Introduction This assignment grows out of the article I assigned in an earlier module — “Windows on the Past: Primary Sources and Why They’re Important.” That reading contains two videos showing you how historians establish the basic facts about their sources and the types of questions they ask about them. I’ll assume you’ve seen and understood these two videos. What also will help you is reading the assigned reading for this week BEFORE you tackle this assignment. That reading that will give you the context or backstory to this source. That backstory will provide important clues to your understanding of this source. When I come to grade your work, I will look to see if you used 1.) the source itself and 2.) the assigned reading in your primary source analysis. The Assignment Please read the primary source below, entitled “Warning About the Future of Texas.” Read it carefully, and read it twice. If you can, read it three times. If you are reading carefully, each reading will reveal to you more than you saw before. Note this carefully: Teran is a Mexican citizen writing about Mexico’s northern state. He is a Mexican patriot. In light of your reading the primary source and drawing on it almost entirely, answer the questions in the Primary Source Question Set below. Submit your answers in your Initial Post. Then critically (questioningly) respond to the posts of your fellow students. The Question Set Please answer the following questions about this document: Source this document: who wrote it and when? Find at least one outside, independent source to confirm its authorship and provide that link. Using a good dictionary (Merriam-Webster or the American Heritage dictionaries), and provide the definitions for the following words. (I suggest you define them BEFORE you read the document: you will better understand the document.) ayuntamiento / venal / alcalde / antagonism / murmur against / league (unit of length: how far?) / franchise / seat (of government) / enmity / chagrin * If you can’t find the definitions for these words in one place, search another credible reference work. The Net is vast: spend yourself a bit. What are the problems that the white settlers from the U.S. face in Texas according to the maker of this document? List and discuss them. Given this document, give a portrait or short description of the Mexican nationals who live in the towns mentioned in this document. How does this document connect to the assigned readings for this week, especially the textbook reading? List as many significant connections as you can. This is the most important question in this question set. Bear down on it. bar 71.png The Source or Document [Editorial annotation: Author: Manuel Mier y Terán, Date:1828 Asked to assess conditions in Texas, Mier y Terán warns the Mexican government that the growing number of Anglos in the region threatens Mexican control of Texas.] [Start of the Document] As one covers the distance from Béjar [San Antonio] to this town [Nacogdoches], he will note that Mexican influence is proportionately diminished until on arriving in this place he will see that it is almost nothing. And indeed, whence could such influence come? Hardly from superior numbers in population, since the ratio of Mexicans to foreigners is one to ten; certainly not from the superior character of the Mexican population, for exactly the opposite is true, the Mexicans of this town comprising what in all countries is called the lowest class—the very poor and very ignorant. The naturalized North Americans in the town maintain an English school, and send their children north for further education; the poor Mexicans not only do not have sufficient means to establish schools, but they are not of the type that take any thought for the improvement of its public institutions or the betterment of its degraded condition. Neither are there civil authorities or magistrates; one insignificant little man—not to say more—who is called an alcalde, and an ayuntamiento that does not convene once in a lifetime — is the most that we have here at this important point on our frontier; yet, wherever I have looked, in the short time that I have been here, I have witnessed grave occurrences, both political and judicial. It would cause you the same chagrin that it has caused me to see the opinion that is held of our nation by these foreign colonists, since, with the exception of some few who have journeyed to our capital, they know no other Mexicans than the inhabitants about here, and excepting the authorities necessary to any form of society, the said inhabitants are the most ignorant of negroes and Indians, among whom I pass for a man of culture. Thus, I tell myself that it could not be otherwise than that from such a state of affairs should arise an antagonism between the Mexicans and foreigners, which is not the least of the smoldering fires which I have discovered. Therefore, I am warning you to take timely measures. Texas could throw the whole nation into revolution…. The colonists murmur against the political disorganization of the frontier, and the Mexicans complain of the superiority and better education of the colonists; the colonists find it unendurable that they must go three hundred leagues to lodge a complaint against the petty pickpocketing that they suffer from a venal and ignorant alcalde, and the Mexicans with no knowledge of the laws of their own country, nor those regulating colonization, set themselves against the foreigners, deliberately setting nets to deprive them of the right of franchise and to exclude them from the ayuntamiento. Meanwhile, the incoming stream of new settlers is unceasing; the first news of these comes by discovering them on land already under cultivation, where they have been located for many months; the old inhabitants set up a claim to the property, basing their titles of doubtful priority, and for which there are no records, on a law of the Spanish government; and thus arises a lawsuit in which the alcalde has a chance to come out with some money. In this state of affairs, the town where there are no magistrates is the one in which lawsuits abound, and it is at once evident that in Nacogdoches and its vicinity, being most distant from the seat of the general government, the primitive order of things should take its course, which is to say that this section is being settled up without the consent of anybody…. In spite of the enmity that usually exists between the Mexicans and the foreigners, there is a most evident uniformity of opinion on one point, namely the separation of Texas from Coahuila and its organization into a territory of the federal government…. [end of source]