BEFORE THE ALAMO:

A Tejana’s Story

by

Florence Byham Weinberg

Genre: Historical Fiction / Texas History

Publisher: Maywood House

Date of Publication: September 17, 2021

Number of Pages: 296 pages

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Emilia Altamirano, half Otomí Indian, half pure Spanish, is born in 1814, the year after the Battle of the Medina River, where her father fought as an officer in the Mexican Royalist Army. She grows up in Bexar de San Antonio unacknowledged by her father, raised by her Otomí Indian mother, and “adopted” as an unofficial ward by José Antonio Navarro, hero of the Texas fight for independence from Mexico. She learns to read, write, and acts as a page for the Ayuntamiento (City Council). She learns nursing during a cholera epidemic and later tends the wounded on both sides during and after the Battle of the Alamo. She survives, but as a Tejana, Spanish-speaking, and a loyal citizen of Mexico, she faces an uncertain future.

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Praise

“Yesterday, I finished Before the Alamo, figuratively gasping for breath…Thank you for a joyful experience, so helpful in this time of disillusion and anxiety.” – reader Marti Nodine

Excerpt, Chapter Two, Part Two

From Before the Alamo

By Florence Byham Weinberg

Click to read part one on Chapter Break Blog

1821

When her mother returned from cleaning the big house, she found her daughter in the jacal, curled in a fetal position on the straw mattress.

“What’s wrong, m’hija? Have you been crying?”

“Sí, Mamá. Juana and Chipita won’t let me play with them. They called me ‘slave girl.’ Why, Mamá?”

María sat on one of the two chairs by the table. “Come, hijita, sit here. Years ago, Señor Juan Andrés paid money for me in San Juan Bautista. He thinks that gives him the right to treat me as his servant. You are my child. That means you are a servant, too. That’s why they call you ‘slave.’.”

“Paid money for you, Mamá? You mean like a horse or a mule?”

“Yes, just like that. But there’s more. You don’t see Juana and Chipita playing with your other friends, do you?”

Emilia thought for a while. “No-o-o, I guess not.”

“Can you guess why?”

“Because they think they’re better than us, I guess.”

María nodded. “That’s right. And why do you think that would be?”

“They have pretty clothes to wear. And they have more money and better houses, too.”

“Yes, and one other thing.”

“What’s that, Mamá?”

“They have paler skin and hair.”

A crease appeared between Emilia’s eyes. “What difference does that make? A white horse is no better than a brown one.”

María laughed. “You’re so right, precious! But they think they are. Pale-skinned people think they are better than brown-skinned ones.”

“But that’s not true. Can’t we just tell them so?”

María shook her head slowly. “I wish it were that simple. But have you noticed who sits where in church?”

This gave Emilia her opening. “Yes. We’re always on the left side; they’re always on the right. Mamá, a few days ago, I went into the church to pray for Manuela, because she was sick.”

“Yes, and thank God she’s well again. And what happened?”

“I knelt on the right side. Father Zambrano came down from the altar and dragged me out of the pew by my ear. It hurt a lot. Still does a little.” She felt her ear, and grimaced. “He pushed me into a pew on the other side and told me that people like me had no right to pray on the right side. That was for my ‘betters.’ Then he called me a ‘coyota’ and ‘gentuza.’ He said my father should have taught me. And then…” she paused. “Then he said my father is Señor Juan Andrés…. Was he lying?”

María’s face turned to stone. She pulled Emilia into a tight embrace. Mother and child clung together, then María released her daughter, placing her hands on Emilia’s shoulders.

“This is all part of what we were just talking about, m’hija. Yes, he is your father. You are the child of his love, a ‘natural child.’ That means he loved me and showed it by making love to me when he was in terrible danger from General Arredondo. I hid him in the jacal for three days. He left in the dead of night.”

Emilia’s eyes were wide. “The ‘child of his love’? Then why is he so mean to us?”

“I’ll try to explain. I was pregnant with you—carried you in my belly—during all the months of Arredondo’s worst cruelties. After nine months, you were born.” She cupped Emilia’s chin in her hand.

“And then?” Emilia caressed her mother’s cheek.

“Then Andrés came back. Arredondo needed him to judge whether some men were to live or die.”

“And did they live?”

“Yes, he convinced the general they were not rebels.”

“But my father didn’t love you anymore?”

“You were one day old when he came back. He took you to Father Zambrano, who baptized you. Then he brought you back to me and told me he would have nothing more to do with you and would treat me as a servant.”

Emilia’s face contorted in grief. “But why, Mamá? Why?”

“It’s the world we live in, m’hija. Andrés loves us, but he can’t admit it. You see, he believes a very old lie, that white people are better than anyone else. “

With the heels of her hands, Emilia scrubbed away tears that leaked out. “I d-don’t understand, Mamá.”

“Then listen. The white people here mostly come from Spain, where darker-skinned people came from Africa. They kept coming, but white people finally drove them out. They were considered inferior. Also, any child of a white person and a dark-skinned one was considered inferior too. When white people came to the New World, they carried the same feelings.

“They call themselves Peninsulares because Spain is a peninsula. We darker people have another name for them: ‘Gachupines.’ They have rules like making all dark-skinned people sit on the left side of the church. It means the Spaniards are in a ‘better’ place than us. It means we work for them. We are servants.”

Emilia sat silent for a moment. “Yes, I know how it is, Mamá. It’s not right. At least we’re together on the left side, and we love each other and play together. But now I know who my father is, what shall I do?”

“Your father thinks his honor lies in keeping you a secret, not admitting he loved a dark-skinned woman. I know most of the town has already guessed, but everyone goes along with him because they believe the old lies. I’ve kept his secret, and so will you.”

“But since there are more of us than of them, if we stick together, we could persuade them.”

María gazed into the distance. When she spoke, her voice sounded strange to Emilia, slow and far away. “Some years ago, a priest named Miguel Hidalgo noticed that we are many and they are few. He started to make it right, but it didn’t happen then, and it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe one day.” She looked down at her daughter and stroked her hair. “Yes, maybe one day.”

Florence Byham Weinberg, born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, lived on a ranch as well as a farm and traveled with her military family during World War Two. After earning a Ph.D., she taught for 36 years in three universities. She published four scholarly books. Since retiring, she has written four books in the Pfefferkorn historical mystery series, three additional historical novels, and one philosophical fantasy/thriller. She lives in San Antonio, loves cats, dogs, horses, and conversations with great-souled friends.

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