Copyright

by

Natasha Miller Pasternack

2010

The Report Committee for Natasha Miller Pasternack Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report:

“History should be told as a fact”:

Elena Zamora O’Shea’s Reconstruction of the Texas Past

APPROVED BY

SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Cary Cordova

John Morán González

Supervisor:

“History should be told as a fact”:

Elena Zamora O’Shea’s Reconstruction of the Texas Past

by

Natasha Miller Pasternack, B.A.

Report

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2010

Dedication

For my students,

who taught me the importance of seeking out

voices not easily heard

v

Abstract

“History should be told as a fact”:

Elena Zamora O’Shea’s Reconstruction of the Texas Past

Natasha Miller Pasternack, M.A.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2010

Supervisor: Cary Cordova

In this report, I examine the life and works of Elena Zamora O’Shea, a

schoolteacher from south Texas, who used her writing to overturn the dominant narrative

of Anglo conquest in the Nueces Strip. Building off the work of other scholars who have

examined the silences in historical production, this report highlights Zamora O’Shea’s

recovery of the untold story of Tejano residents who Anglo settlers displaced at the turn

of the twentieth century. Drawing from her 1935 novel, El Mesquite, as well as the series

of letters she exchanged with University of Texas librarian Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, I

show how she corrected the narratives produced by “official” historians, challenging the

accuracy of their claims and the methods they had used to create them. Through her

writing, Zamora O’Shea worked diligently to insert Tejano voices into the historical

record, arguing that they provided valuable insights into the Texas past. Furthermore, by

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inserting these voices, Zamora O’Shea also inserted a pre-history, as she attested to a

longstanding Tejano presence and overthrew notions of a primitive pre-Anglo existence.

In this way, she moved back the date of when true “civilization” in south Texas began,

thereby writing a new version of the Texas, and therefore American, past.

vii

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................1

Chapter One: Inserting Tejano Voices into the Record .........................................14

Chapter Two: Inserting a Pre-History to the Texas Past ........................................30

Conclusion .............................................................................................................43

Bibliography ..........................................................................................................48

Vita………….. .......................................................................................................53

1

Introduction

“History is a story about power, a story about those who won.” — Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In 1935, Tejana schoolteacher Elena Zamora O’Shea opened the preface to her

novel, El Mesquite, with a sharp inquiry about her home region’s first settlers:

“Sometimes I have wondered,” she wrote, “why it is that our forefathers who helped with

their money, their supplies, and their own energies have been entirely forgotten. History

should be told as a fact,” she stated bluntly, “pleasant or unpleasant.”1 With this

seemingly gentle query and then clear-cut rebuke, Zamora O’Shea began her attack on

the popular tales of Texas history. For as a descendant of Spanish settlers, who had come

to the then Spanish province of Nuevo Santander (now south Texas), she was incensed by

the textbook accounts that gave her ancestors no credit, leaving them absent or, as she put

it, “entirely forgotten.” Tired of such ignorance, she used her own writing to talk back. In

her 1935 novel, as well as numerous letters to University of Texas librarian Carlos

Eduardo Castañeda, Zamora O’Shea criticized the historians who focused solely on

Anglo contributions to society, challenging the accuracy of their claims and the methods

they had used to make them. Working diligently to insert Tejano voices into the record,

she insisted that the stories, songs, and folktales these voices shared all contained

valuable insights into the Texas past. Furthermore, by using these sources to illustrate a

sophisticated, longstanding Tejano presence, she overturned the prevailing notions of a

1 Elena Zamora O’Shea, El Mesquite: A Story of the Early Spanish Settlements between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, as Told by “La Posta Del Palo Alto” (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2000).

2

primitive pre-Anglo existence. In this way, Zamora O’Shea used her writing to overthrow

the dominant discourse of Anglo conquest, giving voice to her forgotten ancestors and,

ultimately, writing a new version of the Texas past.

Seventy-five years later, Texas educators and politicians are still arguing over

exactly how this past should be written, most specifically in terms of who gets

represented in the state’s educational and historical works. In January of 2010, advisers to

the Texas State Board of Education made a motion to ban César Chávez, the Chicano

civil rights leader, from the state curriculum, as he “lacks the stature…and the

contributions,” and should not “be held up to our children as someone worthy of

emulation.”2 Despite the fact that Hispanics make up 45 percent of the enrolled students

in Texas’ K-12 public schools—whereas whites make up 38 percent—board members

and their appointees complained about an “over representation of minorities” in the

current social studies curriculum.3 Many groups, including the United Farm Workers

Association (UFWA)—the union that Chávez and Dolores Huerta helped found in

1962—fought this motion on the grounds that Chávez is an important figure for all

Americans to know. One member of the Board, Mary Helen Berlanga, protested the

adoption of the new conservative standards, storming out of a meeting and saying that her

fellow board members were trying to “just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics

don’t exist.”4 In March of 2010, the Board decided in a ten-to-five vote to accept the new

amendments to state curriculum.

2 Gail Lowe, quoted in “Stop Texas from erasing Cesar Chavez and Hispanics from school books,” United Farm Workers website, http://action.ufw.org/page/speakout/cectxjan10, accessed February 10, 2010. 3 Figures from Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options website, http://www.hcreo.org/section/states/texas/crisis_in_texas, accessed February 10, 2010. Quote from “Stop Texas,” United Farm Workers website. 4 Quoted by Nicole Colson, “The Texas School of Falsification,” 16 April 2010, Socialist Worker website, http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/16/texas-school-of-falsification, accessed April 16, 2010.

3

While at first glance, such a decision may seem minor, merely impacting which figures

students are required to memorize for their history tests, its ramifications extend beyond

the classroom into the wider realm of what defines America and its history. As historian

Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes, average citizens access history through “celebrations, site

and museum visits, movies, national holidays, and primary school books.”5 As such, the

figures that wind up in these books ultimately shape the conception of the nation itself.

Held up as the actors and agents of change over time, these individuals are the ones

viewed as having power in American society, as well as legitimate claims to citizenship.

The diversity of these figures, then, becomes all the more important, lest America come

to be seen, as Berlanga feared, as a nation where only whites have power.

As a middle school writing teacher in Phoenix, Arizona, where 95 percent of my

students were Latino, I felt the need for multi-cultural education firsthand, as my students

were much more inspired by the authors whose names sounded like theirs than they were

by the standard writers found in our textbooks. They were less moved by Walt

Whitman’s 1855 “Song of Myself,” than they were by Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poem

“Learning English,” or Gina Valdez’s bilingual piece, “Where You From?” Reading

works by writers of various ethnic backgrounds was important to my students not only

because these stories were more applicable to their lives, but also because these pieces

showed my students that they, too, had a place in this country. Therefore, in order to keep

Whitman’s vision of America true—his view of America as “the nation of many nations,

the smallest the same, and the largest the same”—curriculum writers must continuously

5 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), 20.

4

seek out a multicultural, multifaceted representation of our country’s key players.6

Without such inclusion, the education system merely duplicates the cultural oppression

that ethnic minorities have experienced throughout American history. It was with

sensitivity to such needs that Zamora O’Shea wrote her novel seventy-five years ago, and

it is with continued attention to such needs that I argue it is important for us to study her

work today.

To understand Zamora O’Shea’s work, one must first understand her background,

as she grew up in a borderlands region, where notions of patriotism and nationality were

complicated. As historian Andrés Tijerina writes in his introduction to the 2000 edition of

El Mesquite, Zamora O’Shea’s ancestor, Rafael Garcia (after whom she names a

principal character in her novel), and her own grandfather, Santos Moreno, were among

the early Spanish pioneers who came in the 1740s to explore what was then New Spain.7

Over one hundred years later, her family still lived in the same spot, but the land had

been annexed by the United States, thereby making Zamora O’Shea’s family United

States citizens. Still, in 1862, her father, Porfirio Zamora, was commissioned by Mexican

General Ignacio Zaragoza to fight against the invading French army at Puebla, Mexico.

(Zaragoza himself had been born in Goliad, Texas, just a few miles away from the ranch

where Zamora O’Shea was born.)8 After Zaragoza and his troops defeated the French at

the Battle of Cinco de Mayo on May 5 of that year, Zamora O’Shea’s father received

Mexico’s second highest combat decoration, the “Condecoración de Segunda Clase,” for

6 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855; reprint, with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1959), 40. 7 Andrés Tijerina, “Historical Introduction,” El Mesquite by Elena Zamora O’Shea (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), xi.

5

his valor and patriotism in the battle. A decade later, after Mexican president Benito

Juárez died, the next candidate, Porfirio Díaz, traveled all the way to Zamora O’Shea’s

family ranch to visit with her father and ask for his political support, which he readily

gave.9 Thus, despite the U.S. citizenship of Zamora O’Shea’s family, they were still

heavily involved in the politics and patriotism of Mexico.

Zamora O’Shea maintained pride in her Spanish-Mexican heritage throughout her

life. Born on July 21, 1880, she grew up on her mother’s ranch, La Posta del Palo Alto,

near the present-day towns of Banquete and Agua Dulce.10 As a child, Zamora O’Shea

attended the Ursuline Convent in Laredo, Texas, where she learned to speak English, and

she began working as a schoolteacher at the age of fifteen at a ranch school near Alice.

