On the Road to Monterrey

 The trip from Tennessee to Monterrey can be long and boring, unless…. You have books on CD.  They are great, makes time go by fast and they keep you entertained through the long lonely road, through traffic jams, stormy weather and even make you forget you have to stop to eat and get gas.  I listen to two murder mysteries and plan to listen to several more on the way back.

First stops:  Texas

I don't particularly like Texas.  The summer weather is bad, it is dry and dusty, I don't care for the politics and how the wealthy are walking all over the lower income people more so than any other State I drove through.  The sad part is that this status quo is accepted by everybody.  But I have some family and friends that live here, so I tolerate coming.

My first stop was to visit a cousin I had not seen in over 40 years.  She lives in Dallas, has had a hard life as a single parent but is surviving - barely.  She tried to find her fortune in the U.S. and it has been an uphill struggle and has had some bad breaks.  But she is strong, optimistic and a hard-core entrepreneur like her father - my uncle.  We practically began our conversation where we left off almost forty five years ago and didn't miss a beat.

My second stop was in San Antonio to see a friend of over thirty years.  We had a chance to catch up on each other's lives and had some great food at the lowest price possible.  Being retired he showed me the best places to eat great food in San Antonio at the lowest possible price. 

On the way to breakfast one morning, my friend happened to drive by The Alamo in San Antonio and I jumped out of the car to take a picture.  I don't consider The Alamo a mythical place of "freedom" that many people in the U.S. have fictionalize as the last stand of 200+ brave men defending their country.  I guess there are two sides to every story, but he fictional whoppers of this one are simply unbelievable.

One side is that about 260 people died defending "freedom."   In modern terms, however, it can also be seen as 260 terrorist died fighting the law in a captured site while the law was trying to keep them from doing more damage.

The facts are that on August 18, 1824, the Mexican government (and Texas was part of Mexico) passed the General Colonization Law. This statute allowed foreigners (U.S. settlers) to gain title to land that was not within 20 leagues of the border of another country or within 10 leagues of the coast. Settlers would be exempt from taxes for four years.  One of the provisions was a stipulation that there be no slavery.  The settlers did not follow the law and tried to force their will through armed force and conflict.  The Mexican army came to stop them, and they did.  Those are the facts.

There has been a lot of glorification and mystification of the Alamo event in order to justify U.S. history.  I guess whoever has the "gold makes the rules," and since the U.S. wanted to annexed Texas, it used that opportunity to apply its large power to take it, along with much of the other land that was once part of Mexico.

I'm not advocating giving Texas back, reality is what it is.  But I'm not about to swallow all this fictional bull that glorifies an illegal action by a bunch of people that we would now consider terrorist in any sense of the word.   And no, The Honorable David Crockett of Tennessee did not die a la John Wayne like in the movie. He was captured and executed immediately after the battle of the Alamo on March 6,1836.

I very briefly crossed the border into Mexico to visit my Uncle and my Aunt in Nuevo Laredo.  He is the youngest of the Rivera Gaytan family and with my dad (who will be 91) the only surviving family of that generation.  I had wanted to interview him for the books I am writing, historical novels on the Rivera Gaytan family and he did don’t disappoint me.  We had a long interview about his life in the early years and I plan to stop on the way back to continue the interview.  For those interested the first book in the series, "Surviving the Avalanche of Life"  can be obtained through The Book Patch,  http://www.thebookpatch.com/BookStore/surviving-the-avalanche-of-life/517d6856-2341-46f9-858d-2e9d8f5e22c8?isbn=9781633183155

I got back on the U.S. side (it took almost an hour with all the security stuff we had to go through) and proceeded to Mission and McAllen, Texas.  I managed a brief visit with one of my dad's cousins (my age) whom I am using as a "sounding board" for the historical novels I am writing.  She has a good "Gaytan" perspective of the history and I have the "Rivera" perspective.

The road to McAllen, hugging the the border, was interesting by the huge number of police on the road and by the beautiful lanscape covered by mestique and cactus.  I had to stop and take pictures (avoiding the rattle snakes and surviving the searing heat). I wanted to pick some of those cactus pears and eat them like I used to when I was a kid, but I had no way to pick them without getting a million thorns in my hand.

 

I left my car in another cousin's house and took the bus to Monterrey  - I didn't want to deal with all the paperwork and insurance costs since I'm going to be travelling by plane in Mexico.

Into Mexico!

One of my cousins picked me up from the bus station and after some beers, some delicious tacos, and great conversation, there was nothing better than a comfortable night sleep in a cool house.  Justin case I did not mention it, it has been over 100 degrees F ever since San Antonio, and Monterrey is not known for its cool weather in the months of July and August. 

My first day in Monterrey was to visit my aunt - one of my mother's younger sisters and the only one left of her generation.  She is 83, still in great physical shape and her mind is as sharp and anyone I know.  Five hours of very pleasant, fun, and very informative conversation went by as if they were minutes.  She filled in some family historical information that I did not know.  All in all, it has started out as a very profitable trip for information gathering.