Day 10:Palo Alto National Historic Site

It was another peaceful night, not a noise was to be heard anywhere. It rained gently at 4:30am when I slowly got up. It was going to be yet another grey and overcast day in the Valley. My first plan was a little bit of history again, and this time the Palo Alto site north of Brownsville. The birds and politics would come later.

http://www.nps.gov/paal/

I got to the park at 8:20 as the first guest for the day. I had all the attention of the rangers, who wanted me to watch a movie, but I told them I’d watch it after my battlefield walk.

"Watch out for snakes!" one ranger warned me as I went out to start my walk. A half-mile paved road/boardwalk leads to where the Mexican and American forces met on the open coastal prairie. There isn’t much to see at this park other than the actual location of where the five-hour battle took place. This is also a birding place and I heard eastern meadowlark, but didn’t see anything new. One can still see the faint outline of the old Matamoros trail here. The ocean breeze is apparent here as well.

Walking battlefields are hallowed to me. Mexican forces were surprised at the better American artillery and lost over 130 men at this place and we lost four. Genral Arista led his men into a doomed campaign that continued for a few more days at Resaca de las Palmas, in favor of the Americans. Yet this battle at Palo Alto was the first battle of the Mexican-American war and it was all about land for the growing US country; Manifest Destiny. Flags of the respective country are lined up representing the battalion formtion of the two countries.

I talked briefly to one of the rangers, Leon, who asked me how I liked the tour.

“It’s humbing to see that all this caused one country to gain twice its size, the other to lose half its size”
“What do you mean?” Leon wanted to know.
“We fought this war strictly for land, not to defend our country, but to gain all this land.”
“The Mexicans did the same thing with Spain in 1820” Leon knew his history and wasn’t about to let up. It was clear he was for the American side. I was too of course, but wanted Leon to know that I don’t take wars lightly. Mexicans died on this prairie to protect their homeland.

“We did the same thing to the Mexicans as the Mexicans did to Spain. This part of Mexico was poorly defended by the central government. People here had to pay taxes to Mexico City but they got northing for it. People revolted. Monies that were collected went to corrupt officials. The Mexicans couldn’t protect their northern borders because of the Indians” Leon went on to say, and were relieved to turn over this land to the Americans. This was sparsely populated to begin with, and there were few Mexicans living here.

I appreciated the history lesson but my initial point was knowing that this war in 1846 was the start of the illegal immigration issue that haunts us today: families ewre split up. Mexicans are still taught that the southwestern US states rightfully belong to Mexico and that Mexico should reclaim the lands, another reason why so many immigrants run across here for work.

Leon’s father was in the Border Patrol. He lifted a book from the ounter “History of US Border Patrol” and pointed at a man in the Dagueree photograph on the front cover. “See this man? This is my father..”

Leon himself was retired Border Patrol. He went on to talk about old friends he has in the Sierra Vista region, who talk about mistreatment from the local cops who claim the Border Patrol take all the women away (apparently he thinks there are few datable women in Cochise County?)

“I am glad the Wall is coming up” he went on, the second person to tell me this in two days. “Go down to the border before 8am and see all the Mexican schoolkids who run across to attend schools here, taxfree.”
“We have that problem in Arizona, too”

The conversation drifted toward politics, as it always does when talking about immigration, and Leon went on to say that he’s met GWB at least eight times. “He never forgets a name. I met him once at a dinner when he was governor and sitting in for his father at an event here. A few years later he met me again and greeted me by his name” Leon went on to get invited to the White House.
“Oh, so you are on the Bush VIP list.”

He denied that, but somewhere said that “I could never vote for Hillary.” Most men statistically don’t want to vote for her, which is helping Obama.

The conversation came to a close when the 10am school group arrived and the rangers had to get ready for their presentation. I thanked Leon for his time and told him I would now go down to the Brownsville campus and see the old Fort Brown garrison that are now property of the university. I knew my way around town now and got right to the location I needed. Parking meters were just 25cents an hour, I placed in four quarters, and meandered around.