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Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas

2017; Duke University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3727635

1527-1900

Matthew Babcock,

Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies

In this collection of previously published journal articles and book chapters, historian Jesús F. de la Teja builds on his foundational eighteenth-century study, San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier (1995), by presenting a Tejano perspective on San Antonio and Texas history from Béxar's founding in 1718 to the 1850s. This viewpoint is important, de la Teja argues, because it demonstrates the complexity and transnational dimensions of early Texas history, which form the “personal and ethnic roots” of Texas's Mexican Americans today, who “will soon constitute a plurality of the state's population” (p. 9).De la Teja's ten well-researched essays can be divided into five thematic sections. The first two chapters synthesize the social and environmental history of colonial Texas and San Antonio, respectively. The author clarifies that what distinguishes his current interpretation of Spanish colonial Texas from the one offered in his first book is that he now “connects Béxar more closely to the indigenous past” (p. 4). De la Teja contends that although Texas's small Hispanic population and limited agricultural and ranching economy made it ripe for Anglo-American conquest, Tejanos made important observations about their natural environment and, through the introduction of irrigated agriculture and domesticated livestock, affected it more significantly than some Texas environmental historians have recognized (p. 30). Chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate that San Antonio was first and foremost a military community. De la Teja argues that San Antonio's presidio was originally garrisoned by immigrants and their families from Coahuila and Nuevo León and that their descendants, who intermarried with Canary Islanders, defended the community from Comanche and Wichita raiding parties and created “a sustainable society” through 1800 (p. 76). The third section explores San Antonio's commercial and social relations. Saltillo, de la Teja reveals in the fifth chapter, served as an important market for Béxar merchants in the colonial period and became the principal supplier of the town's presidial garrison by the 1790s. In the next chapter he shows that through marriage and gainful employment all Béxar men and women tried to enhance their status within Spanish colonial society but that some, especially mestizo presidial soldiers, were more successful than others. Chapters 7 and 8, the fourth thematic section, examine recreational activities in San Antonio prior to 1845 and compare daily life among Tejanos and Texans from the 1820s to the 1850s. De la Teja finds that Bexareños enjoyed numerous pastimes requiring physical prowess, including horse racing, boccie, dancing, and gambling, and that although Anglo Texans adopted various aspects of Tejano culture, from tamales to livestock practices, they “increasingly excluded the Tejanos themselves” (p. 155). Finally, in the last two chapters the author presents the struggles for Mexican and Texas independence from a Tejano perspective, maintaining that most Tejanos sought self-preservation over revolution against Spain and separation from Coahuila as an independent Mexican state, according to the Constitution of 1824, rather “than outright secession” (p. 194).Overall, this is an outstanding volume whose strengths vastly outweigh its weaknesses. Combining Spanish archival research and firsthand travelers' accounts with well-chosen artwork from the French artist Theodore Gentilz and secondary sources in Spanish and English, de la Teja succeeds in presenting a south-to-north perspective on Texas's early history and development. Focusing on Béxar's Spanish, Mexican, and missionized indigenous roots, the author reveals the richness and complexity of Tejano culture and their people's resiliency in the face of ongoing challenges before and after 1821. San Antonio and Texas colonial history are not synonymous; however, de la Teja rightly emphasizes that the vast majority of the Hispanic population lived in and around Béxar, which was unquestionably the most significant Hispanic settlement in that far-flung, exposed colonial province. Some readers may wonder why chapter 8, on “early” Texas's Tejano community, was not the concluding chapter or might ask for the author to include more of the political and economic contributions of independent Indians to San Antonio's history, which go beyond their livestock raids. The updated bibliographic essay alone, however, makes this book an essential purchase for scholars and students of early Texas and Mexican history.