 and get the opportunity to sit in conversation with you all. My name is Karla Adibar, and I'm a member of the Papian Food Foundation as a part of the El Ticapabuame group of families, and I'm committed to seeing through adjusted fair treatment of the ancestors, admissions on and on and all of the missions. And for all of those ones that have been written out of history one way or another, there's a great deal of heartfelt frustration at the processes that have been carried out by the Alamo Trust and the City of San Antonio General Land Office and all of the different players that are involved in all of this. And so part of our work as a tribal community is to create conversations about these important issues in a way that is understandable and usable for people. So we get asked all sorts of questions about what's really going on with the Alamo. And so our hope for this evening was to be able to bring together several different folks who are involved in from different communities representing different communities that are impacted, that are being negatively impacted by the operations of the Alamo Trust, which has set a trajectory based off of the initial 10-year process that was approved by City Council in the state of Texas in 2016, correct? And they have a deadline of 2026 to have the whole project completed according to their plan 2024. So it was initiated in 2014. And then they have a deadline by 2024 to have put the ribbon there for people to come and watch the ribbon cutting. But this is a lot more complicated. It has been made more complicated by the inaction of the leadership of those folks who are involved today at the Alamo. And so we had invited folks from the Alamo defenders from the San Antonio Conservation Society, the 1718 descendants group, which all have very particular concerns about the way that not only they've been marginalized from the process and pushed out of the decision-making processes with the Alamo, but that also their stories are not being told or potentially being erased. And a lot of cultural erasure is being stitched up by the current leadership of the Alamo Trust. And part of the reason why the Teminapo Declaration has filed federal claims based off of the direction that this project has gone. I think that's just a fair intention for what we hoped for this evening. And so for the Ms. Joanne Murphy accented email that she left stuck in Austin, there wasn't going to be able to make it. And we haven't heard from the San Antonio Conservation Society or the Alamo Defenders Association. And so what we're going to be doing this evening is answering some specific questions that we know are of interest that we want everyone to be clear on, at least from the perspective of the Teminapo of the nation. And we have one of our spokespersons here, Ramon Vazquez, who's going to be answering those questions. And we're going to make this conversation here brief as a result of the other panelists not being present this evening and hope to be able to bring those conversations to the table as well, because they're all valid concerns that these different associations have. And so we apologize if you were coming to hear from those other associations and hope that you'll bear along with us as we address these questions here very directly. Does that sound fair to everyone? OK, thank you. And so I'd like to begin by Ramon and others here in the room have done extensive research as to the history of the families and the people at Mission San Antonio de Valleiro and could give a college level lecture on all of these pieces. But I'm going to ask you to maybe speak to things that maybe people don't know about the place or the experience there. Can you tell us a little bit about how African-Americans and indigenous people interacted in the 19th century? Right, even further back. Or even further back, yeah. You know, they shared a community. They shared a space. You know, it's kind of funny that we had about, I would say, 30 families with African heritage that are buried on the site and countless more that were baptized. They had names like Juan Blasio, Badajoz. And, you know, they were in America. We shared a community that was baptized with their children. They were serving in Pasadena with their marriages. They co-existed. Some of them were documented as the Sclavoclides, which means free slaves. So I think that's important, you know. And then there were some that were not free, right? There were clearly some of the slaves there. And this is in 1700s, from 1720s all the way up to about 1814. We know that there was capital. It was slavery on the site itself. So one of the first mayors of San Antonio was Victor Blanco. And he was one of the first black mayors, or he was the first black mayor of San Antonio in 1809. And his name was Victor Blanco. And he went on to become the governor of Coahuila, which was the province that we were under here, or we liked that house. And it's our belief that his great-grandfather, Juan Blanco, was the first person buried at the cemetery of the Alamo. Juan Blanco was listed as a man of African heritage, fighting with the army of the Spanish army of the city of soldier. He was buried there. So there's a lot of rich history that is untoward. Most people wouldn't know that. The one expedition was like that. It wasn't an expedition. It was where the king of San Antonio. So there's a, I think that's pretty important history. And of course, all the American Indians that were on site over the years, and we know that our old Americans had 13,000 people that were documented that were buried there. But we know through just research that there's probably more than probably about 1,500 that are buried in the area. And we're only talking about this is the Catholic cemetery. We're not talking about the non-Catholic cemetery. We're not talking about what people were buried if they were not baptized. We're not talking about ancient burial grounds either. We're talking about a consecrated Catholic cemetery. And so out of those 1,500, probably over, close to about 1,000 of them were American Indians. The rest were a mixture of mestizos that came over as settlers, some Spanish, African heritage, families of African heritage. There's a couple of Canary Islands that were buried there. He was in French. So, there was a community, and I think that's the most important thing that people forget is that this was a place that people were living in. They were falling in love. They were going to church. They were baptizing children. Children were playing in the compound. This was a Pueblo, an American Indian Pueblo. It had government structure that was all native. I think what's happening right now is, by acknowledging that, by acknowledging the human, by humanizing the album of the San Antonio de Valero, again for this process, means that people have to come to grips with some of the atrocities that happened since then as well. And I think that that's what San Antonio avoid constantly. Now, what underscored that matter of an unmovingness to address unsavory aspects of our history, right? Which we could argue that the approach that is being instituted by the Alamo Trust at this point is kind of glazing over those unsavory aspects of the history of that case in particular. Can you talk