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Joshua Kelly, Itzel Dominguez and Ramesses drove from El Paso to watch the reenactment of outlaw Billy the Kid breaking into\u00a0the old county jail.<\/p>\n
Leah Binkovitz<\/p>\n
San Elizario claims a special, little-known spot in United States history. It\u2019s the site where, in 1598, Spanish explorers crossed the Rio Grande and declared sovereignty over the land north of the river. The feast that took place on April 30 is officially considered the First Thanksgiving by the state of Texas. Visitors can still see reenactments of that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But that’s not why nine-year-old Ramesses is there. Wearing a cowboy hat and a red bandana tired around his neck, he\u2019s there to see an actor portray the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid when he broke into the old county jail to free his buddy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
America\u2019s story is often told east to west often starting with the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth. But San\u00a0Elizario flips that. The truth is, we can and should imagine the story of America starting in a million different places, even here in a far corner of Texas that barely considers itself Texas. Here, we get a story of America that was and still is a site of exchange and of welcoming plus a bit of banditry and rebellion. What could be more American than a kid dressed up as a gun-slinging outlaw?<\/p>\n
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Leah Binkovitz<\/p>\n
San Elizario\u2019s claim to the first Thanksgiving started with a dumb decision. The Spanish had good luck conquering the Aztec some 70 years earlier, but after costly battles with England they needed to replenish the royal coffers. The north called with rumors of gold. Fellow Spaniards had already traveled along the Rio Conchos through the Sierra Madre toward the Rio Grande but Juan de O\u00f1ate had another idea. He would cut straight across the Chihuahuan Desert. So with permission from the Spanish king, O\u00f1ate led a four-mile long party of hundreds of soldiers, families and livestock trudging across the sand dunes for 50 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It went about as well as you\u2019d expect. Food supplies didn\u2019t last. They survived off berries and roots and weeds. Clothes and shoes went threadbare. They burned their feet on the hot earth. Their tongues swelled in want of water.<\/p>\n
By the time they reached the Rio Grande, at least two horses drank so much, so fast that their sides burst open. The group rested for ten days, recovering. Finally, on April 30, O\u00f1ate had the friars lead a mass and invited the people already living there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Every American schoolkid knows a version of what happened next. The Europeans broke bread with the local Indigenous community. Usually, though, the Thanksgiving story takes place somewhere else. And 23 years later. Yet in a land that would become modern-day Texas, hapless Europeans benefited from the helping hand of Indigenous peoples and carried on their conquest as a result. O\u00f1ate would actually become one of the few people tried and punished for his abuses of Indigenous people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Texas story of the first Thanksgiving \u2014 ahem, the real one \u2014 is a reminder that this country was not a blank United States-shaped outline filled in right to left, but a dynamic crossroads of peoples from around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a reminder that our nation has never been one singular thing. It doesn\u2019t start in one place with one people or one language. The \u201cAmerica\u201d whose birth we now celebrate in its 250th year wasn\u2019t even one singular nation. Historians know it\u2019s a wonder those 13 colonies even got organized enough to host their own little revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Houston Chronicle editorial board has published this series, Declaring Independence, to encourage Texans to find more stories, more characters, more allegories. Texas is big and we shouldn\u2019t settle for a narrow history.<\/p>\n
History, it turns out, is a mess.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere are 29 different cities that claim the first thanksgiving, many of them before this one,\u201d history professor Yolanda Leyva explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though it may not be the real first Thanksgiving, we should remember the 1598 event, as the state\u2019s new social studies curriculum does. But we should be honest about its complicated legacy. Some even call it a thanks-taking. Leyva was one of the content advisors fighting for more inclusive history in the new curriculum approved in June. She didn\u2019t have much luck. The standard for the Texas Thanksgiving story \u201cleaves out the American Indians who showed the expedition where and how to cross the river,\u201d Leyva wrote in her feedback.\u00a0<\/p>\n
History is about choices. We choose where to start telling the story. We choose the characters. We choose the allegories.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which is why it\u2019s so disappointing to see the underwhelming 250th celebration taking place in Washington now. And so disappointing to see the doctrinaire, partisan version of Texas history coming out of the State Board of Education.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The material for an inclusive, Texas-sized story is there. The vision is not. Americans deserve better. Texans deserve better. We can be honest about our often troubling past and proud of those who fought hard to expand freedom for all.<\/p>\n
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More immigrants than Ellis Island<\/p>\n
El Pasoans sometimes still don\u2019t consider themselves part of Texas. The local news stations give the weather for \u201cthe Borderlands\u201d and daily rush hour traffic includes a steady to and fro across the border. When the editorial board visited, the World Cup games added to the flow of people. El\u00a0Pasoans headed to Juarez to watch Mexico\u2019s World Cup team on its home soil. And Juarenses trekked north to the U.S. side to watch their neighbors on their home soil. It’s an imperfect but usually easy-going kind of exchange where one can see, as we did, an American-jerseyed man ask his partner, \u201cQue es un loading zone?\u201d as he parked his red Toyota at the curb ahead of the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That sense of movement, interaction, contradiction, even, defines the region. It offers a better, more accurate origin story of the country than the more boring one of arrival, conquest and homogenizing assimilation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reality is that El Paso has welcomed more newcomers than Ellis Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But further east, where Texas usually traces its origins as a Republic and later state, Stephen F. Austin was also an immigrant. And many of the Anglo-Americans who followed in his footsteps were illegal immigrants, entering what was then Mexico without permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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They didn\u2019t speak the same language. They weren\u2019t the same religion. They didn\u2019t have the same values. And they wouldn\u2019t stop coming.<\/p>\n
Mexican officials tried to keep guard against the threat of invasion. Laws changed constantly. Only a select group would have permission to stay. They\u2019d be charged special tariffs. Some people were deported. A familiar playbook.<\/p>\n
But these invaders only seemed to grow in number. Finally, the government passed its strictest law yet. Only people with special passports and permission could enter the country. The immigrants from the United States were incensed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When performers today reenact the Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its independence from Mexico, the man dressed up as Antonio L\u00f3pez de Santa Anna gives a rousing speech (over a chorus of boos) promising \u201cto drive out the illegals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018This has always been a crossing\u2019<\/p>\n
These days, immigrants are still an easy target, though the tables have turned. El Paso knows intimately well the challenges of living on the border \u2014 the reality behind photos of crowds of shivering people on the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those images from 2022 helped galvanize anti-immigrant rhetoric and elect Donald Trump to a second term on a platform of mass deportations, which has proved less popular in practice than he hoped.\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Paso also knows that, like its history, it matters where you place the frame. Just outside the view of those photographs of crowds of hopeless looking immigrants were crowds of people wanting to help. The response from El Pasoans was overwhelmingly generous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe began as a city of moving people, traveling people, migrating people,\u201d explained Council Member Chris Canales. \u201cAnd we\u2019re still that today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like other El Pasoan kids, Canales learned the Texas Thanksgiving story, with its sheen of harmonious coexistence. While he knows that wasn\u2019t the full story, the kernel of truth is still there. El Paso is a welcoming city. He crosses the border almost every week for a museum exhibit or gallery show with his wife.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He remembers the 2022 surge of border crossings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat did happen,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we also just have this baseline immigration that we are used to here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many people in El Paso have family in Juarez and they\u2019re there every day or on the weekends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Pasoans cherish that welcoming reputation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has always been a crossing,\u201d Leyva said at a coffee shop near the University of Texas at El Paso where she teaches. \u201cI can see Juarez from my front porch. I can see Juarez from campus.\u201d<\/p>\n