U.S. ELECTIONS | Guide to the 2008 Election
05 November 2007
Old West, Modern Border Issues Collide in Southwest Texas
Local residents hold tightly to Mexican and American cultural roots
San Antonio -- Southwest Texas is a cultural mosaic sprawled along more than 1,000 kilometers of the U.S.-Mexican border.
From customs and costumes, music and food, art and history, the region’s people share traditions from both countries.
The Texas 23rd congressional district stretches across 136,288 square kilometers and crosses two time zones. It incorporates 20 counties, including Brewster, which alone is bigger than the eastern U.S. state of Connecticut.
The district begins in the east, at San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city. It then stretches westward to the Mexican border, across sparsely populated deserts and mountains, and on to the edge of El Paso, the state’s westernmost city.
Within the district’s boundaries are thousand-hectare ranches worth tens of millions of dollars, and run-down urban shacks that house some of the poorest people in America.
The district leans Democratic, but the Republican Party maintains a strong base in the fast-growing northwestern suburbs of San Antonio, and in several of the rural counties.
Mexican-Americans comprise about two-thirds of the Texas 23rd’s population. Three-quarters of the district’s residents live in cities. Nearly one in five is poor.
AN INDEPENDENT HISTORY
Spanish explorers came to the region in the 1500s. El Paso and San Antonio were among the first significant settlements in the American Southwest. Spanish conquistadores and Catholic priests established forts and missions in both cities.
By the middle of the 1700s, El Paso had about 5,000 residents, and some 2,000 people lived in San Antonio. They included Spaniards, Native Americans and mestizos, those of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry.
In the early 1800s, a movement for independence from Spain began to arise in Mexico and the sentiments spread to Texas. When Mexico won independence in 1821, Texas was its northernmost territory.
In the 1820s, Stephen F. Austin led the first major immigration into Texas of U.S.-born Anglo settlers, many of whom brought their black slaves. From the outset, there were tensions and misunderstandings between the settlers and the Mexican authorities, strife that was aggravated by divisions over race, religion and language.
When Mexico moved to end further Anglo immigration in the early 1830s, it sparked a backlash that led to the Texas Revolution and one of the most legendary battles in American history. In 1836 in San Antonio, at a place called the Alamo, an abandoned Spanish mission was defended by larger-than-life personalities -- former U.S. congressman Davy Crockett, renowned frontiersman James Bowie, Alamo commander Colonel William Barrett Travis – under a siege commanded by Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
After 13 days, Santa Anna’s army overran the Alamo on March 6, 1836, in a 90-minute battle. None of the 189 defenders survived.
Seven weeks later, Santa Anna’s army was routed at the Battle of San Jacinto. The Texan soldiers, under command of General Sam Houston, screamed “Remember the Alamo!” as they launched their surprise attack. Houston later became president of the Republic of Texas, which remained independent until 1845, when it was annexed by the United States.
A diverse group of European immigrants began arriving in Texas in the mid-1800s. Germans, Czechs, Poles and Frenchmen joined the Anglo-Americans. When Texans voted in 1860 to secede from the United States and join the Confederacy, the vote was carried by pro-slavery natives of the American South, but many of the anti-slavery Europeans tried to remain neutral and avoid military service.
After the Confederacy was defeated and the Union restored, the post-war years were hard on Texas, as the state adopted a new social and political order. But the economy slowly recovered, the frontier moved westward and the dusty cattle trails were replaced by steel rails.
As the 19th century drew to a close, San Antonio grew as a military and commercial hub, and rail service to El Paso made the town a trade center. Along the Mexican border, one of the most colorful characters in Texas history, Judge Roy Bean, set up court in the remote town of Langtry.
Known as “The Law West of the Pecos,” Bean issued creative, sometimes notorious, legal rulings for two decades. He once fined a dead man $40 for carrying a concealed weapon. The money, found in the deceased’s pocket, was needed to pay for the burial of the pistol-packing corpse.
Throughout this era, and into the 20th century, Texans of Mexican origin often suffered discrimination and repression by the Anglo-dominated society. But in the years following World War II, returning Mexican-American veterans demanded more civil rights and political power. Their leaders included a San Antonio lawyer, Henry B. Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, the son of Mexican immigrants, was elected to the Texas state senate in 1956. In 1961, Gonzalez won a seat in the U.S. Congress and represented San Antonio there for 36 years.
Today, Hispanics control all the congressional districts along the border.
In 1981, San Antonio elected Henry Cisneros as mayor, the first Hispanic to lead the city in 139 years. Biographers have written that, with Cisneros’ election, “word went out across the land: The Battle of the Alamo was finally over.”
