The Other Alamo by Martín Espada

First published: 1993, in City of Coughing and Dead Radiators

Type of poem: Narrative

The Poem

Martín Espada’s “The Other Alamo” takes place in 1990 in San Antonio, Texas, the location of the Alamo. The poem’s five sections move through several layers of time: from the present event of a veterans’ gathering to reflections on Texas race relations since the Alamo siege in 1836. Its central event takes place in 1949, when the poet’s father was refused service at a local diner. “The Other Alamo” refers to his father’s protest against overt racism. To appreciate the poem, one must consider the Alamo’s import.

During the siege of the Alamo, 187 Texans held off 4,000 Mexican troops led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. The Texans were fighting to gain their independence from Mexico. On March 6, when the Mexicans punched a hole in the adobe wall, they entered and killed all the Texans, including the American frontiersmen Davy Crockett and James Bowie. The names “Crockett” and “Bowie” are mentioned in Espada’s first stanza.

The poem begins at a gathering in the “Crockett Hotel dining room,” where a veteran leads others in prayer. Subsequent lines concern the city’s devotion to religious shrines and to the Alamo historic site. Tourists can purchase a “replica” of the Bowie knife, a hunting knife used extensively by American frontiersmen. Its design—a strong, single-edged blade and a horn handle—was attributed to James Bowie. Espada juxtaposes the military references with the religious, ending his first stanza with a reference to “visitors/ in white Biblical quote T-shirts.”

The second stanza places the Alamo into the context of Anglo-Mexican relations in Texas. Independence won, and Texans soon dominated and denigrated Mexicans. Tourist brochures depict “Mexican demons,/ Santa Anna’s leg still hopping/ to conjunto accordions.” The only Spanish word in the poem, conjunto refers to a musical group featuring accordions; Santa Anna lost his leg in battle subsequent to the Alamo. Texans, the ultimate victors, used the law to appropriate Mexican land and exploit “Mexican peasants.” Espada concludes with an image of “vigilantes” hunting men “the color of night.” This catalog of offenses culminates in a single word: “Alamo,” as if the deeds Espada recounts were in retribution for that massacre.

With no transition, stanza 3 takes readers to 1949, when three Air Force men in uniform, including one from “distant Puerto Rico,” enter a diner where only whites are served. Stanza 4 expands upon the incident in which a waitress, the manager, and the police try to get the men to leave, citing “local customs.” The men refuse and are finally served food cooked by a “black man unable to hide his grin.” Ignoring the food, the airmen leave an enormous tip for the cook. At this stage, Espada interjects: “One was my father; his word for fury/ is Texas.”

The final section of the poem returns abruptly to the present. The son of that Puerto Rican airman discovers that the diner no longer exists. Protest, however, continues: “Vandals,” according to a newspaper account, have damaged the Alamo doors, “scarring” them “in black streaks of fire.”

Forms and Devices

The accessibility of Espada’s poem belies a sophisticated poetic intelligence and subtle effects in word choice and in the ordering of details. Assuming that readers are familiar with the Alamo event, he presents a fast-paced set of images in the two opening sections.

The first stanza refers to “a chalk-faced man in medaled uniform.” Denoting exceptional paleness, the word “chalk” also works alliteratively and in assonance with “Crockett.” This military man “growls a prayer.” Mixing religious and military detail, Espada develops an ironic tone that borders on the scathing. The city may be “saint-hungry,” but the saints are those brave Texans who gave their lives at the Alamo. Instead of a holy relic, tourists can grasp “the talisman of a Bowie knife replica.” The color white returns in the tourists’ “white Biblical quote T-shirts.” The images accumulate a sense of a holy war having been enacted when Texas won independence. “White” represents good; dark represents evil. The whole movement of Espada’s poem disputes this dichotomy.

Stanza 2 moves directly to the Alamo, where “The stones in the walls are smaller/ than the fists of Texas martyrs.” This image chiefly functions to allow the mention of the “martyrdom” of the Alamo heroes while reinforcing the poem’s religious irony. “Their cavernous mouths could drink the canal to mud” is a reference to the enormous thirst of the Texan defenders as the siege became prolonged. Not interested in elevating the heroism of the Texans, Espada makes even their thirst seem damaging.

Damage done to the Mexicans concerns Espada more. He refers to “the cotton growers who kept the time/ of Mexican peasant lives dangling from their watch chains.” Colonialism was rampant. The damage, however, is cloaked in an aura of goodness. Even “the vigilantes [are] hooded like blind angels,” and they gather “at church.” The rule of the Anglo-Americans over the Mexicans is sanctified as retribution for the savagery at the Alamo: “all said this: Alamo.”

In stanza 3, Espada’s descriptions of the three airmen are precise. One is black, one blond, the third Puerto Rican. The black man heard the word “nigger” in his hometown Baltimore “more often than his name.” Racism is an old story to him. The white man is “blond and solemn as his Tennessee/ of whitewashed spires.” Espada’s simile gives dignity to this white man. The Puerto Rican’s skin is brown, a dangerous color “in a country where brown skin could be boiled for the leather of a vigilante’s wallet.” The image is hyperbolic—-or at least one hopes so. The repetition of the word “vigilante” recalls the second stanza and the threat of lynchings or worse.