Michener, James A.

by Texas

  'I beg you, as you work at laying the foundations of historical education in Texas, not to fall prey to The Black Legend. This is a historical aberration promulgated by devout Dutch and English Protestants in the sixteenth century. It is a distortion of history, but it has taken root, I am sorry to say, in many quarters of American historical writing. Its main tenets are clearly defined and easily spotted. Do please try to avoid their errors.'

  'What are they?' Quimper asked, and Navarro gave a concise summary.

  'The Black Legend claims that everything bad which happened in Spanish history was due to the Spanish Catholic church. The phrase seems to have originated from the black cloth worn by Phillip II and his priests. It claims that insidious popes from Rome dominated Spanish civil government. That priests tyrannized Spanish society. That the Inquisition ran rampant through Spanish society. That Catholic domination caused the end of Spanish culture and inhibited Spanish learning. That priestly domination caused the weakening and decline of Spanish power, both at home and in the colonies.'

  In our meetings Ransom Rusk always struggled for clarification of ideas, and now, even though he had a strong bias against Mexicans, he labored to understand the point Navarro was trying to make: 'I was taught in college that Spain was backward because of its religion. Where's the error?'

  For the moment, Dr. Navarro ignored this interruption, for he wished to nail down an important point: 'So long as The Black Legend muddied only theological waters it could be tolerated, but when it began to influence international relations, it became a menace, for then it claimed that Catholicism, under the baleful guidance of its black-robed priests, sought to undermine and destroy Protestant governments as well as Protestant churches.'

  Tve always believed that,' Rusk said, whereupon Navarro looked at him with a forgiving smile: i almost believed it, too, when I was a student at Harvard, because that was all they taught. So you can be forgiven, Mr. Rusk.'

  'Thank you. Now I'd certainly like to hear your whitewash of : the situation.'

  'That is what 1 am noted for in Mexican intellectual circles. Whitewashing The Black Legend.'

  He proceeded with an insightful analysis of the baleful influences of The Black Legend: 'It obstructed serious American study of Spain's influence because it offered such a ready-made explanation for anything that went wrong. Did Spanish power in Europe ■and the New World wane? "See 7 The Black Legend was right!" Did Spain mismanage her colonies in America, much as England mismanaged hers? "The malignant influence of the Catholic church!" Did things go contrary to the way Protestants wanted? "Blame it on The Black Legend "

  Quimper interrupted: 'But Spam did decline. It did fall behind. We all know that.'

  Navarro surprised me by agreeing heartily with what Lorenzo had said: 'Of course Spain declined. So has France declined And certainly England has. But they all declined for the same reasons that the United States will one day decline. The inevitable movement of history, the inescapable consequences of change. Not because either England or Spam was nefarious, or unusually cruel, or blinded by religion.'

  This was too much for Rusk's stalwart Baptist heart: 'But damn it all, your Inquisition did burn people!' to which Navarro replied without even pausing for breath: Let us say about the same number that English Protestants hanged or burned for being witches. And some fanatics argue that your killings were more reprehensible because they came so late, after a social conscience had been formed.' I seemed to remember that the last auto-da-fe in Mexico occurred in 1815, when the great revolutionary leader Father Jose Maria Morelos was condemned by the Inquisition and shot by soldiers. But Navarro's obvious skill at polemics so intimidated me that I remained silent.

  But now he changed tactics, becoming even eager to acknowledge each weakness of Spain or her church, and he even conceded that The Black Legend might have contributed some good in that it had driven Spanish historians to a more careful analysis of their culture in their determination to defend it In the end we respected him for his unrelenting defense of things Spanish.

  'You must never let prejudice blind you to the fact that in the years when Spain first explored and took possession of Texas, it was the foremost empire on earth, excelling even China. It dominated the continent of Europe, much of the Americas, trade and the exchange of ideas. It was majestic in its power and glorious in its

  culture. It controlled far more completely then than either the United States or Russia does today. Its influence permeated what would become the future Texas, and to teach students otherwise would be to turn one's back upon the spiritual history of Texas.'