She later attended college at The University of Texas, the University of Mexico in

Mexico City, and the Normal School for Teachers in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico. She

eventually graduated from Southwest Texas Normal School (now Southwest Texas State

University) in San Marcos, Texas, after which she returned to teaching.11 While she

writes in her preface that her career choice “nearly broke [her] father’s heart,” as “The

women of his people had always stayed at home and accepted what came to them from

their parents, without any protest,” she remained dedicated to teaching, especially at rural

schools for Mexican American children.12 Viewing her work as a way of paying respect

to her heritage, she once wrote to a relative that “It is very gratifying to know that one has

8 Tijerina, xiv. 9 Tijerina, xiv-xv. 10 Tijerina, xv-xvi. 11 Tijerina, xvi. 12 O’Shea, preface to El Mesquite.

6

honored the memory and dignity of their parents.”13 She continued to teach even after

marrying and moving to Dallas in 1912, where she lived with her husband, son, and

daughter, until her death in 1951, when she was buried at Calvary Hill Cemetery, far

away from her ranch homeland.14

Knowing this background, one understands why the new social order of south

Texas in the 1930s incensed Zamora O’Shea so much, as she had witnessed Anglo

settlers displace Tejano families like her own. At the time of El Mesquite’s publication in

1935, the Mexican-American community in south Texas was in the midst of great

changes in terms of land ownership and adjusting to a new racial hierarchy. As historian

David Montejano explains in his 1987 book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of

Texas, 1836-1986, the land south of the Nueces River and north of the Rio Grande—

commonly referred to as the “Nueces Strip” and where Zamora O’Shea’s novel takes

place—remained predominantly Mexican for about fifty years after the United States

annexed it in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.15 This changed, however, at the turn

of the twentieth century when new technologies, such as dry farming techniques,

irrigation systems, and refrigerated rail cars, all came into being. These advances made

intensive farming in the semi-arid Southwest possible, bringing on a rush of Anglo farm

settlers from the Midwest and South and leading to the ultimate dislodgment of Mexican

ranching society.16

13 Quoted by Tijerina, xvii. 14 Tijerina, xviii. 15David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836 – 1986 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1987), 30. Montejano writes that population estimates for 1850 report 2,500 Anglos in contrast to 18,000 Mexicans (31). 16 Montejano, 103.

7

Along with this dislodgment came racial division, for, as literary scholar John

González explains, the “peace structure” along the border that had facilitated Anglo and

Tejano coexistence during the late nineteenth century “crumbled before the large influx

of white Midwesterners unused to, and disdainful of, any social accommodations with

what they considered inferior, nonwhite races.”17 Montejano attributes this racial

segregation to the 1904 completion of the Texas-Mexican railway, which led to rapid

population growth and “the creation of two societies, one Anglo and one Mexican.18 This

became evident with the development of separate railcars for “whites” and “Mexicans,”

as well as the gradual decline of intermarriages, which had been common in the region

from 1835 to 1880. In the educational system, 90 percent of south Texas schools were

segregated by 1930.19 Thus, Anglo farmers had stripped Texas-Mexicans not only of their

land, but also their social standing and economic power, reducing them to the position of

dependent wage laborers who were increasingly “disenfranchised in political life,

marginalized in economic development, and segregated in social life.”20

What is more, the Anglocentric historical narratives produced by the historians

and textbook writers of Zamora O’Shea’s time further affirmed this racialized power

structure. With his 1935 history The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense,

17 John Morán González, Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2009), 16. 18 Montejano, 95. 19 Montejano, 92, 160. 20 González, 16 and Montejano, 105, 114. Montejano notes that while in 1850, 34 percent of the Mexican population in south and west Texas had been ranch-farm owners and 34 percent had been manual laborers, by 1900, only 16 percent were ranch-farm owners and 67 percent did manual labor. In contrast, the number of ranch-farm owners among Anglos increased from 2 percent of their population in 1850 to 31 percent in 1900 (73). Armando Alonzo also writes about Tejano displacement in south Texas during this time period in Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). He places greater emphasis on the resilience of the Tejano community and the

8

historian Walter Prescott Webb gained a great deal of prestige and came to be the state’s

most celebrated historian of the twentieth century.21 In his text, he validated the racial

hierarchy that had evolved, celebrating the Rangers as men who defended society against

“the outlaw breed of three races, the Indian warrior, Mexican bandit, and American

desperado.”22 Describing the Rangers as “the first permanent settlers” in the region, he

completely erased the existence of any Native American or Tejano civilizations, which

had existed in Texas for centuries before any Rangers arrived.23 It was not until Sam

Houston’s arrival in 1832, he claimed, that the “orderly occupancy” and “American

civilization” of Texas began.24 Similarly, textbook writer Anna J. Hardwicke

Pennybacker insisted that “Texas was scarcely more than a wilderness” until Stephen F.

Austin came in 1824.25 With claims such as these, official historians pushed Tejanos to

the margins, silencing their voices and erasing proof of their pre-Anglo civilization.

But Zamora O’Shea and other Mexican American writers and activists resisted

such silencing, working diligently to oppose the new social and racial hierarchy that had

evolved. Indeed, many scholars have noted the Latino opposition to conquest that was

formally organized in the 1930s and 1940s with the formation of the League of United

Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which consolidated political efforts and advocated

leading role that they played in the commercialization of ranching. He still concedes, however, that Tejano landholdings had greatly decreased by the turn of the twentieth century (11-12). 21 González, 56. 22 Quoted in González, 56. 23 Quoted in González, 56. 24 Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1935), 10 and 1965 edition, 216. 25 Quoted in González, 81. According to González, the standard Texas history textbook was Anna J. Hardwicke Pennybacker’s A New History of Texas. First published in 1888, the textbook was used in Texas classrooms for approximately forty years.

9

for Mexican American civil rights.26 Scholars have also recovered the literary works of

authors like Jovita González and Américo Paredes, who, like Zamora O’Shea, wrote

fiction during the 1930s and 1940s that voiced their opposition to Mexican American

displacement and subjugation.27 Other Latina authors, such as María Amparo Ruíz de

Burton and María Cristina Mena, preceded Zamora O’Shea in expressing such

sentiments.28 But in the face of the dominant narratives of Anglo-American conquest, the

attention paid to this handful of writers is limited. As such, it is important to examine

Zamora O’Shea’s work and acknowledge her opposition to Anglo power, both through

her overt reproach of official historians’ narratives, as well the more subtle

admonishment she employed in her fiction.29

It is the aim of this paper to highlight these reproaches and admonishments and

give them historical meaning, for only by reading Zamora O’Shea’s resistance can we

understand the power structure she was trying so desperately to overthrow. To trace these

power dynamics, I turn both to Zamora O’Shea’s novel, as well as the series of letters she

exchanged with University of Texas librarian Carlos Eduardo Castañeda. In looking at

both these public and private writings, I point out how Zamora O’Shea’s continued

insertion of Tejano stories attested to the existence of a sophisticated society that had

26 González provides a discussion of LULAC’s activities and their forging of a bilingual, bicultural Mexican American identity in the third chapter of Border Renaissance. 27 Jovita González’s most well-known novel, Caballero, was written during the 1930s and 1940s but not published until 1996. Américo Pardes’ novel, George Washington Gómez, was completed in 1940 but not published until 1990. 28 Burton’s novels Who Would Have Thought? and The Squatter and the Don were published in 1872 and 1885, respectively. María Cristina Mena’s short stories, which complicated the American view of life in Mexico, appeared in American magazines in the 1910s. 29 Vicki Ruiz also notes the development of “a distinctive Chicana feminist consciousness…with historical antecedents predating the 1960s” in From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998).

10

established itself long before the arrival of Anglo pioneers. Drawing on the fields of both

history and literature, I give historical context to Zamora O’Shea’s work, reading her

writing through the lens of the social and political history of south Texas in the 1930s.

Using her novel and letters as evidence, I show how she critiqued the omission of

important historical sources—namely, her ancestors—and thus resolved to insert and

interpret those sources herself. In doing so, I ultimately demonstrate how Zamora O’Shea

not only overturned the dominant versions of Texas history, but also debunked the very

methods official historians had used to create it.

This report is divided into two chapters, the first focusing on Zamora O’Shea’s

insertion of Tejano voices, as she advocated for the inclusion of her own family histories,

as well as traditional Tejano folklore and songs. Dissecting her letters to Castañeda, I

show how she urged him to use her family’s oral histories to correct the “mistakes” other

scholars had made about early Texas settlement.30 But knowing that she could not solely

rely on Castañeda to do such work, she performed the same task herself in her 1935

novel, El Mesquite. Telling the story of over 200 years of south Texas history from the

perspective of a mesquite tree, Zamora O’Shea used this 80-page novella to insert the

stories of Tejano peones and ranch family members, whose viewpoints were notably

absent from the standard textbooks of the day. By including the songs and folklore these

characters share amongst themselves, Zamora O’Shea subtly gave voice to the people she

knew had been silenced for so long.

30 Zamora O’Shea to Carlos E. Castañeda, 27 February 1931. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda Papers, ca. 1920-1960 (bulk 1920-1958), Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin.

11

In chapter two, I turn my attention away from which voices were speaking and

focus, instead, on the underlying message that they sought to convey: we were here first.