a little bit about how this has impacted San Antonio, this unwillingness to address those unsavory aspects of this place? Well, when you have a $450 million project, close to a half a billion dollar project, having its way with the history of San Antonio and the citizens that make San Antonio, the great city that it is, I mean, that is, I mean, when the history of civil rights through the lower desegregation of the lunch counter or the marginalization of the history or the contributions of American Indians from that mission, it can just be wiped away and the city just bowing down to this half a billion dollar project. I mean, it says a lot. If you listen to people tell a story of San Antonio, you would think, well, one of my elders says that, you would think that San Antonio, the Spanish town here, they would agree about mariaches. Because that's all that was, you know, what's here. You know, forget the American Indian history, forget the Mulaco history, forget the history of all those people that contributed over the years in the early days, the people that we celebrated last year during the tricentennial, forget their history, forget the contributions that the civil rights made after the Alamo, I sit on that committee, right? So I would point it forward to the Alamo Advisory Committee, Citizens Committee. And one of the things that if you look at the plans, it talks about the interpretation plans, it talks about telling the entire story of the site. And so I have to wonder to myself now, it's like, what are they gonna say now? What are they gonna say about what's happening today? What are they gonna say about what's happening to the Woolworth building? What are they gonna say? What happened at the Woolworth building that directly related to the Alamo in terms of the myth of the John Wayne 1850s and 1860s, 1960s and 1950s, all that hatred and that John Wayne myth of the Alamo created in San Antonio. There was a lot of hate here. Can you unpack that here for a little bit? Because I know I grew up with those John Wayne films, but why would that impact me as a younger generation? Because we don't get a whole lot of education about the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s, that tripled down again, of course, in part of the glazing over difficult histories like that. So, can you talk about the mythology impacting the way we... When it's a way, it's about behaviors. It's a way other people behave. I don't know, I'm sure people in the room here remember going to the Alamo. So one of the fourth grade field trips. When you, I went to an all white school at the time, it was the central to that district. And I went to another lecture that was all white, primarily. And when we went to the Alamo, you know, all my friends that we played together you know, out in the playground, in school, you know, we all hung out and went to the Alamo. As soon as we were in the Alamo, we started hearing the history and people were telling us about the Alamo. You know, those eyes turned down me, you know, and with hatred. And I don't think I'm the only one. I'm sure that there's a lot of people that remember going to the Alamo and getting that experience because of the color of your skin, you were the bad person because of what they were saying. They were trying to sign up with that and all these other things, right? And so you were the bad person and so you left that Alamo feeling like a child. I know what it made me feel like. And I'm not the only one. I heard the same story from other people. So that was in the 60s, you know, early 70s. So the crafting of the narrative of the popular cultural narrative of the Alamo framed by this John Wayne history of Texas continues to have a ripple effect to date. Well, yeah, I think so because there's a lot of people outside of Texas who come in here and dictate our San Antonio history. You know, I thought it was in the Alamo which is from Ohio or some place. You know, I was at a presentation a couple of weeks ago and they were giving us the Alamo trust was giving us a presentation on who built the Alamo and the four different masons that built the Alamo and these are the people that are supposed to be the professionals and the consultants. The ones giving the presentation to the Alamo committee. Right, and they start off by saying, well the first layer was built by some man named Dale. We don't know his first name. And then he goes on to explain to the other three where and I'm sitting here going, how is this person who's supposed to interpret our story here in San Antonio? How does he not know that that man's name is Antonio Dale? They just wrote about him last year for the Tri-Sentennial as being one of the greatest craving of passion and love, you know, at the Alamo because of what happened with him and his lover and the history of a murder. I mean, this is, you know, so the people who've been around know, you know, who these people, the players are at the Alamo historically, but what scares me the most is when you're paying high dollars where people are coming from out of town to interpret our stories and our history, that's the problem. I don't know how many people heard the... Especially when they're supposed to be experts and don't know basic information like the name of the mason that those things. The first one, the first one that he made was like Cornerstone. So, you know, I don't know how many people heard the interview on the source last week with Councilman DeVino and Douglas McDonald. But if you heard it, if you haven't heard it, I encourage you to go back and read it, find it online, listen to it. What was the date on that show? It was last Monday, so I don't know. It's last Monday, so you can all go back and listen to it. But, I mean, they talked... A caller calls in and asked about issues of slavery and the guy in charge of the Alamo, Douglas McDonald, he answers the question that they're only using evidence to guide this project. And that's inviting all the activity around the Alamo. And he says that there is no evidence of slavery at the Alamo. And I'm sitting there going, whoa, this guy just say this. He goes, there was issues of slavery around taxes and surely there was issues of slavery at other parts of the United States, but there's no evidence of it at the Alamo. And if this is the interpretation that we're going to get, this is what our $450 million project is gonna leave San Antonio for our children and our great-grandchildren to be heirs of, then I think we need to do a better job as citizens to question how our tax dollars are being spent on this project and who is telling our story. I mean, you know, when we talk about the Alamo, we have a lot of issues right with the Alamo, but when you talk about interpretation and we're gonna interpret the stories, you want people at the table who can assist with that interpretation. And unfortunately, you know, a very important piece of history from the Alamo, that community, the African-American community was left out of this process. And I think that to me, that's so crucial. That district too was not represented. Every single district in San Antonio was represented on this committee, except for district two. And to me, that's a problem. I don't think that we, as a city, we did our due diligence