Does this scare you?
Posted on 04/09/2004 5:26:36 AM PDT by harpu
MEXICO CITY - Mexican audiences are bracing for "The Alamo," which depicts this country's most reviled traitor, one of its most humiliating defeats and events that ultimately cost Mexico half its territory.
There is scant comfort in the fact that Mexican forces won the 1836 battle of the Alamo: The movie closes with the Battle of San Jacinto one month later, which Mexico lost - along with Texas. Within a dozen years, Mexico went on to lose most of what later became California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Arizona.
An audience at the Mexico City premiere Wednesday gasped at the final scenes of the Mexican army defeat at the hands of Texans - "in 18 minutes," according to the film.
"It was very much filmed from an American point of view. It didn't have very much good to say about the Mexican side," said Felix Boucham, 63, a Mexico City retiree and history buff. "I frankly expected the audience to boo some scenes."
Nor was it much comfort that part of the movie was in Spanish, with English subtitles, something director John Lee Hancock says he did for the sake of realism.
"This movie will without doubt cause polemics for Mexican audiences," the newspaper Reforma wrote in a review.
Mexican actor Emilio Echevarria - who plays the unappetizing role of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who led Mexican forces at the Alamo but later surrendered Texas - hopes the film will make Mexicans reflect.
"This chapter of history still hurts us very much, but if we don't turn back and try to understand it, we won't understand what's happening today," said Echevarria.
"Part of the weaknesses we see in Mexico at that time are still present," said Echevarria. "We were a weakened and fragmented society back then, and that prevented us from defending ourselves. Unfortunately, I see a lot of the same thing today."
The role of Santa Anna - a wily political schemer and Mexico's equivalent of Benedict Arnold - wasn't easy for a Mexican actor.
"We Mexicans have always condemned him, classified him as a traitor and nothing more," said Echevarria. "But if that was all he was, then how could he have been president of Mexico 11 times?"
On a personal level, "Santa Anna is a very attractive role for an actor," Echevarria said. "He has so many angles." Indeed, after losing Texas, Santa Anna actually sold part of Mexico to the United States - what later came to be known as the Gadsden Purchase - and kept coming back like the undead from exile or retirement until his death in 1876.
At least the current "The Alamo" movie is kinder to Mexico than John Wayne's super patriotic 1960 version, in which "the Mexican point of view wasn't even presented," said Hancock.
Hancock intentionally presented two heroic Mexican figures, one a Mexican army officer and one a rebel Tejano, as the long-standing Hispanic residents of Texas were known. "This is a Mexican movie, Texas was part of Mexico," Hancock said. "A lot of Americans don't know that."
Unfortunately, after Texas won independence, a lot of Tejanos were discriminated against no matter which side they fought on, Hancock noted. In one scene, independence hero Sam Houston warns a Tejano comrade to stay away from the fighting - for fear the Anglo rebels would shoot anyone who looked Mexican.
The biggest question Hancock had to answer is why he didn't end the movie with the fall of the Alamo, but instead went on to depict the rebels' victory at San Jacinto, where Santa Anna was captured and his army wiped out.
"Some people suggested I tacked it on at the end so the good guys could win," Hancock said. "That wasn't it. I wanted it to be the completion ... and most importantly, it is parallel bloodlust."
One thing about the movie rings true with present-day Texas: it is sprinkled with Spanish - something movie studios seem to have fewer problems with today.
"When I came on board," Hancock recalled, "one of the first things I talked to Disney about was, 'If I'm gonna do this, I want Spanish and subtitles. I felt it added to the realism. They had no problem with that."
Still, Mexicans said it could have been more realistic.
"It would have been closer to the truth," Boucham noted, "if they had mentioned in the movie the United States at that time was just seeking to expand, and take as much territory as they could."
They apparently utilize a de-bunked, fraudulent letter's version of Crockett's death and it has a lot of folks very upset.
Because that's how you guys vote --- Mexico has a democratically elected president who never represents the majority.
Do the idiots even know what the word "polemics" means?
They've been "polemicing" for a long, long time now, with many of them advocating open war to reclaim the "stolen" lands.
They are already "polemicing" themselves into American society thru their illegal immigrations and purposeful avoidance of compliance with US law.
They can "polemic" all they want.
The fact remains, this is not Aztlan, it is the United States of America and no amount of "polemicing" by anyone south of our border will result in them getting it back.
There are dark clouds on the horizon and I'm convinced our next major conflict will be to the south. Perhaps not in my lifetime and perhaps not at all, as the invasion is occurring a little at a time, insidious and never-ending.
We'll probably wake up one morning and wonder just how the hell it happened.
..."Sigh"...
I really, really wish Dubya would address the problem just a little more decisively, before it steamrolls us all.
If the United States bought California and the Southwest, why did we fight a war to collect what was supposedly ours? I've got a copy of John S.D. Eisenhower's "So Far From God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-48" here with me. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, we paid $15,000,000 only after the war was won. I wouldn't call that payment a legitimate purchase so much as an ex post facto booby prize.
I address this issue in my book series, The Dragon's Fury Series, but in a little different context. The Red Chinese, in planning for and ultimately opening a multi-front war against us, use the Islamics and the Aztland extremeists (and any others they can) to bleed us and distract us as they do their ruthless business in Asia.
Wow, that's really interesting. A friend of mine who was lucky enough to be at the premier of 'The Alamo' in San Antonio would disagree with you.
Where did you see the movie at?
If you haven't seen it, what did you think of everybody who was pre-judging 'The Passion' and saying that it was something that it wasn't??
The war was fought because the people living in the region wanted freedom from Mexico.
I heard some Germans may have been involved in killing a lot of Jews, and that there may even be some movies out there about it, the audacity of Hollywood!
On a side note, a friend that saw the premiere in San Antonio said that Patrick Wilson (William Travis) led an impromptu singing of 'God Bless America' before the movie started. I'm sure that probably pissed off quite a few people.
I expect the movie to get panned by the critics because those who have seen it have said that it doesn't look kindly upon the Mexican army, and that San Jacinto is very "feel good" and revenge for the Alamo. I'm thinking the lead actor singing 'God Bless America' probably doesn't make them happy either. The liberals are probably thinking "how dare they make a movie about another country killing a bunch of Americans/Texians".
The Texans wanted independence from Mexico, and they won it themselves. The United States did not fight Mexico to free anybody.
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