The End of Texas

The End of Texas

  Or How Indigenous Mexicans Had Something Different to Say About a “Republic of Texas”

  By Juan Batista

  Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved by Author

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: The Governor Flirts With Secession

  Chapter 2: The Governor Pals Around With Terrorists

  Chapter 3: Another Resolution Passes

  Chapter 4: Carlos Guerrero Editorial

  Chapter 5: Rally at the Alamo

  Chapter 6: The Militias Rally

  Chapter 7: Standoff

  Chapter 8: Alamodome Convention

  Chapter 9: El Paso and Austin Conventions

  Chapter 10: What a Difference

  Chapter 11: The Final Breakaways?

  Chapter 12: Would It Work?

  Appendix I: Rio Grande Constitution

  Appendix II: Pecos Constitution

  Appendix III: Constitution of the City-State of Austin

  Appendix IV: West Texas Constitution

  Appendix V: Proposed Constitution for Adelsverein

  Appendix VI: Charts

  Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes

  Notes

  Coming from Juan Batista

  Coahuila y Tejas

  Texas Republic Claims & Reality

  1. Area of Sporadic Control & Ethnic Cleansing by Anglo-American Proslavery Insurgency

  2. Territory & People Remaining Loyal to Mexico, Claimed by Insurgents But With No Actual Control Whatsoever.

  The End of Texas

  Introduction

  A Little History: No Lies, No Bull, Just Straight Facts

  All of this introduction, all the events and facts, are true. All portions of the book describing events prior to the secession speech are true. Every word in this book about Texas history, people, culture, politics, and government are absolutely true, scrupulously researched, and beyond doubt, no matter how much people devoted to the myths surrounding Texas might wish to think otherwise.

  The entire first and second chapters in particular are also true, with the exception of some small parts of Governor Rick Perry’s speech and the responses to it. Those parts which have been altered are indicated by italics.

  All of the events and facts in the remainder of this book could have come true. They came very close to being true, and would have become true with just very slight changes. This book could have come true just by Governor Perry doing some things which have become signatures of his, a careless slip of the tongue followed by obstinately insisting he is right when confronted with evidence he is clearly wrong, and refusing to back down or admit to being wrong.

  All of the facts and events in this book, prior to the pivotal change of the aftermath of Rick Perry’s now infamous speech approving, with a wink and a nudge, the idea of secession and treason against the United States, are true. Unlike most books on Texas, both fact and fiction, they have not been altered or rewritten to fit with foolishly romanticized notions about the origins or Texas or the mythology built about around some of its archetypical characters like cowboys, Rangers, and indeed “Texans.”

  Rick Perry does not deserve to be the primary villain of this book, and in fact he is not. He is just a posturing buffoon with no deep seated beliefs who changes positions on issues even more than the Clintons. The primary villains of this book are various organizations of traitors residing in the state of Texas, some of them violent, some of them racist, some of them simply deluded or ignorant of what they think they know. Many of them are now former supporters of Rick Perry, as some of the rants quoted at the end of Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes make clear. But Perry sought out their support, used them to build himself a greater base by pandering to their contemptible beliefs before later abandoning and angering them.

  It was pure luck Perry’s support from such extremists did not explode in his face. His association with such traitors and dangerous terrorists may yet become a liability in the near future. (Yes, it is true, and I will say it. Rick Perry, a man who would be president, was truly “palling around with terrorists,” unlike the baseless and utterly ridiculous charge once made against our current president. Yet while not many Republicans and conservatives voted for Perry because of his bumbling, most still will make excuses for his ties to terrorists. In some narrow little minds, whites can’t be terrorists, only Arabs.)

  Rick Perry is far more foolhardy than he is evil. He is just another very ambitious, unscrupulous, and ultimately foolish politician, skilled at very little besides (sometimes) getting himself elected, with far too much tunnel vision and too little brains. His primary foolishness is in not realizing (or caring) how he could have unleashed some very disastrous events.

  There is a long strain of secessionism/treason in Texas history. Texas itself was founded in secessionism and would never have come into being if it were not for this strain (I’m tempted to say “stain”) of thought.

  Texas was born because a group of immigrants, some legal, some illegal, including some who were downright criminals and terrorists of the lowest sorts, decided to take over their new adopted land, a place that had generously welcomed them, even offering them handouts and public assistance. But that wasn’t enough. They refused to follow the law (specifically, the ban on slavery) and lashed out angrily with criminal and treasonous actions.