In her letters to Castañeda and in her novel, Zamora O’Shea took great pains to attest to

the early presence and expertise of Tejanos in south Texas, long before Anglo settlers

ventured into the area. By illustrating the Tejanos’ longstanding presence in the region, as

well as their intricate knowledge of the land and sophisticated society, she overturned

Webb’s and Pennybacker’s claims that the “true settlement” of Texas had not begun until

the Anglo arrival. Furthermore, she showed that the Anglo arrival did not necessarily

bring “progress,” as so many historians claimed, but rather, a period of disruption and

disorder. With these corrections and new portrayals of early settlement, Zamora O’Shea

revised the date of when true “civilization” in south Texas began, inserting a pre-history

to the dominant narrative of the Texas past.

Finally, my study of Zamora O’Shea’s attempt to topple the Anglocentric version

of Texas history builds off of the work of several other scholars. In a chapter of his 2009

book, Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican

American Literature, literary scholar John González looks at how Zamora O’Shea used

El Mesquite as a way to tell the stories that were missing from the Centennial discourses

present in Texas in the 1930s. I, too, look at these missing stories that Zamora O’Shea

told, but rather than centering my work around her engagement with the Texas landscape,

I focus more on her engagement in altering the process of historical production.

Historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes about this process in his 1995 book,

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Here he reveals the gaps that

enter into the process of writing history, stating that “the production of traces is always

12

also the creation of silences.”31 He warns that historical narratives are always

constructions that involve uneven contributions of competing groups who have unequal

access to the means of production.32 In looking at Zamora O’Shea’s work, I examine how

she used her writing to uncover these gaps and silences that had come to shape the tales

of Texas history, placing them in an Anglocentric light.

Historian Emma Pérez also comments on the silences in history, writing that,

when heard, these silences “become the negotiating spaces for the decolonizing

subject.”33 That is, by examining the gaps in history, one gives voice to the people who

have been pushed to the margins and whose stories have gone unheard. “It is in a sense,”

she writes, “where third space agency is articulated.”34 In my own work, I strive to point

out the negotiating space that Zamora O’Shea used her writing to enter, as she pulled

Tejano voices out of the margins and placed them in the spotlight. By showing how

Zamora O’Shea did this, I show how she exercised her “third space agency,” thereby

“decolonizing” the narratives of the Texas past.

In his 1993 book, My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American

Autobiography, literary scholar Genaro Padilla looks at several Mexican American

autobiographies as “personal and communitarian response[s] to the threat of erasure.”35

Noting the wistful tone these autobiographies employ as they describe the “earlier

cultural configuration” of the Southwest, he argues that such sentiments are actually

31 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), 29. 32 Trouillot, xix. 33 Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas Into History (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 5. 34 Pérez, 5.

13

coded ways for minorities to voice their opposition to social upheaval. “Their nostalgia,”

he explains, “for an earlier world produced not a non-critical reaction to loss, but an

oppositional response to displacement.”36 In my examination of El Mesquite, I build off

of Padilla’s work to read Zamora O’Shea’s wistful descriptions of the Spanish colonial

past as her coded way of voicing her resistance to the displacement of her Tejano people.

This report thus takes the above frameworks, these structures for examining the

silences and inequities in historical production, and applies them to Zamora O’Shea’s

attempts to overturn the dominant narratives of Texas history. By examining both her

personal letters and her published novel, I show how she used her writing to insert both

the Tejano voices and the Tejano pre-history that she knew were missing from textbooks,

classrooms, and the overall consciousness of those in power. With these insertions,

Zamora O’Shea corrected the history not only of Texas or a borderlands region, but of the

nation as a whole. For, ever since its beginning, America has been a place of encounter

between newcomers and natives, and with her account, Zamora O’Shea reminded her

readers that both groups have stories to tell. The history of a place—be it south Texas, the

Southwest, or the United States as a whole—is almost always told by the conquerors, by

the people who won. It is only by hearing the other side of the story, the side of struggle

and resistance, that we gain a fuller understanding of the power and influences that

continue to shape our nation today.

35 Genaro Padilla, My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), x. 36 Padilla, x.

14

Chapter One: Inserting Tejano Voices into the Record

No podriamos los decendientes de los primeros pobladores algo que detenga las continuas ofensas que nos dan en sus historietas. Si estudiaran los verdaderos datos, y dijeran la verdad estaria bueno. Pero le pegan tanto a lo que es historia que segun ellos nuestros eran verdaderos brutos. [Can’t we descendents of the first settlers do something to stop the continual offenses against us in their history books? If they would study the true facts, and tell the truth, that would be fine. But they twist history so much that, according to them, our ancestors were truly brutish].37

In her 1930 letter to University of Texas librarian Carlos Castañeda, Zamora O’Shea

expressed her outrage at the unfair depiction of Tejanos in Texas history books. As a

schoolteacher in south Texas for over twenty years, she knew that these books only

presented one side of the story, as their authors ignored the “true facts” and relied solely

on Anglo settler accounts to make their claims. Furious at these uneven depictions,

Zamora O’Shea began in the 1920s to compose her own narratives of Texas-Mexican

history, correcting these authors and inserting Tejano voices into the historical record.

This chapter is constructed using the Tejano family histories, folklore, and songs that

Zamora O’Shea placed into the record as evidence for how she countered the narratives

of people like Anna Pennybacker and Walter Prescott Webb. In looking at her letters to

Castañeda, one sees how persistently she urged the historian to reflect more Tejano

viewpoints in his work, supplying him with evidence that had been passed down through

her family’s oral histories. In her published writing, she used such histories as her

foundation, basing El Mesquite on the “legends and stories” her grandmother had told her

15

when she was young.38 Furthermore, within El Mesquite, Zamora O’Shea continued to

insert these voices by including the histories, folklore, and songs shared by the peones

and ranch family members, whose accounts all indicate a strong Tejano presence, long

before Anglo settlers pushed them to the margins. Thus, in looking at Zamora O’Shea’s

constant efforts to place these voices into the record, one sees how she used her writing

as another teachable moment, doing all she could to alter the record and make it “tell the

truth,” relating the “true facts” of south Texas history, as told by its early Tejano

residents.

Zamora O’Shea’s insertion of Tejano voices began with the family oral histories

passed down to her by her father, someone she considered an authority on south Texas

settlement. In October of 1929, she sent Castañeda a summary “de lo que me contaba mi

papa que el estudio y vio varias pruebas de que eran ciertas” [of what my father told me,

which he studied and had proof was true].39 Stressing the veracity of her father’s claims,

Zamora O’Shea seemed to be somewhat anxious about sending such material to

Castañeda, the man who, to her, was a signifier of academia and the history

establishment. Aware of the fact that neither she nor her father had been trained by the

academy, she worked hard to establish the credibility of her sources and the “proof” that

confirmed their accounts. At the end of her letter, her tone once again wavers between

gentle and persistent, as she urges Castañeda to “lea la adjunta y si usted cree que vale la

pena de ponerse en orden para que usted lo añade a sus datos que ya tiene de la historia

37 Zamora O’Shea to Carlos E. Castañeda, 28 April 1930. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda Papers, ca. 1920-1960 (bulk 1920-1958), Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. Translation found in González, 84. 38 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 17 September 1934.

16

de Texas” [read the attached and see if you think it is worth putting in order so that you

can add it to the information you already have on the history of Texas].40 Knowing full

well that Texas histories already existed, Zamora O’Shea also knew that they lacked

important Tejano viewpoints, which she took it upon herself to provide. While she

appears to defer to Castañeda’s opinion of whether or not her father’s account is

“worthy” of submission, the fact that she sent the history, in the form of two single-

spaced typewritten pages, indicates her resolution to enter such Tejano sources into the

record. In another letter that year, her tone had shifted to a more confident one, as she

referred to her narratives of Texas-Mexican history and stated that “Mi opinion es, que

para poner en limpio las malas impressions que la Sra. Pennybacker dejo con sus fabulas

de historia, lo que yo escribi es mas suficiente para hacer esto” [In my opinion what I

have written is more than enough to correct the mistaken impressions Mrs. Pennybacker

created with the falsehoods she passes off as history].”41

The family history that Zamora O’Shea was so determined for Castañeda to

consult told the story of Pánfilo de Narváez, the Spanish explorer who was part of a

disastrous expedition to Florida in 1527, and, more importantly, the Tejano ranchers he

came across in his travels. The significance of these ranchers becomes most clear at the

end of Zamora O’Shea’s account, when she writes that “Estos Ranchos y no misiones son

los que yo quiero probar que son los primeros centros permanente poblados por

Españoles. A estos antecesores, de tantos de nosotros, en el sur de Texas es a los que les

39 O’Shea, letter to Carlos E. Castañeda, 28 October 1929. Translations from Spanish are mine unless otherwise noted. 40 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 28 October 1929. 41 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, c. 1929, quoted and translated in González, 84.

