There exists a widely-accepted version of Texas’ long and complicated history.
Students are taught that heroes like David Crockett and William B. Travis died defending the Alamo. Their sacrifice helped Texas declare freedom and independence from the Mexican dictatorship.
But historians, activists, and educators are trying to bring to light a broader history that has fallen through the cracks of time.
The podcast Becoming Texas challenges dominant Texas myths and aims to present a more comprehensive story of Texas.
The podcast is published by Institute of Texan Cultures at the University of Texas at San Antonio and hosted by writer and documentarian John Phillip Santos.
Its first episode, “Tejano Tales,” focuses on the centuries-long struggle of Mexican American people in Texas.
Santos, a professor of Mestizo Cultural Studies at UTSA’s Honors College, said the podcast aims to broaden the scope of Texas history.
“The idea of the podcast is to take stock of new ideas, new scholarship, new imagination, new kinds of ways of approaching the spaces of South Texas,” he said, “and how they will contribute to this process of becoming a new kind of place over the next 50 [or] 100 years.”
He said it’s important to acknowledge history isn’t cut and dried — it’s always unfolding.
“The act of becoming Texas is something that’s always underway,” he said. “We never arrived at some ‘final Texas.’”
Hear the second part of the conversation with Santos on Nov. 3.