to make sure that the interests of our citizens were protected in this process. We had myself there representing in an American Indian community, but it wasn't the entire American Indian community. So, but we already know what they did with us. They brought in the recognized tribes to take us out of the picture. So before we touch that subject, I kind of want to go back and talk about, and go back to one of the things that I recall, Mr. Douglas McDowell saying on that interview that they wanted to restore, that they wanted to restore the mission footprint and that they were going to be using evidence as the guide for the interpretation of the space. Would you say that there is ample evidence talking about the realities of slavery and how that economic system was carried out in San Antonio de Rejar, starting in that little pueblito of Mission San Antonio de Valero? I think there's ample primary sources that talk about the fact that there was people that were enslaved at the Mission San Antonio de Valero. We have to remember that we have firsthand, we have books, we have the backwards rules, we have the marriages and we have the burials of all residents of Mission San Antonio de Valero and residents from La Vita after 1731 and even into the 1780s and the 1800s where clearly it's documented that this person that's being baptized is a child of a slave or getting married is a slave of one of the slave owner's name on there. Yeah, so I would think that there's ample evidence that there was some, there was issues of slavery but there's ample evidence that there's a cemetery that there's a minimum of 1,300 people buried right there on the side that they don't care. So much less what a few books written in 1,700 by the Franciscans are gonna say. So that's the part where I want for the audience and the people that are watching us at home to understand is the incongruity of the leadership of the Alamo Trust saying that they're going to face themselves on the concrete evidence and primary documents that exist to tell the story, to interpret the space but there's ample evidence of these key pieces of our history that are being circumvented to only be able to tell an 1836 story of Mission San Antonio de Valero which is absolutely incomplete and I would say an offense to the future because that's one of the pieces that is like lime juice going into a paper cut every time that I think about it is who writes their stories and who writes the point of departure, right? So journalists are the first draft of history but when you actually have historians that are putting up panels at any of these sites of significance, what are all of the pieces that have been left out of the picture and the selective authoring of whether it's journalists or researchers and scholars that are putting these pieces together, it erases what isn't covered on those panels. I think what they're saying about evidence is everybody else is evidence but yours. Okay, so talk to us a little bit about what you mean by that as a special interest. But I think that we're going to guide this project, guide us based on evidence. I think they're talking about 1836, the Battle of 1836. They're not talking about what happened before the Battle of 1836 or after the Battle of 1836, what happened in 1836. So the fact that there's evidence about all of this other history is being ignored. That's gonna be saved for the museum. So why should that matter to the regular San Antonio area? Because when you go on the site, if you take a trip to the site, that history, if your family comes from that history, from the Aleppo Assembly to my little history, it will be moved, your history will be erased from the site. You would have to go learn about it in a museum. That you probably have to pay it for the other people. Yeah, you don't have to pay it for the other people. Whereas in other cities, they embrace that history. So I think you had a question over there. Yeah, I think this is so fantastic that you're so well, thank you first for taking the time to talk about history. And this young lady here, as far out, that it's quite clear in America today, and over the last 200 years that there's a conspiracy to erase the history that was here before America, even the Marshall Trilogy in 1823, that Monroe Dockman and the American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, on and on. And so we see after 150 years of this, nothing's changed. They're going to do it again. This is what $450 million will buy you, right? The idea that you can change history and tell a story that is really betraying the anthropology and the vital, the really important history has been betrayed here. I wanted to tell off of that because I think that there's people that, like myself, were educated in Texas schools and were given the 1836 version of San Antonio in the space. But everyone, can you give us a thumbnail timeline of Mission San Antonio de Valero that starts from founding, wouldn't be came a fort, wouldn't be came secularized, like break it down, okay? I don't know whether I can break it completely down. I have a, we have another historian that might be able to give us a thumbnail. Yeah, there was a, there was a, 1718, and then where it's at right now, it's the third site, right, 1721, more or less. And then, there were secularized in 1794, 1795. So that means they were no longer, no longer belong to the church? They were officially secularized by the church in 1795, 1794. Which means civilian. But not in San Antonio, not in San Antonio. They continued to use the church as a mission, as a church, I'm sorry, they continued to use the mission as a church, right? And it wasn't until 1825 that the Bishop of Guadalajara, is that right, Monterey, the Bishop of Monterey actually had to send a letter over here to the priests here, telling them stop using the alimony. Stop burying people there, stop holding services there. You know, this was, this was, it was still being used, right? So they're still built, people being buried there, people being baptized there. So, but there's, there's just a, there's a lot of history. I mean, there's all kinds of events that happened, that need to be documented. One of the things that we've been asking for is a complete historical investigation of the site, which has never been done, right? Basically that means that, basically what that means is that, you do all the research, right? You document all the, all the history, all the stories, you know, all the families that did the cattle drive, the families that came out and bought off your factories, you know, the, you know, all the different things that happened. At Milo Park, they did a, they just finished up the investigation report from Milo Park at 600 pages. At the Alamo, we can't get one page written. We have to depend on outside consultants who come in and wait for the available mission to see how they're going to, I mean, the museum, so that we can see how they're going to interpret our story, so. In the presentations that have been made to the Alamo Citizens Advisory Committee, has there been any conversation about a full archival study being a part of the process? No. Why, why not? Well, they just hasn't been, people have asked. So one thing that they did do, they brought in a professor from