17

debemos darles credito por sus hechos de PIONEERS” [These ranches, not missions, are

what I want to prove were the first centers permanently populated by Spaniards. It is to

these ancestors, who belong to so many of us, in south Texas to whom we should give

credit for the acts of PIONEERS].42 With this, Zamora O’Shea uses her father’s stories to

make an important claim about the first settlers of south Texas, referring to the Tejanos

who occupied the land even before the establishment of Spanish missions. Placing these

people in the Nueces Strip before the missions were built, she marks these communities

as independent from the church establishment altogether. Furthermore, she insists on

giving them credit as true pioneers who had put down roots and developed their own

systems of society, which came long before any Anglo-Saxon ventures into the area. In

this way, Zamora O’Shea used her father’s account to negotiate what literary critic Emma

Pérez would call a “new history.” For by uncovering the untold, she consciously remade

the narrative of Texas history and redeemed the facts that Anglo historians, writing from

a position of power, had disregarded. Thus, by exposing these voices, she implemented

an early version of what Pérez calls the “decolonial imaginary,” a tool used to reveal

Chicano viewpoints that had been relegated to passivity and silence.43

While Zamora O’Shea was confident in the information her father had provided,

she did recognize that her family’s claims were not as authoritative as those made by

academically-trained historians. More than once, she acknowledged the power of the

“men of knowledge and letters,” like Castañeda, who held sway over which facts were

42 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 28 October 1929, emphasis hers. 43 Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), xv, xvi, 5, 127. Antonio Castañeda also calls for the “decolonization” of western

18

deemed official and which were not.44 In her letters to the librarian, who was working on

his doctorate in history at The University of Texas at the time, she often appealed to him

to corroborate her claims about the Texas past. For example, one week before she sent

Castañeda the summary of what her father had told her about Narváez, she wrote to him

with a request for information that would prove that Texas was settled before California.

She explained her request, saying that “Por leyendas que mi papacito me contaba, y

estudios que yo hice en Mexico yo se bien que Texas fue poblada antes. Pero como usted

sabe estas cosas tienen que comprobarse con sitas de historiadores” [Through legends

that my father told me, and studies I did in Mexico I know very well that Texas was

settled earlier. But as you know, these matters must be proven with footnotes by

historians].45 Thus, even though her family stories and own studies had already given her

the information she needed, she deferred to Castañeda to make this claim, knowing that

his words would carry more weight than hers.

In the final paragraph of Zamora O’Shea’s letter about Narváez, she once again

urged Castañeda to take such accounts seriously, writing “No lo quiero cansar con estas

leyendas pero se que usted con su saber puede decirme si acaso no son dignas de

investigarse” [I don’t want to be tiresome with these legends, but I know that you with

your knowledge can tell me if perhaps these aren’t worth investigating].46 Seeming to

pander to Castañeda’s authority, due to his esteemed scholarly “knowledge,” Zamora

O’Shea ultimately used this remark to, once again, assert the importance of including

history in her article “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History,” The Pacific Historical Review v. 61 no. 4 (Nov., 1992): 501-533. 44 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931. 45 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 20 October 1929, translation mine and in González, 85.

19

such legends in Texas history. For while she pretended to wonder if these stories were

“worth investigating,” the fact that she sent them numerous times to the historian

indicates that she certainly thought they were.

But Zamora O’Shea knew that asking other historians to include Tejano sources

in their work was not enough; she had to do the same herself. And so, just as she had

urged Castañeda to rely on her father’s testimony, she used more family stories—these

from her grandmother—as the basis for her historical novel, El Mesquite. She described

her novel in a 1934 letter to Castañeda, calling it a collection of “costumbres,

ocupaciones, y educacion de nuestra gente” [the customs, occupations, and upbringing of

our people], and with it, she inserted a perspective that people like Anna Pennybacker

and Walter Prescott Webb did not consider. 47 She explained the novel’s origins in

familial oral histories, writing that “Durante el año pasado tuve tiempo en mis manos y

me puse a recordar las leyendas y cuentos que mi abuelita Doña Concepcion Garcia de

Moreno me contaba cuando yo era pequeña. Hice varias notas las compare con los datos

historicos que usted da en sus libretos y otras historias y vi que eran verdaderos datos

historicos con las leyendas y datos ella me proporciono” [During the last year I had time

on my hands and I recorded the legends and stories that my grandmother Doña

Concepcion Garcia de Moreno told me when I was young. I have compared my notes

with the historical facts that you’ve given from your booklets and other histories and I

found that they were accurate historical facts according to the stories and facts she told

46 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 28 October 1929. 47 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 17 September 1934, translation found in González, 86.

20

me].48 Here Zamora O’Shea’s confidence in the truth of her work surfaces again, as she

does not rely on Castañeda’s facts to confirm her family’s stories, but rather uses her

stories to confirm the historian’s facts. Making these family histories the foundation for

her novel, Zamora O’Shea used this Tejano voice to write a new version of the Texas

past.

Turning to the novel, Zamora O’Shea’s insertion of Tejano voices becomes clear,

as the only people whose stories we hear are those of the Spanish priests, laboring

peones, and members of the Tejano ranch families who live near the novel’s narrator, a

mesquite tree. Located on a knoll where it “[looks] down on the rolling prairies of the

vast Southwest,” the tree has literally the best view of what takes place in the land around

it, much like the clear view Zamora O’Shea wanted her readers to believe she held of the

region’s past.49 Furthermore, the tree, named el Palo Alto by the Spanish missionaries,

stands in one consistent spot over the 200 years that unfold in the novel, acting as a mere

witness, a personified being, who sees and hears what takes place around it, but has no

ability to converse with those who pass by. By giving the tree such a passive role,

Zamora O’Shea reinforces its perceived objectivity, casting it as a figure that holds

authority over what is common knowledge, but has no ability to act on its observations.

In this way, O’Shea uses the tree to engage in a subtle form of rebellion, as it imagines a

history in an otherwise erased space.50 In addition, by relating the stories it hears from

48 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 17 September 1934, translation found in González, 86-87. 49 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 1. 50 Padilla notes this method of subtlety and indirection as a common form of critique in Mexican American narratives (x).

21

peones and Tejano ranch family members, el Palo Alto provides a unique, non-Anglo

perspective on early Texas settlement.

The character who most pointedly highlights the place of Tejanos in this

settlement is Señora Garcia, who, upon reaching old age, likes to sit beneath the tree and

tell stories to her servant. She begins with biblical tales, ranging from Jesus’ life as a

child, to his crucifixion, and then she moves on to the story of Columbus, who, she

explains, “died in poverty, when he should have been honored for the great discoveries he

had made.”51 In the next paragraph, the tree relates Señora Garcia’s account of how her

husband, Don Rafael Garcia, “had come with colonists to settle in the new world and

establish new houses for their families and subject to the king.”52 With this retelling, the

tree has outlined, in the space of two pages, all of human history, as told by its

“mistress.” According to Señora Garcia, there were only three events worth noting: the

life of Christ, the exploration of Columbus, and the arrival of the Garcia family in the

New World. When framed this way, the settlement of these early colonists takes on great

significance, as their arrival in present-day Texas is put on par with the teachings of

Christ and the discoveries of Columbus. By incorporating Señora Garcia’s accounts,

Zamora O’Shea has used her Tejana character to give a different side to the story than

outlined in the dominant Anglo narratives and textbooks of the day. According to literary

scholar Genaro Padilla, this was a common tactic among Mexican American authors of

this period, as many of them sought to fix “a version of history within a cultural text that

51 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 42. 52 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 42.

22

would mark historical presence in the face of erasure.”53 That is, in a society where

Tejano contributions had been eliminated from the historical record, many Mexican

American authors used their narratives as a way to write themselves back in.

But the most poignant family story that Zamora O’Shea inserts into her novel

comes at the end, when the land around the tree has been abandoned, and there is talk of a

railroad coming through. At this point, Don Santos Moreno, a descendant of the tree’s

original master, and the character who bears the same name as Zamora O’Shea’s own

maternal grandfather, comes to visit the tree in his old age. Sitting with his son-in-law, he

waxes nostalgic about his ancestors who used to occupy the surrounding lands:

‘You know I have heard about this mesquite that shades us, for many years. It sheltered many of my people through my mother’s side. Here sat the dear ones planning for the future. How futile are the plans of man! Right here in this spot I took my first herd of cattle. In this neighborhood I learned to rope cattle, to ride horses, and to ride away into the open spaces of our vast domains. Now they are gone. I perhaps did not know how to hold them. Perhaps if I had been more aggressive, more of the fighting type, I would have retained these possessions.’54

In the whole novel, there is only one other instance of a character speaking at length, for,

while we hear the stories of Señora Garcia and the peones and shepherds, these are all

relayed by el Palo Alto, not told in the characters’ own words. The novel’s only other

monologue comes at the very beginning, when the Spanish Father Antonio tells Father

Margil of how they can develop the land and tame the Indians who live there.55 In

contrast, this monologue by Don Santos highlights the plans of a different group of

people—the Garcia family—and how futile these plans turned out to be, as Anglo settlers

53 Padilla, 16. While Zamora O’Shea’s novel does not tell the story of her own life, it is based on the lives of her ancestors, and it employs the same tactics that Padilla observes in the works he examines. 54 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 68.

23

eventually displaced them from their lands and social position. As Don Santos

remembers his childhood years on the ranch, he evokes a deep sadness for the family

traditions and customs that have now been lost. And in blaming himself, he suggests his

innocence in the matter, claiming he was simply not the “aggressive…fighting type” who

could retain hold of such lands.