  Did I mention those ungrateful, traitorous immigrants were Anglo-Americans, the very same ones held up as all-American heroes? They had been invited in as immigrants by Mexico’s government, and to thank the Mexican nation, they tried to take over and impose their ways on others by violence and terrorism. They are the ones widely hailed in Texas history as heroes and founding fathers.

  Anyone doubting that the founders of Texas were racist terrorists should go right now to Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes. Founders they were, but many of them were far from being heroic. Jim Bowie, supposed hero of the Battle of the Alamo, was that most despicable of human beings, a slave trader. The second president of the “Texas Republic,” Mirabeau Lamar, was a vicious racist of the worst sort, downright genocidal towards American Indians, leading extermination efforts against even the friendliest tribes like the Caddo, Cherokee, and Shawnee. The only one of the insurgent leaders with occasional decency was Sam Houston.

  As for the most famous “Texan,” Davy Crockett…well, he wasn’t really a Texan at all. He had only been in Texas a few weeks when he got himself and his hapless followers trapped at the Alamo by mistake, getting himself captured and then executed after the battle. By some accounts he even tried to bargain for his life. And why not? No one could truly blame him for wanting to live, except the most fanatically blind partisan of the myths built around Texas “independence” who falsely insist he was a martyr fighting to the last for their misguided, hopeless, and terroristic cause.

  The Battle of the Alamo was probably the most ludicrous case of misguided martyrdom until Custer at Little Big Horn. In both battles, these were cases of incompetent commanders throwing away the lives of their men needlessly. In both cases, myths about the battles take aggressors and turn them into “defenders” for the sole reason that they were white and their enemies (who were defending their homelands) were not white. Cheer for the “heroes” of the Battles of Alamo and Little Big Horn and you cheer for racism and conquest, whether you know it or not, whether you understand that or not, and whether you are honest enough to admit it or not.

  Fact is, most of the “Texans” had been in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas for less than a year when they decided to commit treason and started their insurgency. Yet in history books and elsewhere, they are called “Texans” for one simple reason: Again, they were white, Anglo-Americans, or Anglos
as commonly called in the southwest. (An Anglo need not be of English ancestry and can refer to any non-Latino white person.)

  Meanwhile, the Mexicans who had been there for many generations, and the Indians who had been there for thousands of years, generally get called or are assumed by the ignorant to be “foreigners” simply because they are not white. (Often this goes hand in hand with calling them the many derogatory names for Mexican or Indian, and I fully expect many of my critics to do the exact same thing to me based solely on the last half of my pen name.) It’s the old story of racist Manifest Destiny, and of defining only whites as Texans, and thus by extension “real ‘Mericans.”

  Not only was the insurgency one of racist terrorists. The so-called “Texas Republic” was nothing of the sort, not an independent nation in any meaningful sense. It was never even intended by the insurgent leaders to be an independent nation at all. Texas was intended to become, from the very beginning of the insurgency, another American state, one which would have slavery. Texas leaders applied for admission to the US within a few days of claiming “independence” but never counted on the US President saying no. No, we don’t want you. No, we don’t want any more conflict over the expansion of slavery, a new slave state, and more slave owners.

  So Texas became a supposed “independent nation” against its will, but its insurgent leaders never even wanted to be independent anyway. And by any practical or honest standard, Texas was never an independent nation. Texas was no more an actual independent nation than Chechnya is today. And Texan insurgents were every bit as vicious, bigoted terrorists as Chechen fighters are today.

  The agreement to independence from Mexico was signed by its president/dictator, Santa Ana (pronounced “Santana” like the musician) while he was a prisoner of war. His signature, obtained by force and under duress, was not valid, and he immediately repudiated it afterwards. Santa Ana had no authority to sign away a piece of the Mexican nation anyway. Not surprisingly, Mexico’s congress never approved or ratified the agreement.

  Independence is not only self sufficiency. Independence which is not recognized by others is not true independence. No actual nations in the world recognized Texas as a nation. And why would they? Keep in mind, far from being an actual nation, it was a mostly empty huge area with only a tiny number of people in it, perhaps 30,000. Plus there were Indian tribes and Mexicans who stayed loyal to Mexico, likely outnumbering the insurgents. Most people within “Texas” certainly did not accept the mythical authority of this would-be nation. Contrary to the fantasies of mythmakers, the US never sent ambassadors to Texas. The US government did send charges d’affairs, temporary agents that were just sent there to assess the situation. Some of these charge d’affairs were only in the insurgent area for as little as a few weeks.

