Texas Independence Day
March 2, 1836
By Elvis Chupacabra
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When I was a mere lad, Texas Independence Day was celebrated in schools with patriotic songs, readings of the Declaration by schoolkids and grave lectures on our role as Texans by our teachers. Even the Mexican kids participated, because anyone who’d read the hallowed rolls of the Alamo and Goliad dead knew that there were plenty of martyrs with Spanish surnames. We also knew of Lorenzo de Zavala and Juan Seguin, both Texian heroes of the Revolution.
It was understood by the youngest of us that Texas went from being just the mostly empty northern part of the Mexican state of Cohuila-Texas to the independent Republic of Texas with the signing of this document. Like the beloved United States, from whence the spirit -and some would say impetus – of revolution had come, we won our right to be free through the force of arms, wielded by brave and bold men. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the despot which our Texas Forefathers overthrew was ever bit as evil and prone to predations as Britain’s George III. His one saving grace, that he invented that most American of oral fixations, chewing gum, was more than off-set by his cruelty and duplicitous nature. The self-proclaimed Napoleon of the North, he boasted an army well-officered and well-equipped that had spent the past couple of years putting down rebellions in Mexico. It wasn’t just the Texians who longed for the return to a government who respected the liberal Constitution of 1824. (more…)