By including such a speech, Zamora O’Shea evokes sympathy for the people Don

Santos paints as helpless victims without making an overt accusation about Anglo

culpability. In blaming the victim, Don Santos glosses over the deeper power structures,

tied to class and race, that worked to oust his family from their lands and, ultimately, led

to a new order based on racial division and Tejano subjugation.56 In framing things this

way, Zamora O’Shea employs what Padilla calls a “language of accommodation,” which

conveys “pragmatic appeasement” at one level and “contestation” at another.57 That is,

while she uses mediated language to place the blame on the Garcia family members

themselves, she also gives a moving depiction of their displacement, which serves as a

more veiled voicing of her opposition.58

Just as we have seen Zamora O’Shea’s persistent insertion of family stories into

the historical record, so we see her documentation of classic folklore, which attests to the

early development of a Tejano ranching culture. For in El Mesquite, as peon laborers and

shepherds stop beneath the tree, they exchange stories and legends that allude to the

55 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 4-5. 56 Such power structures are discussed in González, 16 and Montejano, 105, 114. 57 Padilla, x, 34. 58 Antonia Castañeda also notes this “oppositional consciousness” that is commonly seen in the literature written by contemporary women of color in the United States. In her article, she points out the “hegemonic and counterhegemonic strategies” these women used to become active subjects in the historical process (“Women of Color,” 522, 533).

24

customs and traditions of early Texas life. For example, in chapter eight, set sometime in

the late eighteenth century, the tree recounts six short “yarns” that some of “the men”—

presumably the “old peones” who have returned to the ranch near the tree after years of

absence—tell while gathered underneath its shade.59 These tall tales range from stories of

a man who uses a lasso to pull a cabin closer to a lagoon, to the overheard conversation

between a mare and her stallion son.60 Two chapters later, we hear of people like Don

Cayetano, the unsuccessful hunter who, trying to impress his friends, buys a pet deer and

ties it to a tree, where he aims to shoot it. The deer, however, dodges the bullet, which

hits the rope instead, and Don Cayetano ends up losing both his deer and his money.61

Exaggerated and embellished, these stories, with references to ranching wildlife and

cowboy culture, serve as homages to old Tejano folklore that Zamora O’Shea, by

documenting them in her novel, was able to insert into the written record.

With this insertion, Zamora O’Shea worked against people like Anna

Pennybacker, who insisted that “‘Texas was scarcely more than a wilderness’” at the time

of Austin’s arrival.62 On the contrary, she showed that Texas not only had settlers who

occupied this territory before Austin, but who had developed their own set of folk tales,

detailing their improvement and taming of the land and its resources. An insertion of such

facts was a noteworthy achievement, for, as folklorist Américo Paredes notes in his 1976

book, A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border, even though such

tales represent “a people’s heritage—their unselfconscious record of themselves, [they

59 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 52, 51. 60 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 52-54. 61 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 71. 62 Quoted by González, 81.

25

are] alien for the most part to documents and books.”63 By including pieces of these tales

in her novel, Zamora O’Shea sought to change this, as she held them up as valid pieces of

evidence of Tejano culture.

It is also noteworthy that while Paredes became well-known in the field of

Chicano folklore and literature for his documentation of folktales and songs, Zamora

O’Shea, whose work was published half a century prior, never achieved such stature. One

notable difference between the two writers is their credentials: Paredes had a doctorate in

English and Spanish from The University of Texas, while Zamora O’Shea did not. But

the academy’s lack of attention to the “untrained” historian goes beyond her absent

degree and, more likely, has to do with her status as a woman. For, as literary critic Tey

Diana Rebolledo notes, women during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s had little education

and were not encouraged to write. “They were confined to fairly rigid gender roles,” she

explains, “carefully watched and cared for. It is a wonder they wrote at all.”64

Considering this gendered context, Zamora O’Shea’s entering of these folktales into the

written record becomes all the more impressive, as one takes note of the agency she

exercised in order to engage in the historical process.65

And similar to this recording of folklore was Zamora O’Shea’s documentation of

Tejano songs, which served to lament Tejano displacement after the arrival of Anglo

pioneers. For example, in chapter ten, after the tree has noted the “many

63 Américo Paredes, A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976), xvii. 64 Quoted in Padilla, 21. 65 Antonia Castañeda notes how, before the 1980s, scholars did not acknowledge the agency that women of color used in the West. And it was really not until the 1990s that scholarly studies began to examine how women of color “responded to the alien, hostile, often violent society” of the American West, focusing on

26

Yankees…coming into Texas to settle,” and the new language and “strange laws” they

had brought with them, it experiences a moment of sadness, sparked by “a familiar tune

of long ago, La Pobrecita de Elena, a song that one of my old masters used to whistle and

the young men sing. It is about a jealous husband who killed his wife, and later regretted

it. It tells how as Elena lay dead at the infuriated husband’s feet, her pet dove nestled

against her face.”66 In this song, Elena’s murder by her jealous husband serves as a thinly

veiled metaphor for the political, social, and economic upheaval that the Anglo farmers

used to put themselves in power and relegate Tejano ranchers to the margins. In such a

representation, the Tejanos are depicted as innocent victims, much like the powerless

Elena, who lies dead at her husband’s feet. Furthermore, the fact that Zamora O’Shea

chose to represent her Tejano people as a helpless woman once again speaks to the

gender politics that consigned women to powerless roles. Similarly, the pet dove

represents the broken “peace structure” that had once facilitated coexistence between

Tejanos and Anglos, but, with the onset of modernity, had collapsed, likening it to the

dove in this song who, upon Elena’s death, could only mourn helplessly at the dead

mistress’ cheek. By making reference to such a song, Zamora O’Shea was able to use the

tale of another’s grief to voice her own feelings of loss and displacement.

This displacement is even more pronounced in the next song Zamora O’Shea

mentions, which alludes to another group of dislocated people. After hearing La

Pobrecita de Elena, the tree recalls “‘La Golondrina,’ a song that one of my mistresses

used to sing. That song was about some Moorish king who had been run out of Spain,

how they use “their own culture and knowledge to sustain them [and] subvert and/or change the environment, and how they adopt or create new cultural forms” (“Women of Color,” 533).

27

and who on leaving the shores of Spain shed tears as he watched the swallows returning

to summer in Spain. How the king’s mother told him to cry like a woman for what he had

not been able to defend like a man.”67 Here the banished and emasculated king, once

again, represents the Tejano, ousted from his land and stripped of his power. The

swallows the king observes highlight the injustice of his situation, as these creatures are

able to move freely, unbound by political borders. With the inclusion of this song,

Zamora O’Shea suggests that a similar injustice has been carried out against the Tejanos.

In addition, these swallows conjure up the birds that Zamora O’Shea’s notes at the

beginning of her novel, when she describes the doves, eagles, falcons, and robins that

come and go with the changing of the seasons.68 Having observed these birds’ free

movement at the beginning of her text, Zamora O’Shea now uses this song to again show

their freedom, but this time, in contrast to the new social order that has displaced its old

Tejano residents. Literary critic Leticia Garza-Falcón agrees on the expressive power of

“La Golondrina,” writing that “The laments of the Spanish Moor’s displacement…echo

the repeated patterns of violence, displacement, and loss.”69 As such, this song embodies

the feelings of the Tejanos in the face of their political and economic defeats and social

segregation.

But Zamora O’Shea’s inclusion of this song not only highlights Tejano

displacement, it also attests to the development of a unique border culture. As noted by

Paredes, this tune is a folksong that dates back to the colonial days of Spain, but its usage

66 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 56, 68, 70. 67 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 70. 68 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 8-9.

28

in later centuries suggests the emergence of a distinct hybrid identity. Overturning the

dominant portrayal of Tejanos, which depicted all Spanish-speaking people as either

“purebred Castilian clotheshorses in search of gold and silver” or “furtive, landless peons

in search of bread and a job,” songs like this one indicate the mixing of cultures from

both Mexico and Spain.70 For, as Paredes writes, “those songs of Spanish origin that have

come down to us in the Lower Rio Grande Border area are well adapted to the new lands

and to the people who settled them. They are at once very old and very new.”71 Using

such a song, Zamora O’Shea illustrates the cultural evolution of the Tejano people, who,

despite Pennybacker’s claims, had developed a distinctly hybrid form of border

civilization.

In both her private letters and her published novel, Zamora O’Shea made the

insertion of Tejano voices a priority. Furious at the writers of textbooks and historical

films who did not “study the true facts [nor] tell the truth,” she devoted herself to

correcting their misleading claims.72 She knew that such historians had been relying on

facts created by Anglo settlers like Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, and the only

way to overthrow their narratives was to call on a new set of sources. Therefore, she

admonished historian Carlos Castañeda for not using such sources and supplied him with

facts from her own family’s oral histories, which she consistently urged him to use. In her

own writing, she made such family histories her foundation, basing El Mesquite on her

grandmother’s “legends and stories,” and including the oral histories told by Tejano

69 Leticia Garza-Falcón, “Renewal through Language in Elena Zamora O’Shea’s Novel El Mesquite,” introduction to El Mesquite, (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2000), liii. 70 Paredes, 3. 71 Paredes, 5.

29

characters like Señora Garcia and Don Santos Moreno.73 Privileging the voices of these

ranch family members, Zamora O’Shea offered a unique, non-Anglo perspective on early

Texas settlement. In addition, she used the folktales and songs that el Palo Alto overhears

to speak to the strong Tejano presence in the Nueces Strip before Anglo pioneers pushed

them to the margins. As such, Zamora O’Shea used the voices of the Rio Grande Valley’s

early Tejano residents to overthrow the dominant discourse of Anglo power and control.

More than just inserting these voices, Zamora O’Shea also inserted a pre-history,

moving back the date that Texas history began from 1824, with the arrival of Stephen F.