  The one possibility, the only nation that took preliminary steps to grant recognition, was France, kind of, sort of. (Isn’t it a nice irony that the Texas Republic’s claim of independence would depend on French recognition? The French, who are despised by so many “real ‘Mericans.”) France did send an ambassador. But the French ambassador never even went to Texas, and spent all of his time in New Orleans, getting drunk and chasing women. Thus there were no diplomatic relations between the “Texas Republic” and any actual nations or governments.

  Independence does also mean self-sufficiency, but Texas didn’t have it. Its economy and government were falling apart at the seams for those brief nine years. Nations are also supposed to have control of the territory they claim. The “Texas Republic” claimed all territory between the Rio Grande, Red River, and Sabine River. This includes land that today makes up more than half of New Mexico, large parts of Colorado, and small pieces of Oklahoma, Kansas, and even Wyoming.

  Problem was, those claims weren’t anywhere close to being true. The most distant part of the claimed territory was nearly a thousand miles beyond actual control of the supposed “Texas Republic” government. Fully half of that territory or more was actually under the control of numerous Indian tribes, for whom it was their homeland as far back as anyone can trace. All of what is today the state of New Mexico stayed under Mexican government jurisdiction and, for the most part, control. Most of the Indian tribes in New Mexico, the nineteen Pueblo peoples, recognized and accepted Mexican authority, while retaining their own self-government and local control. Most what is today west Texas also accepted Mexican authority.

  The Santa Fe and El Paso areas both stayed Mexican territory until the US-Mexico War, and when the Texas military sent an expedition to try to conquer Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Expedition got lost, got their tail kicked, surrendered, were imprisoned and then got sent back humiliated and defeated, in that order. After the US conquest, El Paso and most of what is today west Texas wanted to be part of New Mexico Territory. It was only by some very undemocratic threats of military force that what is today “west Texas” became part of the new state of Texas, against their will.

  The Rio Grande Valley, what was called the Nueces Strip since it includes everything between the Rio Grande and Nueces River, also stayed under Mexican control, with its citizens staying loyal to Mexico during the entire time of the “Texas Republic.” Almost nothing west of the Balcones Escarpment (a geographic feature running from north of Dallas to south of San Antonio) was ever under “Texas Republic” control. Take a look at the second map to see the difference between what the alleged nation of the “Texas Republic” claimed and the actual reality.

  Even in the territory more or less under its supposed control, the “Texas Republic” was an ungovernable mess, an abortion that didn’t deserve to be called a government or nation. Mexico sent several armies north that sometimes succeeded in reestablishing control for periods of time. The territory was so huge it would have taken a large army to control it. But the main reason Mexico did not permanently reassert control was that its ruling classes were selfish elites more preoccupied with holding onto their own privilege than the good of Mexico. They kept fighting amongst themselves with little concern for how they wreaked havoc on their own nation, and did so for most of the first half century of Mexico’s existence. A Mexican nation that had won its independence under a populist leader such as Hidalgo or Morelos, compared to crass and opportunistic elitist leaders like Iturbide and Santa Anna, would never have lost Texas or the rest of the southwest to the US.

  The “Texas Republic” could not do the most basic parts of governing at all. It was broke and in debt, its economy a shambles the entire nine years of “independence.” Its money was nearly worthless. The seat of “government” bounced around from one tiny town to another. Much of its military was a joke, the army building up and then being dissolved again when the congress couldn’t find money or agree to pay them. Often commanders ignored orders from civilian leaders.

  The Texas Rangers? Contrary to fantasies of Chuck Norris and others, they were notoriously poor fighters infamous for most often attacking the innocent and the helpless and often making volatile situations worse, and then being bailed out by the regular army (and after statehood, by the US Army.) Also, take note, Mr. Norris: The Rangers were notoriously racist and excluded minorities for almost all of their history. There are actually more minority Texas Rangers in Norris's films and TV show than in real life. Having clueless token minorities play the sidekick to the Great White Ranger you always play on your television show and films does not change that.

