Search - Remember the Alamo - American Experience on DVD

Alamo Bias

Ned Huthmacher | Hill Country, Texas | 05/15/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"While the Tejanos certainly played a role in the Texian Revolution, that role is exaggerated in REMEMBER THE ALAMO. Of a garrison of roughly 200 men,9 Tejanos died in the Alamo; but 25 fought at the battle of San Jacinto with Sam Houston's 910 man army. One became vice-President of the Republic.

Mexico itself was in rebellion at the time, with two other provinces taking up arms against Santa Anna's dictarorial rule. The general had destroyed the legal Mexican constitution of 1824 and set up a centralist state. When the Province of Zacatecas rose up in rebellion, Santa Anna brutally crushed the rebels, then allowed his victorious troops two days of rape and pillage that took the lives of over 2000 non-combatants, including women. REMEMBER THE ALAMO does not address this issue, and yet makes a point of painting the Texians as wetbacks that Mexico had a right to expel.

Throughout the revolution, it was the Texians who held the moral high ground. The Texians took prisoners and treated them well. The Mexican army did not; they killed them. The Texians tended to the Mexican wounded with compassion; the Mexican army murdered the sick in their beds, promished the 400 vanquished at Goliad that they would be sent home, then murdered them, as well. REMEMBER THE ALAMO does not address these facts, either. While many accounts of the Texian revolt have certainly been biased in the favor of the Texians, the bias shown in REMEMBER THE ALAMO is shamefully blatant. It presents debatable theories as 'facts'. The manner of Crockett's death, for instance remains unproven; the number of Texians in the Alamo remain unknown.

As a piece of fantasy, REMEMBER THE ALAMO may amuse the serious historian. Unfortunately, the general viewing public, that gets all of its history from TV and the movies, will unwaveringly accept it as the solid truth. And there the danger lies."