Austin, to the 1500s, with the arrival of the Spanish. In the next chapter, I examine how

Zamora O’Shea supplied evidence of early Tejano presence and expertise in the Valley,

as well their participation in a well-established trade economy, to show that a complex

civilization did exist prior to Anglo conquest. Additionally, in looking at Zamora

O’Shea’s depiction of the Anglo arrival, I show how she read the influx of white settlers

in a new way, marked not so much by progress as by disruption and disorder. By looking

at this interpretation, one can see how Zamora O’Shea revised the historical record by not

only inserting Tejano voices, but also by highlighting the message that these voices

sought to convey: Tejano civilization, and therefore Texas history, had begun centuries

before the Anglo arrival.

72 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 28 April 1930. 73 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 17 September 1934.

30

Chapter Two: Inserting a Pre-History to the Texas Past

In a letter to Castañeda in February of 1931, Zamora O’Shea called on the

historian to “pongan en limpio lo que pone en duda la sinceridad de los primeros

pobladores de el Valle” [prove what has been put in doubt about the first settlers of the

[lower Rio Grande] Valley].74 This simple statement summarizes the overall revision that

Zamora O’Shea sought to make, as she set out to prove the existence of both Tejano and

Native American cultures in south Texas, long before Anglo settlers ventured into the

area. In this chapter, I highlight Zamora O’Shea’s particular focus on Tejano presence,

expertise, and trade to show how she overturned leading notions of a primitive pre-Anglo

civilization. In her letters to Castañeda and in El Mesquite, she insisted on a longstanding

Tejano existence, repeatedly showing the Tejanos’ intricate knowledge of the land and

the sophisticated society they had developed. She also made sure to demonstrate how

members of this pre-Anglo community communicated and exchanged goods with other

cultures on the continent, participating in a well-established network of trade. By

attesting to the Tejanos’ presence and sophistication, as well as their economic

establishment, Zamora O’Shea showed that these early residents did indeed have an

advanced civilization, well before Anglo settlers came onto the scene. What is more,

unlike people like Anna Pennybacker and Walter Prescott Webb, she did not credit

Anglos with bringing civilization or “progress” to south Texas at all; rather, she showed

their arrival as resulting in disruption and disorder. With these corrections and new

portrayals regarding early settlement, Zamora O’Shea revised the date of when true

74 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931, translation found in González, 85.

31

“civilization” in south Texas began, inserting a pre-history into the dominant narrative of

the Texas past.

As mentioned above, Zamora O’Shea’s insertion of this pre-history becomes clear

in her 1931 letter to Castañeda, in which she testifies to an early Tejano presence in the

Rio Grande Valley and calls on the historian to correct one of his own claims regarding

settlement. Referring to Castañeda’s classification of José de Escandón as the Spanish

explorer who authorized the first villages and towns in northern Mexico in 1748, she

disagrees, arguing that when Escandón arrived, there had already been people living in

that area for many years:

Usted menciona que Escandon autorizo las primeras Villas y pueblos en el Norte de Mexico, pero cuando Escandon visito esos lugares ya habia gente, que habia vivido en esas comarcas muchos años. Nomas piense como hubiera podida caminar con el esplendor y Gloria que lo hizo si no hubiera habido quien le sirviera, y le diera el abrigo, y sustento que necesitaba para el y sus compañeros. Los Daniel Boones de nuestra comarca son los que la historia ha olvidado.

[You mentioned that Escandon authorized the first villages and towns in Mexico’s north, but when he visited those places, people had already lived in those parts for many years. Just think about how he could have traveled in the splendor and glory that he did if there had not been anyone to serve him, and to hand him his cloak, and furnish whatever provisions that he and his party needed. The Daniel Boones of our region are the ones forgotten by history.]75

With this reference to those who “served” Escandón, Zamora O’Shea appears to be

linking Tejanos to the Caddos and Lipan Apache, who are known to have aided the

Spanish explorer in his journey through Nuevo Santander. Though, unlike the “Daniel

Boones” of Anglo folklore, these Native Americans are not mentioned in the popular

versions of history. With this rebuke, Zamora O’Shea forced Castañeda to rethink the

32

claims he had made about the Valley’s first settlers. Three paragraphs later, she closed

her letter with a cunning reminder to her “Apreciable Amigo” [Dear Friend], saying,

“Usted ha sido una bendicion a la parte de historia que depende de datos verdaderos, y no

dudo de con el tiempo pueda sacar en limpio todo lo que han obscurecido otras

historiadores” [You have been a blessing on the part of history that depends on true facts,

and I don’t doubt that with time you can correct all that other historians have obscured].76

Using a classic rhetorical strategy to shift the blame away from Castañeda and place it on

“other historians,” Zamora O’Shea still reminded the librarian of his responsibility to

correct the mistakes that other scholars had left behind. Adamant about the settlers who

lived in the Valley before Escandón’s arrival, Zamora O’Shea was relentless in her

pursuit of establishing a pre-Anglo Tejano presence.

To demonstrate just how far back Tejano existence dated in south Texas, Zamora

O’Shea used her novel to paint a clear picture of the complex society they had developed,

long before people like Escandón came along. From the beginning of El Mesquite, she

shows their intricate knowledge of the land, indicating their longstanding experience with

the environment and the resources it provided. For example, she fills her first chapter

with numerous references to Native American and Spanish expertise with the

surrounding plants. Detailing the flora of the different seasons, she writes,

[A] little later come large, pansy-like flowers which grow from bulbs, and which the Indians gather in large quantities, and use against snake bites. They call these bulbs “huaco,” and they chew them with great relish. I can also see in the distance the white blossoms of the sentinal plant, which the Spaniards gave a new name. They call it “Spanish Dagger,” perhaps because it is so sharp. The Indians use the young shoots of the sentinal

75 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931, translation found in González, 86. 76 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931.

33

plant as food. They make a fire, bury these shoots in the ashes, and cook them. Then they peel off the scorched parts and eat the centers. They must be good for they collect them in large numbers. Some of the men with the Fathers found some of the fruit from these sentinal plants already ripe and ate them, saying they were like dates.

One of the Fathers found some of my gum, sap that flows out through my bark, and he, the Father, said it was as good as “gum arabic.” As I have not seen this substance I can not tell.77

With such detailed descriptions, Zamora O’Shea shows off her own knowledge of plant

life, as well as that held by the Spanish and Indian people of the past. Including plant

names, uses, and methods of preparation, she demonstrates the vast amount of

information these early Valley residents had about their environment. As literary critic

Leticia Garza-Falcón writes, leaving “a lasting impression of the presence and valuable

knowledge possessed by her own community of ancestors prior to Anglo settlement

appears to have been her primary intention.”78 Zamora O’Shea continues to intersperse

this plant information throughout her novel, mentioning the “Mexquitamal” cakes the

Indians make out of mesquite beans, and the fields of corn and hay the Spanish cultivate

for food and animal feed.79 With descriptions like these, she paints a clear picture of the

people she referred to in her letter to Castañeda, who had helped “serve” Escandón and

“furnish [the] provisions that he and his party needed.”80

The attention to the land that Zamora O’Shea exhibits throughout her novel

solidifies nature as what Garza-Falcón calls a “partner with human history, offering

particular insight as to how it was possible for the environment to witness, house, and

77 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 5-6. 78 Garza-Falcón, xxxvii. 79 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 14, 18. 80 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931.

34

sustain change.”81 That is, by giving such attention to the plants and animals that had

occupied the landscape for centuries, Zamora O’Shea created a sense of change over

time, making nature the bystander that merely marked and observed the transformations

that humans wrought.82 This focus on transformation and interdependence, Garza-Falcón

writes, appealed to America’s fascination with nature, which had become apparent in the

1920s and early 1930s with the publication of bestsellers like Opal Whiteley’s The

Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow (1920) and Walter Prescott Webb’s The Great

Plains (1931).83

Capitalizing on the appeal of the genre, Zamora O’Shea sought to attest to the

longstanding existence of Tejanos in south Texas by including even more details of a

sophisticated society. Once again illustrating their advancement and expertise, she gives

meticulous descriptions of the animals they raised, buildings they constructed, and

technology they employed as part of their ranching lifestyle. For example, once the

Garcia family settles near el Palo Alto, Zamora O’Shea writes of the oxen they use to pull

carts, the duck and geese feathers they use for pillows, and the chicken, pigs, and cattle

they raise for the eggs, lard, meat, tallow, and hides that they provide.84 She mentions the

pack mules and horses they use to transport goods, as well as the cheese the women make

from the milk cows their family raises.85 To store this food and house their animals, they

build cabins and corrals, and for themselves, they first build the “Garcia Mansion,”

81 Garza-Falcon, xxxvi. 82 Indeed, the clearest example of Zamora O’Shea using this strategy lies in her choice of making her narrator a tree, which acts as a mere witness that can see and hear what takes place around it but has no ability to converse with those who pass by. 83 Garza-Falcón, xxxvii. 84 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 12, 21, 22, 46. 85 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 25, 27.

35

constructed out of a wooden frame, rock walls, and a thatched roof. It is complete with

windows that have bars made from branches “smoothed and fitted tightly” into them.86

For the next generation, the Garcias build a “new and large house made of stone” and dig

a well “lined…with logs so that the earth won’t cave in and ruin [it].”87 Finally, in one of

the wells, they construct a windmill, which they use to draw water and grind corn.88 With

all these details, Zamora O’Shea illustrates a society with domesticated animals, modern

buildings, and sophisticated technology, all of which the Tejanos had developed during

the early eighteenth century. With a depiction like this, she paints a picture of the “Daniel

Boones of our region,” who, she had complained to Castañeda, had always been

“forgotten by history.”89 After pushing historians to acknowledge that these Tejano

pioneers had existed, she used her novel to go one step further and illustrate just how

advanced their communities were.

