Customer Reviews

Almonte's Texas: Juan N. Almonte's 1834 Inspection, Secret Report, and Role in the 1836 Campaign

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It is amazing to me that I am the first person to write a review on this outstanding work published in 2005 (in paperback.) Is no one reading American history?

This work edited by Jack Jackson contains the Secret Report of Juan Almonte to the Mexican Government of conditions in Texas on the eve of the Texas Revolution and his subsequent diary during the war as General Santa Anna's trusted lieutenant. Editor Jackson deftly uses these primary materials to create a full story of Almonte and his importance to American and Mexican history with a thrilling narrative.

Almonte was the bastard son of the Spanish priest and Mexican revolutionary Jose Morelos. He accompanied Morelos on his campaigns but was sent to New Orleans shortly before Morelos was defeated and executed. He learned English and French as a boy, and those language skills stood him in good stead during his long career. Almonte changed his support to the French and Maximilian in later years, and as a result has suffered greatly in Mexican esteem. Nonetheless, he was a major player and Mexican patriot during the years of the Texas Revolution and his diary and reports are extremely important historically. Unfortunately, his secret report from his 1834 inspection of Texas lay undiscovered in archives at Yale University due to an unusual set of circumstances covered in the Introduction, and did not come to light until 1987. So who says that academics know what they have?

As always, editor Jackson includes other historical works that round out his main thesis, this time including reports and letters by Colonel Jose Noriega and correspondence that Almonte kept from individuals like Peter Bean and documents from Jose Tornel and others. Almonte's correspondence is covered in some fifty plus letters, the 45th being his cover letter to his secret report with fifteen attached documents. The reader might expect all this to be boring reading, but it is not. Almonte sounds a lot like General Teran in his earlier inspection report of Texas in 1828, but Almonte is full of surprises that call for a reassessment of the traditional views that historians have held about Almonte's opinions toward Anglo Texans and his historical role.

Then comes Almonte's diary that he wrote while at Santa Anna's side in 1836 and at the Alamo. Almonte was captured along with Santa Anna at San Jacinto and his diary stopped immediately before the battle. Editor Jackson brings in many other sources to round out the picture of Almonte's activities, and then takes the story through the time Almonte was Mexico's Minister to the United States until the US annexed Texas in 1845. The part of Almonte's life when he gave up on the republic and moved to support a monarchy is not covered.

This work mentions but does not get bogged down in a discussion of the extreme brutality used by the Mexicans toward the Anglo colonists wherein prisoners of war were declared rebels and traitors and summarily executed. Almonte tended to distance himself from these atrocities decreed by Santa Anna and Jose Tornel and quickly carried out by the likes of General Urrea. It was not until Santa Anna was captured by the Texans that Tornel changed the policy and pled for an exchange of prisoners because "humanity demands it!" Gee, I guess the 400+ Anglo Texans who were executed just fell afoul of Mexico's European tradition of Civil Law that originates from the King, Emperor or supreme religious leader. Unsurprisingly, the Anglo tradition of Common Law arising from the people clashes mightily with Civil Law in this book behind the scenes.

Like Teran in his report, Almonte proved to be no friend of the Anglo Texans but rather a relatively thorough and analytical Mexican patriot. He advocated the establishment of permanent Mexican garrisons in Texas to control and suppress the North American population (as well as the Indians), but time was not on his side. Most of all, his secret report shows that he was not in favor of Texas independence as has been held previously by some historians. Far from being typically "revisionist history" in the sense of making new interpretations, this work gives the historian a new primary source with which to correct earlier analyses.

All in all, this is a spectacular new book presenting an overlooked primary source that is important to Mexican and Texan history. I recommend it to all historians interested in Mexico, Texas, and the American Southwest. The book is wonderfully edited, and if there are flaws, I didn't detect them.

Highly recommended.