  The Texas Navy was the worst of all. It was more Keystone Cops than a military force. Tiny, never numbering more than six ships, they usually confined themselves to attacking civilian vessels in the manner of pirates, rather than military service. On several occasions they hired themselves out as mercenaries, and held ships and their crews for ransom. But the navy commanders were so incompetent, they kept sinking their own ships! There were two separate groups of ships called the Texas Navy, and most of the ships ran aground or wound up at the bottom of the ocean.

  (Actually, not the entire navy sank. One of them, the
Liberty, was seized by debt collectors. Seriously. One can’t make up such bad comedy.)

  The one thing the “Texas Republic” could do (sporadically) was nothing anyone would be proud of except the most hardened racists. The insurgents carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, outright extermination or genocide. The Texas Army ethnically cleansed Texas of nearly all its Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians. It did this even though all four tribes had been on friendly terms with the new colonists. The Delaware and Shawnee had even been allies of Texans up to then, acting as scouts for the Texas military, Texas Rangers, and Anglo civilians.

  The worst fate of all befell the Tonkawa. After some Anglos in the city of Goliad stole Tonkawa horses, some Tonkawa retaliated by robbing a few Anglos in turn. So Goliad’s Anglo population proposed outright genocide, killing every last Tonkawa to the last man. And they nearly succeeded. Driven near the city of Bastrop, and very few in numbers, they turned to begging or hiring out as manual farm labor to survive.

  Texas, much like the US, was often dishonorable and broke its treaties with Native tribes. The first President of Texas, Sam Houston tried to make treaties with most of the tribes. But his successor, Mirabeau Lamar, was a butcher favoring the genocidal tactics of extermination or removal. The last tribe to feel the wrath of the brutal “Texas Republic” was the Lipan Apache. Texas signed a treaty with them in 1838. By 1842, the treaty terms had been repeatedly broken, and most were driven to Mexico. Some Apache found refuge with the Mexican population, with whom they intermarried.

  As for the Mexican population, the Battles at the Alamo and Goliad turned a war for supposed independence into a race war. “Remember the Alamo!” became an excuse for hatred and violence towards all Mexicans. (The same is often true with how the battle is remembered today.) In 1836, Mexicans in the town of Victoria were expelled after the Battle of San Jacinto. All Mexicans in the city of Goliad were also robbed and driven out by the Texas Army. From to 1836 to 1838, all Mexicans living in the city of Nacogdoches were either driven out or killed. In San Antonio, the Mexican population was much larger. But still, Mayor Juan Seguin reported Mexican requests for protection from violent Anglo racists “every hour of every day.” In 1842, over 150 Mexican families fled San Antonio after the Somervell Expedition, a mix of the Texas military with vigilantes, pledged to kill every Mexican they could find and committed mass rapes of Mexican women and girls.

  As was once said in an editorial, written after the standoff with the so called Republic of Texas militia group, “Texas Republic-Not a Good Idea Then or Now.” The “Texas Republic” was an aborted effort by racist terrorists of the most vicious sort. After nine years of failure, finally along came an American president who was happy to have another slave state. The failing “Texas Republic” was glad to be rescued.

  (Things had gotten desperate enough that Sam Houston even proposed Texas join the British Empire. If Houston had succeeded, it would make for an interesting alternate history. A Texas with many Indians from India, likely brought in to replace slave labor since the British had outlawed slavery in their empire. But that would have meant the end of power for the plantation slave owners, which is why Houston had little support on this.)

  A false image of Texas and Texans would be built up over time for the next century and a half. It’s an image which whitewashes and sanitizes the past, denies, justifies, or even glorifies that ethnic cleansing and terrorism. Texas’s Native tribes would suffer the worst of it. Today there are only three tiny tribes in Texas, all of them at the edges of the state. The rest were forcibly removed and almost wiped out. Texas’s Mexican population were nearly as badly treated, often forced off their lands, killed or abused by racists, but kept around as a marginal exploited cheap source of labor. Other minorities would suffer similarly, but the popular image of Texas either ignores that or downplays it, or in the worst cases even celebrates it.

  We all know that popular image of Texas; cowboys, cowboy boots, hats, belt buckles, guns, horses, cattle, rodeos, violence, hard drinking, country music, pickup trucks, and wide open spaces and oil wells are all central to the image. Supposedly Texans are very independent minded and self-sufficient, so many often think of Texas as deeply conservative in both their political and religious beliefs and society.

  But the real Texas is nothing like the fake popular image. The real Texas is quite different from what many of you likely think. For you see, there is much that ethnic cleansing never wiped out. There is much of Texas which is Tejano, not Texan, proudly multicultural and pluralist, not reactionary, not racist, and certainly not redneck.

