Tejano Origins in Mexican Texas — 12
Nevertheless, Tejanos at this time also began to conflict with their new Anglo neighbors. In one early incident, a tense situation between DeWitt's colony and the Tejanos erupted into open conflict within a year of DeWitt's arrival. In March 1826, the Tejano leader and empresario, Martín de Leon, sued an Anglo colonist in a dispute over livestock. And in October, De Leon went to confiscate some contraband goods which Anglo colonists had hidden in DeWitt's colony. Indeed, the commander of La Bahía Presidio, Rafael Antonio Manchola, escorted De Leon with an armed troop. When the colonists heard that the Tejanos were coming and that De Leon had sworn to return with DeWitt's head, the Anglo-Americans armed themselves for resistance. An armed conflict was averted, but the incident was only the beginning of a long series of conflicts between the Anglos and Tejanos for years to come. Tejanos were very much aware of the widening cultural gap between them and the rest of Mexico as well. As the political situation worsened after the Law of April 6, 1830, Tejanos in Bexar, Nacogdoches and Goliad drew up memorials in 1833. The Goliad memorial is perhaps the most revealing of Tejano sentiments at the time. It began with a declaration of the social contract and ended with a threat of secession by the same sanction.
"If the people who are ruled by despots are permitted the natural right of revolutionary measures against their oppression then those people, who by their own consent live under the divine republican system, have also had conceded to them by the political compact the right to petition as a primary measure which they may use toward remedying the evils which afflict them, whether those evils originate from the inertia of the laws, by the ignorance of the Legislators, or by the ineptitude of their governing officials."
