The Border Starts at the Alamo.

Not physically but historically. All the dominos fall from there. If we are going to ride the border we had better understand its history.

Long before the United States or Mexico existed, everything from here to Patagonia was Spanish; swooped up by the conquistadors, claimed for Spain by the King, and defined as Catholic by the Pope. San Antonio de Béxar was a centre of trade with the native Americans and the Alamo Mission was established from 1718 to educate the converted Indians.

After Mexican independence in 1821 its government sold land in Texas to over 30,000 American and European settlers who increasingly demanded independence from the central Mexican government. The political demands were met with repression that culminated in the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 where the garrison was besieged and overrun and all the Texans – settlers and native Tejanos alike – put to the sword and their bodies heaped and burned.

The Texan leader Sam Houston quickly got his remaining troops better trained, captured the Mexican General Santa Anna, and demanded the independence of Texas as the price for the general’s release. The border was established as the Rio Grande River from El Paso to the Gulf. Border Part One.

The annexation of Texas in 1846 by the United States was then the cause of the Mexican-American War which led to Mexico losing or selling its northern territories to the United States to establish the current land border from El Paso to the Pacific at San Diego. Border Part Two

So … no Alamo, no Texas, no War, no border. Simple.