Who Really Remembers The Alamo?
'"San Antonio — With apologies to all Texians — as they were once called — before visiting San Antonio, I really didn’t remember the Alamo. I retained a vague impression from youth in which heroism, independence and Davy Crockett were major elements, and Mexicans were the bad guys, but that was about it. It was like a childhood fairy tale, barely recalled.
"That’s fine for myths: they are not really meant to survive with photographic realism. That is one way they have such a broad effect on the mind and culture, creating impressions, molding perceptions, shaping expectations. That’s also why every demythologizing movement has an element of aggressive triumph over myth’s power, as if a mesmeric trance were being overturned.
"But when it comes to the Alamo — particularly here in this Texas city where this old Spanish mission turned fort attracts nearly three million visitors a year — the history and its mythical meanings have been wrestled over almost as much as the blood-soaked terrain was in preceding centuries. 'Remember the Alamo!' was the old battle cry; in recent decades the fight was over just what was being remembered."
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