Zamora O’Shea continued to insert evidence of a Tejano pre-history, not only by

insisting that these Tejano communities had existed and developed knowledge of the land

and sophisticated societies, but also by showing their communication with populations in

other parts of the continent. This comes out in a letter she wrote one month after her

missive about those who aided Escandón. Once again calling on Castañeda to help her

make a correction, she wrote the following:

Mi objeto en establecer la residencia de nuestra gente en el sur de Texas antes de la venida de La Salle es que aqui en Dallas vive una Señorita que va a dar al publico una especie de historia titulada THE BIRTH OF TEXAS. Yo quisiera con todo mi corazon poder probar que Texas estaba

86 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 6, 17. 87 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 31, 15. 88 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 39. 89 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931.

36

poblada y tenia medios de comunicacion con otras partes de Norte America antes de la venida de La Salle. [My objective in establishing the residence of our people in south Texas before the arrival of La Salle is that here in Dallas lives a woman who is going to release to the public a sort of history titled THE BIRTH OF TEXAS. I would like with all my heart to be able to prove that Texas was settled and had modes of communication with other parts of North America before the arrival of La Salle.]90

The film to which Zamora O’Shea refers is the same one she describes in a letter five

months later as showing her ancestors as “truly brutish.”91 To counter this image, she was

desperate to prove the sophisticated existence of “her people” before French explorer

Robert de La Salle’s arrival in Texas in 1685. This time, to demonstrate the complexity

of Tejano settlement, she did not want to show the extent of their knowledge or

development of the land, but rather, their communication with other parts of the

continent. If she could show that they had an established trade economy, she believed,

she could overturn their uncivilized portrayal. She knew, however, that she could not

overturn this image all on her own; she needed Castañeda’s help. In the next paragraph,

she went on to write that “Una persona como usted que tiene a su alcance la biblioteca

puede hacer uso de [los datos] y no se le disputa su palabra…Yo estoy segura que usted

puede establecer la verdad sin dificultad” [A person like you who has the library close at

hand can make use of the information and your word will not be disputed…I am sure that

you can establish the truth without difficulty].92 Here she enlists Castañeda, who had both

library access and the respect of the public, to use the tools at his disposal to set the

record straight. Knowing the power he held due to his place in the academic world,

90 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 16 November 1929. 91 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 28 April 1930.

37

Zamora O’Shea insisted he use it to fix the incorrect facts that had led to such unfair

interpretations of Tejano existence.

To provide support for this reading of Tejanos as having a deep-rooted trade

economy, Zamora O’Shea, once again, turned to her novel. Here she shows the Garcia

family exchanging corn and horses with “Indians from across the river” for their buffalo

skins, as well as making trips across “the great river” to obtain other goods.93 One

summer, the men who had traveled return with their carts full of supplies they had

brought from “the country to the south of the Great River.”94 In the spring of another

year, Señora Garcia makes a list of items she would like her son to procure:

[She] wants dress goods for the girls, mantillas, laces, perfumes, linens, silks, and buttons, hooks, stays, and many other things. The sizes of the girls’ feet are on different papers so that he can bring them shoes. She has instructed him to have some new clothes made for himself, and a new suit for his father. As they will go as far south as Queretaro in Mexico, he can make all the purchases there. She also wants a new spinning wheel, some wool and cotton carders, and a small loom. He must not forget to bring back some copper kettles, and some iron pots. Also a set of English chinaware.95

With such an extensive list, we see the Tejanos’ extensive system of commerce. What is

more, unlike the “brutish” depiction of them presented in The Birth of Texas, the people

we see here have polished tastes, to say the least, requesting items ranging from laces and

fine silks to dress suits and English chinaware.96

92 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 16 November, 1929. 93 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 18-19, 21. 94 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 22. 95 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 25. 96 Paredes confirms the trade economy that existed in the Rio Grande Valley, writing that “Intercourse with central Mexico, and with other frontier colonies, was a regular feature of early life. From our jet-age point of view, this commerce proceeded at a snail’s pace, but it was lively enough for the tempo of the times. There is no reason to believe that the frontier provinces were any more isolated from Mexico City than were many other areas in south and central Mexico” (4).

38

While such a refined picture of Tejano life may seem romanticized, such nostalgia

for what literary critic Genaro Padilla calls an “earlier cultural configuration” was

actually a coded way for Zamora O’Shea to voice her opposition to displacement.97

Padilla points out that such rosy portrayals, common in Mexican American narratives,

could still function as forms of resistance because, even though they romanticized the

Spanish colonial past, they still created “rather complex and powerful narrative

articulations of self and culture that opposed the Anglo-American hegemony.”98 That is,

by shifting the lens away from narratives of Anglo power and influence, these depictions

of a harmonious Tejano past worked as “oppositional response[s] to displacement” in

their own way.99

But the ultimate revision Zamora O’Shea made to the existing historical record

had not to do with early Tejano existence or their communication with other cultures, but

rather with the disruption and disorder that Anglo pioneers caused upon arrival. In

contrast to people like Pennybacker, who claimed that Stephen F. Austin had brought

“true settlement” to Texas, or Walter Prescott Webb, who claimed that Sam Houston’s

arrival had led to the “orderly occupancy” and “American civilization” of the region,

Zamora O’Shea understood Anglo settlement to be purely destructive.100 She makes this

apparent in her novel when, after eight chapters of a harmonious existence between

Tejanos, Native Americans, and the land, the Yankees arrive, and the last three chapters

tell of all the damage that they do. One paragraph after the tree states that “many Yankees

97 Padilla, x. 98 Padilla, 21. 99 Padilla, x.

39

are coming into Texas to settle,” it also notes that “Every man goes with guns now,”

marking the tensions and violence the Anglos brought.101 As noted by literary scholar

John González, it was with the coming of the Anglos that “racial violence and hatred took

root in south Texas.”102

Perhaps the most striking force of destruction that the Anglos bring in Zamora

O’Shea’s novel is an invention that Garza-Falcón refers to as “the ultimate symbol of

‘progress.’”103 Yet O’Shea casts this progressive symbol also as one of destruction,

introducing it into the novel, literally, with a crash. As the tree explains in the final

chapter of the novel:

There was a train wreck today. I heard the men who came by later in the day say that the engine had run off the track. Nobody was killed, they said, but the fireman was scalded. Horses used to run away with riders, oxen would get mad and hook some with their horns, but they were slow, and they had to get something else to go faster. Now that they have it these engines run off the tracks and scald the firemen. Well, I guess that is the way of everything.104

Noting the physical harm that has come with the progression from slow-moving horses

and oxen to the fast-moving railroad, the tree surrenders itself to such scenes of

detriment, referring to this inevitable shift as simply “the way of everything.” With this,

the tree casts the changes wrought by the railroad as an expected development, an

unavoidable transformation that has come with the passing of time. Wary of this

transformation, the tree knows it can do nothing to change it, and so it simply resigns

100 Pennybacker quoted in González, 81. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1935), 10 and 1965 edition, 216. 101 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 56. 102 González, 90. 103 Garza-Falcón, li. 104 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 76.

40

itself to the power of this new modern invention. And it is this invention that ultimately

leads to the tree’s demise, as el Palo Alto lies in the path of the railroad and is set to be

cut down. With the railroad, then, Zamora O’Shea highlights the destructive quality of

the new settlers’ arrival.105

Zamora O’Shea continues this theme of Anglo disruption in the final chapters of

El Mesquite, in which the tree observes more violence and theft brought about by the

“many Yankees” who have come to the surrounding lands.106 El Palo Alto tells us that

“all kinds of fighting” have broken out, and the “stock is in constant danger.”107 Tejano

men who return from fighting in the Civil War find that “their cattle had been stolen,

their lands appropriated, their houses burned.”108 Cattle rustling becomes a prominent

issue when the tree tells us that “Hundreds of men [start] butchering cattle as they had the

buffaloes, just for their hides. I have seen many men, under my shade cry for the loss of

their hard-earned stock.”109 Placing this heavy emphasis on the losses Tejanos suffered,

in terms of both land and property, Zamora O’Shea recast the Anglo entrance as one of

cruel and ruthless confiscation.

105 Indeed, John González notes the changes the railroad brought to south Texas, writing that “Not until the completion of the St. Louis, Texas and Mexico Railroad into Brownsville in 1904 did the Texas-Mexican communities of the lower Rio Grande Valley experience such a complete transformation of everyday life. The arrival of the railroad in the valley not only ended the region’s economic isolation, but also foretold the end of a Mexican way of life on the border that had endured for over fifty years after the U.S. annexation” (15). 106 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 56. 107 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 59. 108 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 62. 109 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 63. Indeed, cattle theft was a problem and did result in what historian David Montejano calls the “Skinning Wars” of the 1870s. “Because of a surplus of cattle,” he writes, “beef prices had dropped sharply, making the meat of the cow practically worthless” (53). The hides, however, were still valuable, and so the skinning raids began on both sides of the Texas-Mexican border. Like Zamora O’Shea, Montejano also blamed Anglos for their destructive acts, writing that “Anglo outlaws from Corpus Christi raided the Mexican ranches, killing every adult male, burning ranch buildings and stores, and driving the Mexican ranchers away from the Upper Nueces area” (53).