  Strongly implied if not outright stated in most depictions of Texans, especially older ones from “independence” up to the Civil Rights Era, is that a true Texan is a white male. A Texan is not simply a white male, but very much a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), the strongest possible expression of Anglo-Saxon manhood and Protestant virtue. A Texan, by default, is assumed to be a WASP male, and all other Texans require modifiers, Texan woman, Black Texan, etc. Even a Native Texan is assumed to mean a white Texan, rather than a Native American Texan.

  Other aspects of who is or is not “truly” Texan extend to beliefs and lifestyle. A liberal Texan would be assumed to need a qualifier for being supposedly atypical, for example, since political and social conservatism is assumed to be part of what is “truly” Texan. The same is true for non-Christian Texans, though Texas is not short of them.

  The real Texas include large numbers of American Indians, Asians (including South Asians and Middle Easterners), Blacks, Latinos, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and an amazing variety of faiths. Keep in mind we are not talking small groups. Absolutely every one of the above groups named number in at least the hundreds of thousands in Texas. Latinos in the state alone number almost ten million.

  There are also more than 800,000 Asian-Americans in Texas. Chinese communities in Texas go back almost to the Gold Rush. Asian Lunar New Year, Dragon Boat Festivals, Moon Festivals, and Red Egg Festivals have long been widely celebrated in Texas. Along with Asian immigrants to the state came Buddhist and Hindu beliefs, Buddhist and Hindu temples, monasteries, retreats, and yoga centers. There are hundreds of Buddhist centers of worship in at least twenty-five Texas cities, offering services in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Laotian, Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Hmong. Way back in the 1940s, Texas country music legend Ernest Tubbs performed “My Filipino Baby,” about his love for a Filipina woman, to huge cheering audiences throughout the state.

  South Asians number over 100,000 in Houston alone, and over 160,000 statewide. There is even an officially named Mahatma Gandhi District in Houston. In the city of Irving near Dallas, the South Asian population is large enough to bring the first mall in the entire nation, Everett Heights, catering to South Asians. Celebrations of Diwali, the Hindu New Year Festival, are large enough to fill the Houston convention center.

  The Middle Eastern population in Texas is large and growing, with over 65,000 in Houston alone. In a sign of the times, Farouk Shami, a Palestinian immigrant and millionaire entrepreneur, placed second in the Democratic primary for governor in 2009. One of the most Muslim places in America today is actually Houston, with twenty-two Islamic centers and mosques, and nearly 60,000 Muslims. (Houston also elected an openly lesbian mayor in 2009.) Texas has the eighth largest Islamic population of any state in the US, with about 140,000 Muslims. There are fifteen K-12 Islamic parochial schools in the state of Texas today.

  Jews have long been a central part of Texas. Adolphus Sterne, an east Texas merchant, was a financial backer of the Texas insurgency against Mexico. Another Jewish colonist, Albert Moses Levy, was the chief surgeon for the insurgent army. A number of Jews were leading colonists, the most famous being Henri Castro, the founder of the city of Castroville. The state’s first synagogue was founded in 1859, in Houston.

  Probably few things are more associated with Texas than oil. You might
think the Texas oil industry is run by Anglo-American cowboy types. Actually, Jews played a central role in the Texas oil business, including Haymann Krupp, Max Jaffe, the Rudman and Danciger families, and Charles Brachfield, first president of the East Texas Lease Royalty Owners.

  More than forty cities in Texas have had Jewish mayors. Dallas has combined local flavor with older traditions to even have a Kosher Chili Cook Off. The best known Jewish Texan today is probably Richard “Kinky” Friedman of the country music band The Texas Jewboys, with songs like “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”

  If a Jewish Texan may not fit the popular image of what is Texas, think of this: Texas actually was long a stronghold of atheists and agnostics, all the way back to the 1840s. For much of the state, the locals wanted nothing to do with organized religion and did not even build churches. Freethinkers made up much of the German immigrant population and were the majority in the German Hill Country, one-eighth of the state’s territory. Freethinkers opposed slavery, believed in racial equality and women’s rights and opposed organized religion. At one point the German colonists even planned to break away from Texas to form their own nation.

