LogFAQs > #975794584

VampireCoyote posted...

The message they overtly tried to make clear to us when I went to elementary school in Texas was that they lost the battle but in the process they killed so many Mexican soldiers that it was still a victory

pretty fucked up thing to teach kids imo

And is also fundamentally untrue. The reason that Mexico lost the war in the end was simply that Santa Anna wasn't a great general despite considering himself the Napoleon of the West. He pursued the Texans into territory familiar to them and not his troops and picked the worst possible place for his camp (over the objections of his officers) at San Jacinto and got his and his army's dick kicked in for it.

The real problem is that we don't teach the context around the conflict because it makes the Texans look assholes (they were). The whole reason the white settlers of Texas declared independence from Mexico was because Mexico had begun the process of ending slavery. The wealthy white settlers who had moved there planned to farm cotton with the slaves they had brought.

So if you had to boil it down to a good/bad guy, Mexico is the good guy. We absolutely would never teach kids that.