The Alamo has long been a shrine. The new Alamo Museum must tell a more complete story. Will it?
Texas taxpayers and private donors are spending $550 million on a construction project in downtown San Antonio that, when completed, will refurbish and expand the city’s most popular tourist site and include a new facility to be called the Alamo Visitor Center and Museum.
For generations, many politicians as well as everyday Texans have called the Alamo the “Shrine of Texas Liberty” because it was the site of a 13-day siege that ended in a much shorter battle during Texas’ war for independence from Mexico in 1836. All the Alamo defenders, about 200 men, died at the hands of a much larger Mexican army and have been considered heroes by millions of Texans ever since.
But the Alamo was more than a battle site. In 1718, many years before Americans started settling Texas, it was established by the Spanish as Mission San Antonio de Valero with the goal of converting the indigenous people of the area to Catholicism and teaching them Spanish ways and customs. It remained a mission until 1793, when the Catholic Church gave up control. For a while after that, it was a Spanish fort.
There is a difference between a shrine and a museum. Historical museums are supposed to be based on facts – the good, the bad and the ugly. Shrines can share facts, but they also promote legends and thrive on hero worship and similar emotions.
Some shrines are religious. Others aren’t. For many years, the Alamo has been a memorial shrine, with a religious-like devotion from many Texans, including many of Texas’ elected leaders. It commemorates an event and people – the Texan defenders, whose exploits have become legendary, maybe even mythical.
Many adult Texans grew up believing every Alamo defender died fighting, fed by popular beliefs and movie or TV portrayals of Davy Crockett swinging his rifle like a club after running out of ammunition. But based on written accounts left by Mexican soldiers, some historians have concluded that some defenders, including Crockett, surrendered and were executed.
Does their surrender diminish their role in Texas history? No, and the new Alamo Museum must differentiate between facts and legends. Some historians believe the preservation of slavery was a factor in the Texans’ revolt from Mexico and believe the new Alamo Museum also must include that story, even though it is decidedly less than heroic and doesn’t reflect the ideals of freedom and liberty historically associated in the public mind with the Alamo itself.
And to be a real museum – as opposed to a shrine – the museum must tell the true story of the indigenous people who were served and/or exploited at the Alamo when it was still a Spanish mission. Their living conditions were harsh, their work was arduous, punishment for disobedience was severe and mortality rates were high. That period lasted 75 years. The outcome of the Texas Revolution put Texas on the road to statehood, but the Alamo siege lasted 13 days and the battle, which the rebels lost, less than two hours.
At present, the state General Land Office is custodian of the Alamo site, but it is operated by a nonprofit, the Alamo Trust, through a contract. An agreement between the Land Office, the Alamo Trust and the city of San Antonio calls for the new Alamo project to include Indigenous, Mexican, Tejano and Black perspectives, but state Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham seems to have lost her copy of the deal.
Last week, on Columbus Day, a federal holiday that some states (not Texas) also celebrate as Indigenous Peoples Day, someone posted a message on the Alamo’s official X page honoring indigenous people and their history at the Alamo. According to stories in the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle, Buckingham, whose ancestors first arrived in Texas nine generations ago, reacted angrily.
The post on the Alamo’s X site noted that the “Alamo Visitor Center and Museum will feature an Indigenous Peoples Gallery, celebrating the bands, clans and tribes that shaped the region.”
After a right-wing activist tipped her off about the Alamo post, “Buckingham posted this response on X: “I did NOT authorize this post. This is frankly unacceptable, and it has been deleted.”
“Woke has no place at the Alamo,” she also wrote. “This speaks to a pattern of behavior that is completely misaligned with the priorities of my office and the vast majority of Texans who care so deeply for our Shrine of Liberty.” She made clear her priority was to keep a “battle-centric focus” on the Alamo as a defender of liberty and freedom. The Alamo Trust apologized for its indigenous people post.
But Ramon Vasquez, an indigenous scholar on the Alamo project’s museum committee, pointed out “there is nothing woke about facts.”
Vasquez told the Express-News and the Chronicle that he was hopeful that Buckingham’s response wouldn’t sabotage the progress the Alamo project has made in “celebrating the diversity of our state and our city.”
But now that the Alamo has become a front in the culture wars, who knows what kind of story or stories the new Alamo Museum will tell when it opens in 2027. Will it be a real museum or simply an expensive, prettied-up version of an old shrine?
Alamo overseer’s anti-woke demands loom over $550 million project’s future