the University, to do a report on the Woolworth building and to determine whether the importance of the Woolworth building in regards to the African American history during civil rights. And we were given a preliminary or a brief on the report and I have to tell you, if, based on what I heard, if that's the type of investigative research they wanna do, I'd rather not have them do it for us. Some other members of the committee asked. You know, it was unfortunate because the brief of that story, what we took, what I took away from that presentation from that professor was that, yes, the Woolworth building is important, but it's, there are other places in San Antonio that are just as important and not more important for the black community in San Antonio. To me, that was key for, there's no reason to keep the Woolworth building, we can interpret the civil, the black civil rights history in San Antonio and any other building, we don't have to do it at this one. It wasn't the first lunch counter. Crest, desegregated their lunch counter 30 minutes before the Woolworth building did. That's how, so that's key, that's code talk. We have to pay attention. There's a lot of code talk going on and so that's why we're doing our own investigation, you know, our own research and studies and that's why we commissioned that, we commissioned that, I don't know, report. It's about 70 pages, just on the subject. We have the Pappinam, not as Alamo Citizens Advisory Committee. So can you talk to us a little bit about what the mode of, what the process for interpreting that we're aware of, it's been discussed at the Alamo Citizens Advisory Committee, how the Alamo Trust is going to be making its decisions on how things are interpreted? Is it just behind closed doors and we have to deal with whatever it is that makes it? I don't know, I don't know, I've asked a question. I've posted a couple weeks ago to our tri-chairs asking that specific question, what is the purpose of our committee? What is, how do we make decisions? Because right now, we are not making decisions. Right now we're being told, you know, what's happening, but we're not, we're not making decisions as to, you know. Can you talk to Gene Powell? Hmm? You know, Gene Powell's meetings, I think one of the public meetings we had, were you referenced in? We didn't want to discuss this one. Yeah, but we haven't, Gene Powell hasn't been around in about two years. Oh, you're saying that he didn't keep his word? I don't know, but he did keep his word. You're the chair of the Trust now. No. I'm talking about the tri-chair. No, I'm talking about the honorable citizen advisory committee. Well, so let's go back a little bit to- That's part of the history of the crew. I don't know whether he kept his word or not. This is the city, this is the city committee. So I wanted to talk a little bit about who some of the players are, because not everybody here in this space has been on top of the issue as something that's a daily matter. So the citizens advisory committee was created by the city council to be initially the, setting the pillars and the benchmarks for the things that needed to be included the processes that needed to be taken into consideration for this Alamo development project. Then I want to say that it was before 2014, you can correct me, that the daughters of the Republic of Tamsas were required to hand over administrative leadership of the operations at the Alamo to an entity that was created by the state of, excuse me, an entity was created by the general land office called the Alamo Trust. So you have the Alamo Trust incorporated, which manages the day to day operations of the Alamo, above them is the general land office and then above them, of course, is the governor's office and on the ground here in San Antonio, you have ended the Alamo Trust incorporated and then a few other nonprofits that were created to bring monies into the redevelopment project, which also include the Alamo Endowment and the Save the Alamo Foundation. So those are three nonprofit entities that are pulling in funds to manage the project, the redevelopment project. Other players that are important for folks to understand is as we move into conversations around current litigation is the Texas Historical Commission and the role of the Texas Historical Commission is to acknowledge and protect a variety of different historical, there are lots of different things that are under their umbrella of obligations, but one of them is to provide the certifications and designations and protections for historical cemeteries. And whenever it is that the city or the county is going to be carrying out any research or scholars that are gonna be doing research at archeological sites, at known archeological sites, they have to get their permits from the Texas Historical Commission before they go into these particularly sensitive spaces. And so when we come back into the Alamo and everyone can bring up the Alamo in their mind, you're looking at the shrine in front of you. The Santa Tap is on your left-hand side. The Zivo is over here on your right-hand side. Are we all there together? So there is evidence, reports from the Texas Historical Commission issued to Bear County for utilities work that was going to be carried out, acknowledging the cemetery. And that is on that site that Bear County had to get permits from the Texas Historical Commission that already had a archeological site designation number assigned to the cemetery there in the Alamo. I flipped open one of these reports because there's a stack about the A.I. of these reports that shows where Alamo Street is not on the proper grid. It's kind of like, it's a little truepo, it's a little angled over. And in the documentation of that map, it showed that the reasoning for the city of San Antonio to make that street be at an angle is because it had to avoid the Taposango, the cemetery that's there, currently under the U.S. Post Office, potentially under the Santa Fab, and in all of these spaces on the left-hand side if we're looking at the church. Additionally, based off of evidence and not only practice burial practices and how it is that these colonial churches are trying to build, we know that there are people buried underneath in the church and then literally in the walls because that was custom that people were buried in the walls. We know because our relatives reinterred a cranium in 1994, is that correct? Right, but at that site that there are other bodies that are buried there. We have an obligation as a tribal community to continue to obviously bring these things to the surface, have these conversations. We have a moral obligation to bring these issues to conversation more broadly, which is why we're having these forums and inviting you all to be a part of the conversation and help us to push the conversation out more broadly, not only through social media, but at your dinner tables and talking to your relatives about what's really going on here because this not only impacts the Tequilango, the nation, but it impacts the entire city of San Antonio. I would argue even the state of Texas because the willingness to selectively omit history at the Alamo, as is being done by the Alamo Trust based on some of the examples that we had here in the previous conversation, that is unjust to the city of San Antonio and to those people who are required to know our history, required to tell their stories. So we have all of these differences, sorry, I got confused to lines of thinking. So number one, can we trust the Alamo Trust to interpret the space in a proper, whole authentic manner? I don't, based off of the conversations that we've had here, it doesn't sound like they're interested in telling any story outside of the 1836 mythology, which is very incomplete. But then how do we get these conversations to matter to the folks in the city of San Antonio? Because this is gonna be happening on our watch. You know they're gonna sink another $450 million to renovate it again, at least not in my time or my kid's lifetime. So we have a responsibility to have that here and now, have those stories told here and now. The first thing we had to get rid of is all of us calling us Latinos and Hispanics, which we ain't. Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think the history we mentioned earlier, it's not even about, if we talk about science-specific stuff, right, and because that's really what they're calling in on, you know, to avoid the, to threaten the world we're building, you know, to threaten the civil rights activism by the African American community. To disregard slavery, the issue of slavery, on the side, to disregard the final resting place of American Indians and other Spanish settlers. On the side and mestizos on the side. I think the continuation of cultural genocide, that's what that is, you know, when you erase that history from a site, that's cultural genocide, regardless of what culture, you know, if you're impacted by the culture, that's cultural genocide. To say that we're gonna tell you a story, yeah, you were born there, but you know what, I'm not gonna tell nobody you were born there, you'll have to go to a museum to hear about what life was like over there. Pay to get into a museum, maybe it's the hour's work for you, you know, to be able to get in there. And I think that we can't do sight of that, we can't do sight because we're gonna encourage all this. The city of San Antonio is gonna encourage this. And right now, if they continue on the path that they're on, we will only know that site as the Battle of the 36. And that said, you won't know, you know. I wanna interrupt, may be able to help you. This record that this gentleman is filming, is it for? No, neither one of these are for us. Okay. I have a papillon, these are folks that are documenting for individual purposes. This will all be available. Yeah, he works for the Access TV, you see. Well, my name is Richard Gai, and to follow up and support and compliment from one statement about slaves, tell the animal trust people to do their source of labor. I've already done the research, but let them do their own research. If you wanna count how many slaves there were in the Spanish colonial and post-colonial period in San Antonio. The Bear County Archives, the Spanish records, the Spanish section of the county clerk has no less than 250 and as many as 300 wills in the states, starting as early as I think, 17, I wanna say 43. But every one of the people that part of the data will itemize their property, and part of their property were their slaves. And their slaves are identified by name. And if they were black, they were calm with others. They were called several other ethnic extractions to me. So if you wanna go count slaves, you can do it very easily by sending somebody to the Bear, the Spanish archives. And they're very detailed that whether the slave was healthy or whether he limped, they're very detailed. So the question about slavery is clear comment. It's already been identified. I think the important piece is why are you omitting that? Why are you minimizing that on the site? Well, not you, but the people that are in charge, right? So since we're creating a record, they could consult this record and tell them that on this day- I'm sure Doug is putting an assistant on it. Documented it. I would add another aspect is that to, for us to consider in terms of the intentionality of the emission, when we talk about 1836 and the secession of Texas from Mexico, in that we don't have enough conversation or hardly any conversation of how Mexico abolishing slavery had to do, how much the abolition of slavery in Mexico had to do with Texians initiating their rebellion against Mexico because it was an economic order that they were unwilling to shift away from. And that part in our Texas history is not discussed. It's always talked about liberty and all of these different pieces. But once again, in the Spanish archives, there was sort of the bear counting Spanish archives. There is a decree from the Cortes de Cádiz. Cádiz is a city in the southern most part of Spain. And then state of the art? The courts of Spain in Cádiz in 1318, 114 issued a decree for all the kingdom of New Spain of which Texas was apartheid. They said all slaves are hereby emancipated. So you can't any longer be considered a slave. Everybody ignored it, but officially, the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 of Abraham Lincoln came very late in the Americas compared to how the Spanish treated a person known as a slave. So they were all, how many emancipated? Long before Lincoln did his thing. Well, that's for the very first time. It was in Texas, you know, but they were celebrated in the week of the Revolution. Mexico followed up with their own decree emancipating slaves in Mexico, of which Texas was apartheid until 1913. When these trees as Mexican as a Mexico city does happen records when they had files for them to bring their attention to the circus. That is to build a slave, but I think it became a block on the same time that secularized in the Alamos. But I cut off that route. It shows Louis, there in the Orleans during the trans-1990 trade, Spanish law transporting the boars coming through Galveston Bay, it was a block down to the Rio Grande where they were attacked and free and they started to black-lancers. But the moors got his name. The moors, you know, the boars. They just were killing the slave traders. The important date that just passed us is November the 16th. November the 16th is the day that the priest officially declared the present Campo Santo in the present church that is today the chapel at the Alamo. He declared a Campo Santo. He blessed all the stations of the cross and his name was Frey, he was a Franciscan father, Mythine Garcia. And he entered, he made an entry in the baptismal record book because when you baptize a church, you Christian the church, you give it its religious name, in canon law, that's the way you're supposed to do it. And we have that document. It's just been redone, the book has just been fixed. It just got completely redone. The Catholic archives hasn't, but they won't let you look at it. Those are the, you'll take pictures on it and then text them over to Douglas MacDonald? No. I have the picture. I have the picture, I think it was very important though, you know, I think, you know, the 16th drilled it into his head. So I think what's really important is that, that we have processes in place, right? That we can participate in one way or