  }ust as I began to fear that he was trying to make too strong a case for Spanish and Catholic influence, he broke into a wide, conciliator} smile: 'You must remember one fundamental fact about your great state of Texas. If we date its beginning in 1519 with the Pineda exploration, or 1528 with the marooning of Cabeza de Vaca on Galveston Island, it was about two hundred and fifty years before the first Protestant stepped foot on Texas soil. Of course, Mr. Rusk, when the rascal finally appeared his boots made a deep impression.'

  He then turned to one of the most difficult problems: The glory and the power! You simply must believe that when Coronado ventured into what is now the Texas Panhandle in 1540 he was impelled by two forces of precisely equal importance, spiritual desire to spread Christianity and temporal hunger for gold and the power it would bring. I have read a hundred accounts of those stirring days, and I have done everything possible to discount the bombast and the speeches made for public consumption, but in the end I stand convinced that men like Coronado really did believe they were doing God's work when they proposed to subdue heathen lands in northern New Spain. I can cite a score of instances in which the conquistadores placed the rights of the church above those of the state, and they did so because they saw themselves first as God's servants, discharging His commands. Gold and power the conquistadores did not find in Texas, but they did find human hearts into which they could instill the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I have always felt that Texas started as a God-fearing state and that from the first moment it was Christian.'

  In a more subdued tone he proceeded to discuss the matter of Spanish power in Texas, and his analyses were refreshingly sophisticated: 'Texas was so far from Mexico City and so infinitely far from Madrid that power was never transmitted effectively. To tell the truth, when I study those two hundred and fifty years of rather futile Spanish dominance I find myself wondering: Why did not Spain send fifty men like Escandon to settle Texas? They'd have altered the entire picture.'

  'Who was Escandon?' Quimper asked, and Navarro replied: 'Jose de Escandon? The wisest and perhaps the best man Spain ever sent to the Rio Grande. Arrived in 1747. Please teach your children about him.' He broke into a disarming chuckle. 'Mr.

  Rusk, with five hundred like Escandon we might have worked our way clear to the Canadian border. We came this close'—and he pinched two fingers together—'to making you speak Spanish.'

  The scholarly chuckle turned into a laugh. 'But history and the moral will power of commanders determine outcomes. It was destined, perhaps from the start, that Texas would not be adequately settled by the Spaniards. The men like Escandon were never forthcoming. They could not be found . . . they had no one in Madrid pressing their cause. Spain edged up to the immortal challenge, then turned aside.'

  Now our speaker became a true professor: 'I trust that in any published materials for school or college you will, out of respect for your heritage, use proper Spanish spelling. Avoid rude barbarisms like Mexico City. It's La Ciudad de Mexico. It's not the Rio Grande, it's El Rio Bravo del Norte. And because in Mexican Spanish / and x are so often interchangeable, please differentiate between Bexar, the original name for what you now call San Antonio, and Bejar, its later name. Same with Texas, then Tejas. And do keep the accents.'

  Rusk and Quimper looked aghast at this pedantry and I was afraid they were going to protest, but Professor Garza saved the day: 'Of course, in our sch
olarly publications we are meticulous in respecting Spanish usage. I'm especially demanding of my students. But in general writing for our newspapers and schools, custom requires Mexico City, the Rio Grande and Bexar. Up here, most accents have vanished.'

  'Ah! But I notice from your nameplate that you keep Efrain.'

  Garza smiled and said: 'I do that to please my father,' whereupon Navarro asked with an almost childish sweetness: 'Could you not do the same with La Ciudad de Mexico? To honor those of Spanish heritage?' and Garza said: 'Texas honors its Spanish heritage in a thousand ways.'

  Navarro bowed politely, then addressed us as a committee: 'When you draft your recommendations you are not required to alter a single item in the American portion of your history. It is sacred. All national histories are. But in the long run, I am convinced that the Spanish heritage of Texas will manifest itself in powerful ways. It will produce results you and I cannot envisage, perhaps a whole new civilization here along the Rio Grande.'

