Rant: I visited the Alamo last month and the 'cancel culture' around its history is getting out of hand

I was in San Antonio for a weekend trip and spent an afternoon at the Alamo. What caught my attention wasn't the old mission walls, but the signs everywhere explaining how the original story was 'problematic.' They spent more time talking about what they got wrong in 1960s movies than the actual siege. I get that history needs to be honest about things like slavery and land rights, but this felt like they were apologizing for the whole place existing. They had over 30 new panels and I think maybe 4 of them talked about the actual battle. At some point, don't we honor the people who died there regardless of the politics around it? Has anyone else visited a historic site that felt like it was trying too hard to fix the narrative?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray3566d ago

Oh man, the last time I tried that at a historic site I got so lost I ended up in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel thinking it was part of the battlefield. Maybe just me but sometimes the old map is the best map.

jennifer8336d ago

...so what I ended up doing at a similar spot up in Gettysburg was just skipping the new exhibits entirely and taking the old walking tour route they had on their map from like 2010. You can usually find those older printed guides in the gift shop or sometimes online if you dig around. The battle itself doesn't change, just the interpretation around it. Maybe grab a book from a local San Antonio bookstore written before all this stuff blew up, then go back and walk the grounds on your own without reading any of the new signs. That way you get the straight story without the modern filter.

quinncarr6d ago

@ray356 cracked me up with the Cracker Barrel thing, that's exactly the kind of mess I'd end up in too. But I gotta ask Jennifer, when you say "before all this stuff blew up", what year are you actually thinking of as the cutoff? Because I swear every generation thinks their old map is the real one, but 2010 feels pretty recent to me. Seems like the "real story" people keep going back to just depends on when they first got interested in the place.