegee
Let's state this simply: If it weren't for San Jacinto, The Alamo would not be drawing crowds this weekend.
In fact, nobody would remember the Alamo.
Yet compared to the Alamo, San Jacinto is the Rodney Dangerfield of battlefield sites.
The $100 million epic now at the theaters does conclude by showing Sam Houston's victory over Santa Anna seven weeks after the slaughter in San Antonio.
But the movie doesn't bother to mention the venue.
If Sam Houston and his men had lost at San Jacinto, the Alamo would be a footnote in Mexican history books.
The victory at San Jacinto led directly to the border dispute that spawned the war with Mexico that tripled the size of the United States, making it a secure, bicoastal nation.
Yet the Alamo gets more than four pages in the bible of state history, the Handbook of Texas, and the battle of San Jacinto barely gets one.
What accounts for the disparity? A number of things:
·Santa Anna's decision to take no prisoners was tough on the defenders' mortality, but great for their immortality. The lack of survivors -- at least, white male survivors -- allowed myth-makers to lionize without limits the likes of Crockett, Bowie and Travis.
Sam Houston suffered the fate of generals who go into politics and have to make tough decisions such as opposing secession.
·Myth in its purity is more powerful than nuanced history. The story of men choosing death in service of a greater cause naturally shines longer and brighter than the tale of Houston's cunning in outsmarting Santa Anna and wisdom in keeping his men from executing him.
·Location, location, location. The Alamo thrives as a shrine partly because it is located on a park-like plot within a short stroll of several thousand hotel rooms that line the lovely River Walk.
The San Jacinto Battlefield and Monument are lovely and pastoral, but to get there you have to drive through 12 miles of Mordor, the surreal world of the world's second largest petrochemical complex with plumes of smoke rising all around. As you approach the site through the morning's haze, you're likely to get a whiff of what Houstonians like to call "the smell of money."
·Houston has a long tradition of doing the future better than San Antonio, but the Alamo City is much better at doing the past. With its Fiesta anchored by San Jacinto Day (April 21), it even celebrates that former state holiday more extravagantly than Houston does.
San Jacinto, the historical event and the monument that memorializes it, deserve better.
The monument, built with federal funds during the Depression at the behest of Jesse Jones, is an impressive site. The 600-foot Texas limestone tower rises above the coastal prairie, topped by a stunning star.
But the building at the base has only 3,000 square feet for museum display space, a research library and offices for the museum. That's room to display about 4 percent of the museum's vast collection of artifacts and documents on any given day, says museum Chief Operations Officer Larry Spasic.
Happily, a capital drive is under way for a new museum. Its scope will go far beyond the battle to serve the chartered goal "to preserve and revisualize the history of early Texas."
What's more, it could serve as a badly needed museum of Houston-area history.
But you don't need to wait for the new museum. You can attend a formal commemoration of the battle on April 21 or a scholarly Battle of San Jacinto Symposium April 23 at the Hilton Hotel at the University of Houston.
Or you and your family can join me and mine at the San Jacinto Day Festival and living history battle re-enactment on April 24.
History's not a movie. It's better.
-Eric
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