another. And we participate in this process through the Alamo and by-election committee. We've participated now, we're participating through federal court. Yeah, right. Because the process that was played didn't work, it wasn't working. And it's still, I mean, when you have the leadership of the Alamo saying that there was no evidence of slavery at the Alamo, that's the problem for me, right? I mean, there's abundant evidence and another thing. Since we're being recorded, the first person buried in the present church of the Alamo in that cemetery, his name was Thomas and he was a Yerpi Piami Indian. He's buried in the south transect of the church. And in the center part, on the same day when the priest blessed the Campo Santo, he buried Canary Islander, whose name was Bueno y Rojas. Those were just the two inside the church. And the cemetery, of course, extends all the way out into the plasma and there's, you have to say plural cemeteries. Because as each church was built and as it fell down, it was a cemetery and they just moved over to the new church and built that church and its cemetery. So I think we have about $450 million worth of questions. If you could get a question here. Okay, so we're gonna take one more question and then I wanna switch gears a little bit into the organizing questions that we have because, like I said, we could spend, it's a whole college course on the untold stories of the history of Mission San Antonio de Valero on the top. This picture, this picture. So, give me just a second. Isn't there anyone that can write a book about what is going on in the effort to visit every history or something? They talk about it. There's a lot of people that are not aware of that and do. Well, my guess and there are multiple people that are documented and the thing is all of those bikers of evidence, all of that content is there where we are hearing and understanding is that there is an unwillingness of the leadership of the Alamo Trust and the General Land Office and by default the city of San Antonio and the state of Texas an unwillingness to actually incorporate all of the subject of evidence in the interpretation of the story and that willingness by the Alamo Trust makes the city of San Antonio complicit in the omission of the history of its own people. So we have a question in the back and then I'm gonna put it in the clutch and talk a little bit more about what it is. Statement towards slavery as opposed to the Islamic system. The Spanish and Comienza system and even though it was transferred to being that they were no longer accepting. Maybe slavery, they were making vessels of the king. But this is something that is written about what we're taking aside that they were the most important to do the work because the Paraguas and the Tapuas refused to mix with the Spaniards or be made Christians. This is a statement that was written that a completely overwhelmed by Spanish civilization that probably technically became a broken people where they're always destroyed, they became completely empathetic to life in the Spanish mission system. Their choices were these, work to death, become a fugitive or die at the hands of the host of the party. Death was the only escape for Indians. And is that not slavery? So that's another, yeah, yeah. And the colonial experience, their missions at our missions is this very bad. That is all the time that they want to hide from all this tourist ration. I'm sorry, what was that? Well, we're bringing up, I had a battle of 15 years just to get indigenous people to recognize it's our body. And that is a part of how they oppress, repress our identity and our existence and our struggle as indigenous people. So what I want to do is very vital but what I want to do is vital is you're speaking truth to power and then power squashes any truth but put to the darkness. As I'm reading right now, it's a part of all this systematic injustice. It's insignificant. They don't want the tourists to come over here and hear all this. How San Antonio was actually created that we were here as free people and then converted into vessels of the crown, basically slaves without being called slaves. How black people were sold at a slave trading block there in front of the Alamo. This is all a part of our history. It should be told. I agree. So then in this exercise of speaking truth and power, you don't really mention the lawsuit. Has there been any conversation or dialogue or seeking to find a redress on behalf of the Alamo trust with the Bapinam or anybody else? No, no, I'm fine. There are a trajectory to get the job done, to lead Mr. Phil Collins in a $15 million collection. And all these other people that they're referring to as investors. Can you, you're saying referring to investors but I think can you be more clear as to what we're talking about in terms of the breakdown of who's actually pitched in to date to make this project happen? The city and the state put 130 million dollars. So, so far they've exhausted the taxpayers' funds and they're relying on the investors, private investors to complete the other 300 million, right? And so I think that's the biggest issue, right? That they have to leave this deadline because that's the promise. But in the documents in the court litigation we haven't had a hearing. We're waiting on the judge to schedule a hearing date. We have one, but two days before the hearing the lawyer has dropped about 700 pages worth of documents on the judge's hearing. Is the court of the G.L.O. or? All of them, all four of them. Right there in the G.L.O., right? The city, the state, the city, the G.L.O., the Electoral Trust, and the leading companies to generalize the G.L.O. They're all four of them are independent. So, they filed, so the judge needed more time to review their documents in the holidays came. So, but in those documents it's really interesting because the opening, the opening paragraphs elude to that the judge rules in favor of our claim that it'll basically just shut down the product. So it's like fear-mongering. And we're in 2020 and we're using fear-mongering to get our ways, Antonio, which is obviously the way things are done here, I guess, because our history has been marginalized for decades, and maybe even centuries, and here we are entering into a new decade, and we're starting it off really bad. I don't know what's, you know, in terms of the future for this site, you know, in regards to my children, I don't think it's an eligible history or the inherent, so why'd you grab children out of my children? Why didn't I want to talk about crockery because it's about four years, so the neighbors, I mean, these people aren't just trees and it's Mexican. Yes, so one of the things that I do, I'll talk about processes, and in the process, in the early 2014, we engaged in, when I say we, I'm talking about the animal citizens advisory committee, we engaged in developing the guiding principles that would set the stage for how this project would be unfolded over the years, and one of those guiding principles, one of the themes that came up with that guiding principle was about healing, and that this had to be a site of healing. We had to focus in this, Allen would have an opportunity, you know, for the city, for the state, and we could use it, and