Beyond the Alamo

Introducing a new model for the transnational history of the United States, RaAl Ramos places Mexican Americans at the center of the Texas creation story. He focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano, society in a period of political transition beginning with the year of Mexican independence. From the perspective of the Tejanos of San Antonio de BA(c)xar, Anglo-Americans were immigrants and the battle of the Alamo was a war between brothers.Ramos explores the factors that helped shape the ethnic identity of the Tejano population, including cross-cultural contacts between Bexareaos, indigenous groups, and Anglo-Americans, as they negotiated the contingencies and pressures on the frontier of competing empires. Initial peace gave way to violence as tensions between Anglo-American immigrants and the Mexican government made cultural brokerage impossible, leading to Texas's secession from Mexico and subsequent annexation by the United States. Ramos demonstrates that Bexareaos turned to their experience on the frontier to forge a new ethnic identity within dominant American culture. The nineteenth-century story of the Tejano people, who went from political dominance in 1821 to political minority in 1861, is a story of declension, but it is also a story of resurgence in the face of changing conditions and oppressive circumstances.