41

Thus, while other historians had interpreted the Anglo arrival as bringing

democracy and industrialization to south Texas, Zamora O’Shea told a different story. As

noted by Garza-Falcón, Zamora O’Shea criticized the loss of dignity to landowners and

peones brought by “democracy,” which actually “result[ed] in dispossession—from the

land and from civil rights—of the Texas Mexican.”110 And so, rather than extolling the

virtues of “civilization” and progress the Anglos brought, as historians like Pennybacker

and Webb did, Zamora O’Shea, instead, mourned the violence, destruction, and theft that

ultimately displaced and disenfranchised her Tejano people.

This revision of what the Anglo arrival brought with it was part of Zamora

O’Shea’s larger revision of when settlement in south Texas had begun. With all of these

corrections that she urged Castañeda to make, as well as her own depictions of early

Texas life, she sought to “prove,” as she put it in her letter of 1931, “what had been put in

doubt about the first settlers of the Valley.”111 Correcting people like Pennybacker,

Webb, and even sometimes Castañeda, she insisted on reading the record a new way,

giving it what historian Michel Rolph-Trouillot would call a new “retrospective

significance.”112 From the facts of Escandón’s travels, she read indications of a

longstanding Tejano presence in south Texas, which she used her historical novel to

illustrate in great detail. She showed how “her people” had been the “Daniel Boones” of

the region, learning how to live off the land and its resources, while also constructing a

complex society, marked by their intricate knowledge of the land, as well as their

advanced buildings, domesticated animals, and sophisticated technology. She even

110 Garza-Falcón, xlix. 111 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 27 February 1931.

42

attested to the bustling trade economy of her ancestors, arguing that they were in contact

with other parts of the continent, and showing as much with the goods that her Garcia

characters exchange. Finally, Zamora O’Shea made her greatest revision to the historical

record by offering a new reading of the effects of Anglo migration. Rather than showing

Anglo settlers to be the carriers of democracy and civilization, she revealed the violence,

destruction, and essential disruption that they carried out. With all of these readings,

Zamora O’Shea ultimately set out to shift the view of when Texas history had begun. By

showing a complex Tejano civilization that was dismantled by the Anglo arrival, Zamora

O’Shea inserted what had been until that point, and in some ways continues to be, an

overlooked component of the Texas past.

112 Trouillot, 26.

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Conclusion

At the end of El Mesquite, el Palo Alto, the narrator that has told the story of

Tejano settlement and civilization in the Nueces Strip, is silenced. Lying in the path of

the coming railroad, it is set to be cut down, putting an end to all the stories it contains of

the Tejano ranchers and peon laborers who have passed by. The tree learns of its fate

when it is visited by Anita Garcia, a descendant of the original ranch family that settled

near the tree centuries before. The year is close to 1900, and Anita has just moved to

Agua Dulce, the town near the tree and the old Garcia ranch, where she will be the new

schoolteacher. Having heard about el Palo Alto from her ancestors, she pays it a visit, the

site of it bringing tears to her eyes. Feeling a strong attachment to the tree, she continues

to visit it frequently, until one day, she meets the surveying party that is marking the

ground for the coming railroad. With quiet resignation, the tree tells of the exchange it

overhears between the young schoolteacher and the workmen:

[Anita] watched them as they surveyed the road bed. Then asked if I would be cut down.

When she was informed that I was right on the path of the road, she asked if she could bring her camera and take a picture of me.

Today they cleared all the brush about my roots.113

The tree does not comment on its imminent demise, but one can perceive its acquiescent

tone, as it knows it has no power to resist the changes that are about to take place. In the

next paragraph, we read of Anita taking photographs of the tree, documenting the

landmark that paid witness to her ancestors’ settlement. When one of the workmen asks

113 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 79.

44

why she wants the pictures, she responds by going to her saddlebag and “[drawing]

away,” the tree explains,

some old papers. They were sketches of a tree. One of the papers was held up by the men as he compared it to me,

and I saw myself as I appeared to my first master, Don Rafael Garcia, as he stood under me while he examined the best site for his home. Written under the sketch was the inscription—

Palo Alto, 1575.114

And so, Zamora O’Shea ends her novel with this final image of the tree, drawn centuries

before.

This closing scene of the novel is indicative of the feelings Zamora O’Shea had

towards the social and political changes in south Texas at the time of El Mesquite’s

release. For the quiet sorrow the tree expresses at the building of the railroad mirrors

Zamora O’Shea’s own sense of loss at Tejano displacement. But, unlike the tree, which

was powerless to stop the destructive force from being built, Zamora O’Shea did not

resign herself to the disruptive changes that Anglo settlers had brought. Rather, she used

her writing to resist displacement and make the voices of her ancestors heard. Writing

their stories into her novel, she inserted their history into the Texas past.

What is more, she inserted herself into the novel as well, in the form of the

schoolteacher, Anita, who, now that the tree is set to be cut down, holds all of the

narrative power. With the two representations of the tree, the photographs and the sketch,

now in Anita’s hands, this schoolteacher has full control over how the tree’s stories will

be told. Considering Zamora O’Shea’s own teaching background, the power she gives to

Anita suggests the power she believed lay in education as the foremost method of

114 O’Shea, El Mesquite, 80.

45

propagating history. For, as the one who has contact with future generations, the teacher

has the unique opportunity to shape and interpret the information that gets passed on.

Working daily with young students, she has the ability to help them challenge and

question old ways of thinking. Thus by placing herself in her text, Zamora O’Shea used

her novel to mimic her own situation: the tree, like her ancestors, has been silenced and

so Anita, like Zamora O’Shea, must pass its stories on. As an educator and writer,

Zamora O’Shea clearly deemed it her responsibility to explain and interpret the “true

stories” of the Texas past.

As shown throughout this report, Zamora O’Shea dedicated her life to telling this

new version of the past. In her letters to Castañeda, she insisted that the librarian take

Tejano viewpoints into account and use them to present a more even-handed view of

Texas settlement. Supplying him with “proof” of early Tejano existence, based on her

family’s oral histories, she persistently pushed to have these accounts entered into the

historical record. And in her own novel, she made Tejano characters the only ones who

speak, inserting the stories, speeches, folktales and songs of the peones and ranch family

members. By placing these voices into her novel, Zamora O’Shea worked to uncover an

important version of history that, as a schoolteacher for twenty-three years, she knew had

been notably absent.

In addition to these voices, Zamora O’Shea used her work to insert a pre-history,

moving back the date of when Texas settlement had begun. In both her letters and her

novel, one can see the great attention she gave to proving a Tejano presence in and

knowledge of the land, long before Anglo settlers arrived. Painting a complex picture of

early ranching life, with domesticated animals, modern buildings, and sophisticated

46

technology, she illustrated the Tejano civilization that, at the time her novel was written,

she knew had existed centuries before. Furthermore, she offered a new reading of the

effects that Anglo pioneers had on south Texas life, showing the disruptive and

destructive consequences of their arrival.

In this way, Zamora O’Shea did all she could to correct the Anglocentric version

of history that she knew was being told. Even in 1942, at the age of sixty-two, and seven

years after the publication of her novel, she still worked to enter Tejano accounts into the

official record. Writing to Castañeda, she offered him two books from her family library,

explaining that, “Mis hijos no tienen interes en esta clase de libros y cuando yo pase al

mas aya van a ser de sobra” [My children aren’t interested in these kinds of books, and

when I pass on, they will be left over].115 Worried that not even her own children would

be concerned with their Tejano heritage, she presented her books to the one person who

she thought might find a place for them.

What is striking is that attempts like Zamora O’Shea’s are still needed today, as

many curriculum writers and politicians still have a lack of interest in minority histories.

Figures like César Chávez are still pushed to the margins, leaving a depiction of a country

where only whites have power. Therefore, just as it was important for Zamora O’Shea to

draw Tejano figures out of the periphery and make their voices heard, so is it important

for us to continue to draw such figures out today. For by not doing so, and thus allowing

the continued removal of these figures from history, educators and authors erase the

power and agency that minority leaders have wielded in their struggle to be recognized as

full participants in the democracy of the United States. We must continue to tell their

47

stories of struggle against the dominant power structures of American society so that we

can have a better understanding of how power works and operates. For it is only by being

conscious of how power is distributed that we can ensure that America is, indeed, as Walt

Whitman wrote, “the nation of many nations, the smallest the same, and the largest the

same.”116

115 O’Shea, letter to Castañeda, 6 December 1942. 116 Whitman, 40.

48

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 16 November 1929. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 28 April 1930. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda Papers,

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 22 July 1930. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda Papers,

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 3 February 1931. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 27 February 1931. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. Ca. March 1931. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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51

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______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. Ca. February 1939. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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ca. 1920-1960 (bulk 1920-1958), Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin.

______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 6 December 1942. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

Papers, ca. 1920-1960 (bulk 1920-1958), Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin.

______. Letter to Carlos E. Castañeda. 21 January 1948. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda

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53

Vita

Natasha Miller Pasternack was born in Greenbrae, California. She received a

Bachelor of Arts in History and Literature from Harvard University in 2003 and enrolled

in the American Studies program at The University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Like her

friend and fellow-scholar Marian, she is a bright and shining star.

Permanent email: tashapasternack@yahoo.com

This report was typed by the author.