there had to be healing involved in the site. There is no healing going on right now. We have five battle fronts with the Alamo, the Alamo Invaders and Father Lawsuit, the NAACP has been fighting with the issue of the war and the desegregation of the war with building, the much counter, the San Antonio Constellation is fighting to preserve the building from the demolish because they're going to move forward with the demolishing that building. To turn it into the Tiger Museum. That's against, you know, we're fighting the issue of the cemetery, you know, and so this is now, who knows what's going to happen within the next few months? You know, who knows, you know, there might be other lawsuits, but you know, there is no healing going on, and I've already, I've asked, and I've reached out to several leaders in San Antonio asking them, is there no one that will stand up and try to bring some sense to this site? You know, I mean, when you have that many battle fronts, there can't be all good with the outcome of the site, and... So what I'm on, right there, I think that that's sort of a really important piece that there's all of these different battle fronts that the Alamo renovation project is seeing. Can that be an opportunity for the general public to be able to apply pressure? And where are strategic places that the public can apply pressure in these circumstances, that we're at right now? I still think it's huge, if it's making the leaders digest, they can output a remarkable thing, the true story of the history of the Alamo. Well, I welcome any journalists, writers, media makers, storytellers, puppeteers, you name it. You want to come and tell, expand the narrative? However that is, you know. Well, you know there's a lot of people that know the true story, but don't want to come out and say it because they're too scared. See, I have this picture right here, and back then, when they took this picture, they took someone like my, it's a grandma of mine, took some of her kids away. They were left only with a boy and a girl. And it's a very old, old picture. It's in the shield of the Alamo, it's very old. And Emma descended on the mission of Jose. This picture was taken there, she lived there. In that, in one of their rooms in there. So remember, can you kind of discuss with us and we're going to be sitting at home about specific pressure points that the general public can address? Yeah, I still think that the city council has to, you know, weigh in a little bit more. I was told that the city council members could not speak to me anymore because of the lawsuit. So I don't believe that that's the case because the city is in litigation constantly. People the fire department, police department, they're constantly having conversations. I was disembodied from a fundraiser, you know, because of other people that were at the fundraiser. So, you know, I think certain people know that the city does themselves into a hole and they can't find a way out. But I do still think that, you know, I think the city council should be called. I think people should be saying, look, you know what? Tell us what's going on with the Alamo, be more transparent. Let us know how our $150 million is being used. I think somebody should call the county and thank them. Thank the county for doing what they did in 2005 in the Alamo cemetery because they're the only, they're the only political entity of the state that recognized the Alamo cemetery back in 2005. And because of what they did, the Texas Historical Commission had to recognize it as well. And that's why we're in this battle right now over the cemetery because there's so many consistencies and there's some things that should have been applied that were not applied because it's the Alamo. So in terms of antiquity laws and things like that. And other cemetery protections that are not being cared for. That wouldn't happen in any other cemetery. Look at Sugarland in Houston. A year and a half ago, Sugarland, they found, I mean, if you were heard of Sugarland 95, the Sugarland 95, okay, the Sugarland 95 was two years, two and a half years ago in Fort Bend County, the school district wanted to build a new building. So they started digging. They were told, look, this could be a cemetery. We don't know, but they started digging anyway. They started digging, they came across the body. They went to the Texas Historical Commission and said, look, we found a body. We're just gonna move it, get out of the way and we're gonna be building our building. Texas Commission said, no, you're gonna go in there and you gotta find, you gotta keep digging until you find no more bodies. Because they told us there was a cemetery, okay? You gotta keep digging. So they made Fort Bend, yeah, they made Fort Bend and Bend School District, dig the entire site until all of them was no more bodies. By the time they were done, they had dug 95 bodies out of this site. This site was the site of the Black Convict Cemetery. Okay, so it was historical. There was family members that were still alive that were connected to the people that were buried there. And so they were made to, so they went to Fort. The infant school district went to Fort to get Fort in order to remove all the bodies that they could build their building. Last year, actually at the beginning of this year, they dropped their lawsuit and said, forget it. We're just gonna leave it at the cemetery. There's just too much public outcry about the cemetery. And Fort Bend County even kicked in a million dollars to help find, to help do DNA to find the family members of the cemetery. And what we're saying here is, why can't we do that at the Alamo? Well, we have families here that are directly related, linearly send it of the people that are buried in that cemetery, right? So, you know, you can't apply the laws to one culture or one group or one place and not equally apply it someplace else. And that's exactly what, that's why we're in Fort. That's why we're in Fort. But they're only digging to a certain depth. Well, that's, yeah, they're purposely doing, so you know, in the past month, they've found over 200 bones, right? And the month before that, they found other bones, right? They've been finding bones, they're gonna find bones, they're digging the cemetery. But they're only going deep enough so that they're going, they know they're gonna find bones because the bones have been scattered throughout history, because of history, right? Because of all the utility work and all the other excavations. But they're purposely not going deep enough to hit what they call articulated remains, full bodies, caskets, things like that. They're purposely not doing that. And that, because that's a practice that archeologists engage in when there's a very special project that needs to happen because they know that if they found a body, they found an articulated body, that by law they would have to stop. And the law of Texas says you cannot build improvements on a sepa, half of a cemetery. So they're gonna go deep, just far enough that they need to because all the previous system archeological reports already told them that they're three meters deep. That's where the bodies are. So as long as they stay within that three meters, they're not gonna hit the body. They're