  Approaching the end of his presentation, he continued: 'Do not, I beg you, teach your children that Spain was a devil. It was merely one more European country trying to do its best. Do not castigate the processes of exploration and settlement available to it as inferior or negative. They were the best that could have happened

  in the middle of the sixteenth century as Spain started her unfortunate decline.'

  Smiling at us in that ingratiating way Spanish-speaking scholars sometimes command, he concluded: 'Some centuries from now, say in 2424, scholars like you and me sitting in Mongolia may argue that in the later years of the twentieth century, North America started its decline. One hopes that those scholars will be generous in their assessment of what you Americans and we Mexicans tried to accomplish.'

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  HEN CHRISTIANITY WAS ABOUT TWELVE HUNDRED

  years old, religious leaders sought a tighter structuring of holy orders, and in 1209 the Italian Francis of Assisi started what became the Franciscans, an order of subtle appeal. It stressed celibacy, poverty, profound devotion and a love of humanity. Its members, like all members of the mendicant orders, were known as friars and they did not live in fixed abodes or monasteries; they traveled endlessly, built missions, performed good deeds, and provided examples of humility.

  The Franciscans found Mexico a dramatic theater for their operations, and if the Indians of that country escaped formal slavery, it was due in great part to the humanitarian efforts of the Franciscans; if the Indians acquired certain limited blessings of Spanish civilization, it was because brave Franciscans established missions on the remote frontier. They were teachers, hospital attendants, farmers and understanding friends, but primarily they were servants of Jesus Christ.

  In 1707 the silver-mining town of Zacatecas, which lay near the center of Mexico, was excited by an announcement that would convert their drowsy rural place into a city of some importance.

  'The Franciscans are finally going to build a college here!' ran the rumors. 'We're to be headquarters for all the north.' 'They've started to dig!'

  And when men wandered from the central plaza out to the edge of town they saw workmen, Indians mostly, patiently cutting through the rocky earth to provide foundations for a building that would be of surprising size. The gray-clad cleric in charge verified the news: 'It's to stand here . . . just as you see it forming. 1

  'How many monks?'

  'Only friars.'

  'But if it's a monastery . . .'

  'It's not a monastery, nor is it a proper university like the one in Mexico City.'

  'What is it?'

  'A teaching center. With some administration on the side.'

  The Zacatecans could not comprehend, so he put down his

  shovel and explained, pointing once more to the north: 'Here we study to prepare ourselves. Up north we do God's work.'

  'Then you won't live here?'

  'Here while we study. Later wherever God sends us.'

  Throughout that first year the many idlers of Zacatecas watched as the Franciscans built the college. More precisely, the friars supervised its building, for the hard work was done either by Indians who were practically slaves or by paid mestizo artisans who had worked on similar structures elsewhere in Mexico.

  Among the mestizos on the site in 1716, when the interior decoration of the college was in progress, was a skilled worker in wood, Simon Garza, who had been born in the mining town of San Luis Potosi, where his father had followed the family's tradition of carting materials to and from the silver mines. Since the Garzas had had five sons but only twenty mules, Simon, the youngest boy, came too late to inherit any animals. Instead, he apprenticed himself to a carpenter, and after a year of supervising Indians who worked in pits sawing planks from felled trees, he became an expert in fitting together these planks so as to make a solid wall with no chinks. Later, the Franciscans were delighted to find him, and he worked diligently at their building, perfecting his trade.

  At age twenty-six Simon was undergoing an experience in this northern town which disturbed and at the same time delighted him. In the past his occupation had kept him on the move and a lack of money had prevented him from paying court to the young women in those towns where he worked, but in Zacatecas he had steady employment, so six nights a week when work was done he found himself in the spacious public square before the cathedral, watching as the young unmarrieds of good family walked about from seven till nine.

