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With Santa Anna in Texas
A Personal Narrative of the Revolution José Enrique de la Peña Translated and edited byCarmen Perry With a new introduction by James E. Crisp |
The recent discovery of a week’s worth of entries in an untranslated manuscript version of José Enrique de la Peña’s diary opens another chapter in the longstanding controversy over the diary’s authenticity.
In this expanded edition of With Santa Anna in Texas, Texas Revolution scholar James E. Crisp, who discovered the "missing week," discusses the history of the de la Peña diary controversy and presents new evidence in the matter. With this new material and the perspective Crisp provides, the diary should prompt a new round of debate over what really happened at the Alamo.
When it was first translated and published in English in 1975, With Santa Anna in Texas unleashed a fury of emotion and an enduring chasm between some scholars and Texans. The journal of José Enrique de la Peña, an officer on Santa Anna’s staff, reported the capture and execution of Davy Crockett and several others and stated the reason behind Santa Anna’s order to make the final assault on Travis and his men. Whether or not scholars agree with de la Peña’s assertions, his journal remains one of the most revealing accounts of the Texas Revolution ever to come to light. First published in Spanish in 1955, the diary was translated into English by Carmen Perry, who served as director of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo and as an archive translator and cataloger for the University of Texas at San Antonio.
JAMES E. CRISP is an associate professor of history at North
Carolina State University at Raleigh and a frequent contributor to Alamo
de Parras.
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With Santa Anna in Texas
ISBN 0-89096-527-7 paper $16.95
LC 75-16269. 5 1/2x8 1/2. 248 pp. 8 b&w Illus.
Texas History.
Publication Date: January 1997.
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