  The state also has large numbers of pagans, including people whose beliefs include a mix of Christianity with older beliefs, such as Curanderismo, the Native American Church, Santeria, and Voodoo. Many, if not most, Latinos in the state believe in or practice Curanderismo or Santeria. Given their large numbers, there are probably more pagans in Texas than all but the biggest Protestant denominations.

  Texas today is no longer a mostly white state. Texas has no racial or ethnic majority anymore, and it reached that milestone long before the rest of the US. A third of Texans do not speak English at home. (Racist fear mongers need not panic at hearing that fact. Almost all Spanish, Vietnamese, Cherokee, etc. speakers are bilingual or multilingual, unlike most of the paranoid types who fear them.) Texas is less than a generation away from have a Latino majority again.

  The most remarkable story in Texas history is the comeback of the Mexican population, in spite of the early efforts at ethnic cleansing, in spite of a long history of facing deep hatred and widespread discrimination, and in spite of the current hatemongering atmosphere created by anti-immigrant groups and other racists, none of whom seem to realize Mexican Equals Indian. A Mexican is usually a Spanish speaking Indian, or of mixed American Indian ancestry or heritage, and thus cannot be an “immigrant” and especially not an “illegal” one. By any reasonable standard, Mexicans have far more right to be in Texas than any of the ignorant types who hate them.

  The popular image of Texas, then, not only is not true now, it never was entirely true. Texas went from entirely American Indians, to Natives plus mestizos (mixedblood people) under Spain and then Mexico, to mostly but far from exclusively Anglo for less than a century and a half. The state is returning now to a largely mestizo Mexican and otherwise Latino population, plus others, who are increasingly other nonwhites.

  Even the popular image of what is a typical Texan, the white cowboy, also obscures just what a typical cowboy was, and what he is today. Your typical cowboy was not John Wayne. (John Wayne was actually a white supremacist and a draft dodger, but that’s another story.) Your typical cowboy then was more likely to be American Indian, Black, or Mexican than he was to be white. Cowboy traditions were originally Mexican vaquero ways, from which we get that other word for a cowboy, buckaroo.

  Cowboys today are also quite different from the popular image. To call all or most of them ignorant racist rednecks would be equal parts wrong and insulting. The best known country singer from Texas, Willie Nelson, has long been antiwar and pro-legalizing marijuana (as well as an openly heavy user.) Nelson is one of a long line of often leftwing country artists from Texas, joined by Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, and Robert Earl Keen.

  Texas country music also crossbreeds quite a bit with another music native to the state, Tejano. One of the most common sights in Texas is crowds of cowboy-hat clad Mexican-Americans. Texas country music has even produced such wonderful demented music like cowpunk (cowboy music mixed with punk in the 1980s) and hellbilly (country and rockabilly mixed with thrash metal in the 1990s). Not for us the bland commercial pandering of cities like Nashville and Motown. Texas has more often produced dangerous radical music from artists like Big Mama Thornton, Janis Joplin, 13th Floor Elevators, Millions of Dead Cops, the Dicks, the Butthole Surfers, D.R.I., Geto Boys, Reverend Horton Heat, Union Underground, Pantera, Underground Kings and Chamillionaire, and all those left wing country singers mentioned before.

  Your typical Texan, then, is not John Wayne. Your typical Texan is from a land of Native peyotists, kosher chili cook offs, curanderos and botanicas, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, atheism, Muslim K-12 schools, and left wing white and Mexican cowboys. The popular image of Texas today as a land of staunchly conservative (or even reactionary or racist) white Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians is ludicrous at best, and becoming more untrue every day.

  But those reactionary people who live, love, and believe in the redneck image of Texas don’t die easily. They react with anger at seeing the dying of the old ways. The worst of them easily turn to violence. That’s what this novel of alternate history is about. Because Governor Rick Perry, through clumsiness, lack of thought, and his typical loudmouthed nature, almost stirred up a whirlwind he could not have controlled.

  That whirlwind could have destroyed Texas once and for all. And in some ways, that would have been a good thing. I say this as someone born, raised, and living most of my life in Texas, with a great deal of affection for the better diverse parts of the state, its people and cultures. For it would have freed the blue state (for lack of a better succinct term) parts of Texas from the domination of the dying, reactionary, red state parts of Texas. And ending the old Texas would have made all of America a better place in the process.

  And make no mistake, redneck Texans are dying out (good riddance) to be replaced by a state of multicultural Tejanos. The only question will be how redneck Texas dies.

  Enjoy.