Denying Genocide: “America's” Mythology of Nation, the Alamo
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Denying Genocide: “America’s” Mythology of Nation, The Alamo, and the Historiography of Denial by Robert Anthony Soza A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Patricia Penn Hilden, Chair Professor Ula Taylor Professor José David Saldívar Professor Paul Thomas Fall 2010 Denying Genocide: “America’s” Mythology of Nation, The Alamo, and the Historiography of Denial © 2010 by Robert Anthony Soza Soza 1 Abstract Denying Genocide: “America’s” Mythology of Nation, The Alamo, and the Historiography of Denial by Robert Anthony Soza Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Patricia Penn Hilden, Chair History, the adage goes, is written by the victors. As a result, history represents the values, ideologies, and most importantly for this dissertation, the remembrances of the victorious. Their remembrances never remain ethereal or disembodied; they become the object lessons about the past for those living in the present. And these object lessons, the lessons of history, become the narratives and locations that transmit a nation’s idealized values and origin stories. It is in this confluence of remembrances, object lessons, values and origin stories that this dissertation examines in the Alamo. The Alamo represents a consummate site of memory for the United States. As a cultural narrative it persists from a mid-nineteenth century battlefield through the present day as a cinematic narrative. The Alamo is one of the historical watershed moments of the Westward expansion. However, the tales of the victors (ironically, in this case, the victors at the Alamo are the Euro- Americans who died in the battle) transmit values, lessons and stories steeped in narratives of denial. They engage in what this dissertation calls the historiography of denial. Simply, the Alamo, according to the victors, represents a shrine dedicated to personal liberty, familial security, economic development, and a furthering of the best values of humanity. The victors, however, fail to acknowledge the consequences of their victory for people of color. The victorious Texans reintroduced chattel slavery, exterminated Native America, and engaged in cultural genocide against the remaining Mexican/Chicana/o population. It is these omissions that mark the Alamo as a location where the historiography of denial permits the United States to remain invested in its own belief system that genocide did not occur at the hands of “America.” The ultimate aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the Alamo represents a location that both borrows from and recreates the consummately “American” historical practice of holocaust denial, a denial that stretches from the United State’s origins to the present-day. Soza i For Francis, Gladys, John, Ramona, and Pilar In memory of those who have yet to be acknowledged in the pages of “history” Soza ii Table of Contents Dedication ............................................................................................................................ i Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. ii Introduction .......................................................................................................................... iii-x Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. xi-xiii Chapter One: The Origins of Denial: “Finding” the Empty Continent .......................................................................................................... 1-25 Chapter Two: Remember the Alamo! Forget White Supremacy! .......................................................................................................... 26-47 Chapter Three: Norming the Historiography of Denial: The Alamo’s Media “Blitz,” Part I .......................................................................................................... 48-63 Chapter Four: Norming the Historiography of Denial: The Alamo’s Media “Blitz,” Part II .......................................................................................................... 64-83 Chapter Five: Norming the Historiography of Denial: The Alamo’s Media “Blitz,” Part III .......................................................................................................... 84-101 Chapter Six: The “Right” Kind of People of Color Shall Inherit the Earth .......................................................................................................... 102-118 Chapter Seven: As American as Apple Pie: Genocide and the Art of Denial .......................................................................................................... 119-139 Chapter Eight: Toward a Strong Messianic Moment: A Historiography of Accountability .......................................................................................................... 140-161 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 162-175 Appendices: One .................................................................................................................. 176-179 Two ................................................................................................................. 180 Three ............................................................................................................... 181-182 Four ................................................................................................................. 183 Five ................................................................................................................. 184-185 Soza iii Introduction “Memory and consciousness are inseparable. But language is the means of memory, or, following Walter Benjamin, it is the medium of memory.” (40) —Ng ũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Something Torn and New : An African Renaissance “If intolerance of unorthodox views continues unabated, American will soon become adept in the art of self-censorship as the citizen’s of the world’s most dictatorial regimes. When Americans are intimidated into keeping dissident views to themselves, our public discourse is constricted, the First Amendment is diminished, and democracy itself is under attack.” (102) —Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent : How Post -September 11 Anti -Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties This dissertation begins with the assumption that the national story exists to maintain both narrative and social order. This order informs the roles of its citizens, and assures the individual that s/he has a place in the on-going production of the nation. And ultimately, the national story provides a framework of meaning that aids people to discern right from wrong, patriotic from rebellious, and productive from disruptive. However, this national story, as will be discussed in detail below, is not an innocent narrative. The order that it instills precludes the realm of “disorder” and in fact, defines the “disorder,” as destructive, or in the case of the United States, “un-American.” The key values of the United States can easily be reduced and recited: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Subsequently, those things that are “un-American” hinder the quest for these three sacred “American” values. Additionally, as individuals living within this society, there is an ongoing educational process that inculcates U.S. citizens in the right-minded nature of “America’s” core values. School text books, television commercials, political speeches, editorial pages of the newspaper, and for the purpose of this dissertation, museums represent platforms upon which the national story and its values are promulgated. “America” exists as a social contract where its citizens possess a series of inalienable rights, and this story is broadcast as “truth.” However, this narrative is also a narrative of power. David Theo Goldberg argues: The social contract tradition, far from being a realist(ic) account, then, is more aptly conceived as the prevailing modern story or narrative form, a gripping and telling myth about state origins, constitution, legitimation, and justification (Taussig 1997: 124-5). It is an account modern political theory in the European tradition has fashioned for itself as a way of coming to terms with – of accounting “magically” for – such social constitution. After all, it was fifty-five men, every one white, who were party to the agreement that fashioned the United States of America, the paradigmatic case of a contractually based state if ever there was one. The constitutional contract was fashioned between thirteen states at the time, the additional thirty-seven added over roughly a century and half through seizure, Soza iv conquest, expansion, wheeling and dealing more often than not to the detriment and exclusion of those who already lived in those spaces that became states. (Racial 38-39) It is the power behind the “magic” that elevates the narrative of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness over the “seizure, conquest, expansion, [and] wheeling and dealing” resulting in the destruction, displacement, and deaths of the peoples, who were almost always people of color, living on the land that would become the United States. The colonial growth and progress of the United States