Roots of Revolution

The story of Latin@s in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands has long been an overlooked topic in the region's history. Often, the narrative begins with the development of Mexican-American movements in the 20th century; however, starting the story there has long been a mistake in Texas history, particularly in public-facing accounts. According to Texas Historian Ty Cashion in his landmark work Lone Star Mind, one of the chief propagators of male-centric narratives is T. R. Fehrenbach, specifically his 1968 book Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans. The work itself describes white, Anglo men conquering a “frontier,” where women are relegated merely to the role of a wife. However, these popular histories do not accurately depict the role that women played in Texas during the early 19th century, and demonstrate a need for alternative narratives. This section will focus on the lives of Mexican, Indigenous, and Tejana women in the Borderlands during the 19th century and their leadership and societal presence and resistance in their respective communities, and how actions that were seen as revolutionary in the 20th century were commonplace in the early 19th century, as women held significant religious, cultural, and legal presences.