  They did not walk aimlessly. The men strolled unhurriedly in a counterclockwise direction, keeping toward the outside of the tree-lined square, and as they went they looked always toward the center of the square, where, inside the large circle they had formed, walked the young women of the town in a clockwise mode. About every ten minutes a young man would meet head-on, almost eye to eye, a particular young woman, twice in each circuit of the plaza, and in this practical, time-honored Spanish manner the unmarrieds conducted their courtships. Over a period of three weeks, any young man could pass his preferred young woman more than a hundred times, during which he could notice with the precision of a scholar the degree to which her smiles had softened.

  The traditions of this paseo, as it was called, were rigorously observed. Girls of the purest white skin paraded, their mothers

  protecting them from the advances of any man of lesser standing; these families were the elite of Zacatecas, the peninsulares, born in Spain itself and dreaming always of a return to that splendid land. Almost as exalted were the criollos, of pure Spanish blood but born in Mexico, and these protected their heritage even more carefully, for they realized that they had little chance of ever getting to Spain; their families occupied positions within Mexican society which did not allow the accumulation of enough funds to permit that. Such criollos lived cut off from Spain, especially when their duties sent them to a distant town like Zacatecas, but they were the inheritors and protectors of Spanish civilization, and they never allowed their neighbors to forget it: 'My child is pure Spanish .. . eleven generations . . . unsullied. We came from Ex-tremadura Province, just like Cortes and Pizzaro . . . same family. If you look closely, you'll see she has the Pizzaro eyes.'

  Entrance to the paseo was restricted, with Indians being forbidden to participate; Spanish and criollo families did not want to run the risk that their children might strike alliances with the aborigines, no matter how beautiful the girls or manly the young fellows. A few mestizo girls were in the parade, but only as servants who walked well behind their white mistresses, serving as a kind of protecting influence should one of the young men prove too bol
d. Mestizo men were absolutely excluded, but well-behaved young fellows of good character like Simon Garza were allowed to stand along the periphery and watch.

  However, as the sun went down on Sunday nights, the mestizos of Zacatecas held their own paseo in a nearby plaza, and here young people of the most exciting character paraded. Girls with jet-black tresses and delicate olive complexions smiled at young men dressed in freshly laundered trousers and white shirts. Flowers abounded, and occasionally some girl wore about her neck a disk of pure silver, smelted from the ore of the Zacatecan mines. This rural paseo was apt to be far more colorful than the one conducted by the Spaniards.

  It might be assumed that Simon Garza, eager for a wife, would participate boldly in this lovely courtship ritual, but he did not. Inordinately shy, he came each Sunday night to this lesser square, watching enviously as young men braver than himself made the rounds and identified the women with whom they might fall in love. Afraid to enter the paseo that he was eligible to join, he spent hours daydreaming about what kind of woman he might ultimately find, and ended by lamenting: I'm growing older and nothing's happening.

  One Thursday evening in 1719 when Garza finished work he wandered back to his cramped room, and when he saw the bare walls he was overcome with loneliness: God! I must do something! Splashing water carelessly over his face to wash away the sawdust, he grabbed a crust of bread and some cheese and almost ran to the main plaza, where the young Spaniards and criollos of good breeding were already forming their circles. Trembling, as if he were about to undertake some dangerous adventure, he edged close to where the marchers would pass, maneuvering so that he could view the oncoming girls directly.

  During the first three circuits of the parade Simon received only vague impressions of the graceful women as they went by him. They seemed like the sailing ships he had seen at Vera Cruz, proud, beautiful, moving forward, then passing slowly out of sight. But on the fourth round he found himself staring into the face of a mestiza walking sedately behind her mistress. She was somewhat older than the others, and her graceful deportment caused him to gasp. She seemed to be about twenty-two or -three, slightly taller than average and with a mature, gracious smile. When she walked, her long skirts appeared to move of themselves, poetically and barely touching the ground. Her shoulders were heavy-set, as if accustomed to hard work, but her most conspicuous characteristic was the manner in which she leaned forward when strolling, as if prepared to meet life head-on, regardless of its threats.