War of Words Divides Hispanic and Anglo Residents of Texas Town

GOLIAD, Tex., July 20, 2004 (By Simon Romero, NYTimes) — In history books, the killing of more than 300 Texan rebels by Mexican troops here has long been known as the Goliad Massacre. But to many residents of Goliad, with its 18th-century Spanish fort and towering monument to the dead, that brutal episode in its history is still open to interpretation.

Some of Goliad's Mexican-American residents prefer "execution" to "massacre" in describing what happened here in 1836 because of Mexican law at the time, which was explicit in meting out de facto death sentences for foreigners taking up arms against the government.

"For so long in Texas history classes it's been drilled into us that Mexicans were the demons and Anglos the enlightened heroes," said Emilio Vargas III, an assistant principal at the Goliad elementary school and a descendant of Canary Islanders who settled here in the 18th century. "On this point we're no longer going to accept it without a fight."

Such talk has shaken Goliad, where the population of 2,000 is almost equally divided between Hispanics and Anglos, with a small black minority. The dispute has included the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the Presidio de la Bahía, the site of the killings 167 years ago, when American and European settlers were engaged in a war to pry Texas from Mexico.

Responding to letters and protests from parishioners and residents in Goliad, the Diocese of Victoria two years ago stuck with the long-used interpretation of events and refused to describe the killings as an execution. The church has owned the Presidio, a fort that operates as a tourist site and includes a chapel, since 1853.

"I'm aware of the sensitivity of the issue, but it's historically been called a massacre, and we don't feel qualified to change the name," Bishop David Fellhauer said.

The bishop's view might have signaled the end of the dispute, but tempers have continued to flare around Goliad, with many residents refusing to accept the church's position.

Benny Martinez, president of Goliad's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that many Anglos "still hate Mexicans and using `massacre' is a subtle way for them to express it." Mr. Martinez said he ruffled feathers at a meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in April when he said that the 1836 killings should be described as an execution.

Bishop Fellhauer and Newton M. Warzecha, director of the Presidio de la Bahía, consulted historians when a group of residents from the General Zaragoza Society, a Hispanic rights organization, sought to change the fort's description of events.

Few experts dispute the brutality of the killings: Mexican forces shot hundreds of Texans on river roads near the Presidio, burned their bodies and left the remains to vultures. Documents from the time show that even among high-ranking Mexican officers there was ambivalence over carrying out the orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to kill the Texans, who had surrendered after a battle.

"Those men might have fought to the death if they thought their lives would not have been spared," said Ron Tyler, a history professor at the University of Texas and director of the Texas State Historical Association.

The different views illustrate a rift between old-school historians and a newer group who assert that Hispanics were marginalized — sometimes brutally — after Texas gained independence from Mexico.

"The cliché that victors write the history is too simple for Goliad," said Andres Tijerina, the author of several works on 19th-century Texas. "Would we be surprised today if the U.S. government executed a group of pirates, or terrorists, as they're known in modern language, who were found operating on American soil?"

Mr. Tijerina and other historians who say "massacre" is too clumsy and insensitive a term call attention to the methods Anglos used to suppress Mexican-Americans in Goliad in the decades that followed Texas independence and statehood.

Near the courthouse here is a large oak, called the Hanging Tree. A plaque describes the Cart War of 1857, when Anglos attacked competing Mexican-American ox cart drivers, stole their freight and hanged 70 Mexican-American drivers on the tree.

"There's no mention of that violence when the fort does its re-enactments," said William Zermeno, a retired postal worker who lives a few hundred yards from the Presidio, where hundreds of people gather each March for re-enactments of the 1836 killings.

Many people in Goliad find history hard to ignore. The town was founded in 1749 as a missionary outpost and was later known as La Bahía del Espiritu Santo. In 1829, its leaders changed the name to Goliad, a phonetic anagram of the surname of Miguel Hidalgo, the Roman Catholic priest who is known as the father of Mexican independence. Texans of Anglo and Mexican descent gathered here in 1835 to sign a declaration of independence.

Some people here think it folly to dwell so much on the past.

"No wonder our town is not growing," said Rajesh Bhakta, an immigrant from India and manager of the Antlers Inn on Goliad's outskirts. "Who wants to invest in a place with all this unseemly fighting over long-ago affairs?"

Some friction is unavoidable in a place where it is almost impossible not to cross paths. Mr. Zermeno and his wife, Estella, also an outspoken "execution" proponent, attend the same church as Mr. Warzecha, the administrator of the Presidio and a staunch member of the "massacre" camp. They often avoid one another.

"I don't know if it's bad conscience on their part, if they feel guilty," said Mr. Warzecha, who grew up in the nearby ranching town of Cuero. "My best advice to them would be to just go on to better things."

There are few signs of appeasement from either side on the matter of the past. But divisions are not insurmountable. Anglos and Hispanics mingle freely in Goliad and intermarriage is becoming common. Robert Parvin, a photographer who had an ancestor killed at Goliad, came to the aid of the Zermenos this week after Hurricane Claudette damaged their home.

" `Massacre' is so engraved in people's minds that we don't realize this is not a semantic issue but a moral one," Mr. Parvin said. "When you boil this thing down, it's about power, one group having more than the other. How long is that supposed to last?"