The other baggage of Confederate symbols: anti-Mexican sentiment
*The vast majority of Latinos have no idea of the struggles of Latino generations past, specifically of Mexican-Americans who fought institutional racism, lynching, and deep seeded hate. This is why Mexican-American studies are needed, not just for Mexican-Americans, but for all U.S. Latinos. In Texas, the Confederacy railed against the Mexican people. VL
By Teresa Van Hoy, Ph.D., San Antonio Express-News
In the debate about the meaning of Confederate symbols, it’s beneficial to hear from those who handcrafted the first ones and gave speeches defining them.
[pullquote]Anti-Mexican sentiment is a little-known part of Texas Confederates’ well-known commitment to the racial supremacy codified in Confederate laws.[/pullquote]For Texas, Miss Sallie Smith’s speech is instructive. On April 20, 1861, this belle was chosen to bestow a Confederate flag — hand-sewn by the fair maidens of Marshall in East Texas — upon the new regiment of Confederates the morning they marched off to war.
Surprisingly, Miss Sallie’s speech targeted “Mexicans” more than Yankees. In her opening salutation to Marshall’s “Citizen Soldiers,” she said:
“We come to greet you this morning as the gallant inheritors of the renown and valor of the Alamo and San Jacinto! The tocsin (sic) of war again echoes o’er our vales; again … slaughtered innocence and outraged humanity invoke your vengeance. The war whoop of the savage and the still more demonic yell of the dastardly Mexican call for retribution.”
Miss Sallie’s opening salvo left the Union untouched. Subsequent paragraphs hailed Texans’ glory over Mexican enemies in the 1830s and 1840s, yet still no mention of the Union. When she finally referred to the Confederates’ avowed enemy, Miss Sallie used euphemisms and milder terms: “fanaticism,” “Northern Bear,” “tyranny.”
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[Photo by Christian/Flickr]