gonna hit our disarticulated remains, which are means of fragments. And basically they're saying that that's why it's not a cemetery because they're just fragments. Basically saying that our people, the people of San Antonio, that our culture back then when our people died, we would break their bodies up into little pieces and throw their bones around. And that's how they got it. So that's part of the justification of saying why it's not a cemetery. We also heard them say that because there's no headstones, it's not a cemetery. And besides on the air, on Texas Public Radio they're saying that we're going to guide this interpretation of the space based off of the evidence that's on record. There's ample evidence that there's a cemetery there on the site. But again, selectively being obited in the interpretation of the site. The evidence that they're choosing to guide this project is quite, there is an evidence. And so as the citizens of San Antonio, we have an obligation to call our city and county representatives to make them and state representatives, councilmen, council women, anyone that has authority over this project. Or not even the project, but over these leaders that we put in positions to represent. We would hope that the city has told us, or has made it clear that they wish they could do something but their hands are tied because the GLO is running the show. And we have said in public and to other city leaders is that that's not entirely true. You're still responsible landowners, right? You own the land. So if they found a brick of gold during their dig, the Alamo Trust is not going to claim it. The city of San Antonio is going to say, that's our goal. It's on our land. So it's ours. So what's the difference between that power of gold that happens to be a power of gold or a very likely, you know, profit? So who's claiming damage to the bones that have already been dug up? The Catholic Church claim them. You talking about the Alamo? No, I'm talking about the human remains that have been dug up in the Alamo. No, we're in the Alamo. Right now they're in the Alamo. I want to be able to kind of shift another storyline into the scenario for those that are still being educated as to why it is that the Catholic and unpolished nation is so deeply invested in making sure that this is done the right way outside of the obvious reasons that we've already discussed as being folks that are directly in the old descendants of those that are buried there at the Alamo. At Christa Santa Rosa Hospital, when they were doing the prayer garden and a project that, again, was multi-million dollar project, that we know that that's the Catholic sample that's one of the first cemeteries of the city of San Antonio, right? And they found all of these human remains when they were digging up there, you know, burying the prayer garden, the Papinacoic designation as long with the Canary Islander associations and other associations or the earliest families of San Antonio were brought in to come up with a plan of what to do with the human remains that were found there, and to give them a proper burial because that was what was ultimately decided by the descendant groups. Well, we threatened to sue them. We'd take them to court if they didn't change course. And they, the sisters of the Incarnate Word, made the decision to do the right thing and they dropped the court case. They dropped their petition to have all the bodies removed and they chose to work with the descendants you know, to move the project along. Right, and so the prayer garden is still being constructed. Architects were brought on board to be able to create a redesign so that those, that gampo sangle, that cemetery underneath would no longer be disturbed, right? And so you have no descendant organizations such as the ones that have been mentioned that have been involved. Most recently, even here at Maverick Plaza at La Vita, that was the second site of the mission San Antonio de Valero where they had a cemetery as well and have been brought on board as part of the consulting communities as interested parties with any forms that they find to be able to be involved in the determination of what happens because the city of San Antonio and everybody that knows anything about like the earliest families in San Antonio acknowledges the Papinam as some of those original descendants of those original families with direct blood lines to all five of the missions and beyond, right? But they don't remove the bodies they just leave them there. They just remove the... But you typically, like according to standard practice you ask the families what's going to be done with them and then a decision is made. This project that we're dealing with at the Alamo all of these standard conventions that would otherwise be carried out have been chunked up away and on our watch. And as significant as this place is as that footprint is in the minds of every Texan that a false and incomplete narrative is being bulldozed through literally and we're being told by our city leadership oh, our hands are tied, sorry. And that's absolutely unacceptable. So I wanted to... So I asked you about holidays that people can apply pressure, city, county, federal and I would also argue or not argue but like suggest for those of you that no writers, that no journalists, that no media leaders, that no artists, people that are able to carry a message and carry this Palada across to get them activated. This isn't something that's gonna necessarily be won by a lawsuit. Yeah, the lawsuit's gonna be the one that makes the decisions on that level but it requires public pressure to be able to get articles in the newspaper, stories on TV, public access, public radio, every avenue to be able to talk about this in a coherent and intelligent way because we may not have the millions and millions of dollars for PR and communications campaign that the Alamo Trust has to work with but we have the population of the city of San Antonio that deserves to know its own history and should be enraged at the way that this is being carried out. And so that's where our responsibility is and you took time out of your Tuesday night to be here with us this evening and thank you for giving your most precious resource which is your time and we put that response, that seed of personal responsibility back into you if you're not already involved in some sort of advocacy around this issue. Talk to us, we'll find a way to get you plugged in. We have plenty of ways of being able to activate folks that wanna be involved and if you have a community organization or a church group or your tamalada that's coming up that you wanna invite someone from getting on to come and speak and share these pieces to educate people. Talk to us here afterwards and we'll be happy to make arrangements because this is a really unique and opportune time for us to be able to have some backbone in Playa Vía and to be able to push back and demand that our stories are told at this place because it's so much easier for them to give in a coat of stucco and move on. What are the reasons that they were able to do? We just found out, I have some of the features. I'm gonna go into an inventory of secret objects that Red McCombs has in his office. The Kayawan Nation, the Lakota Nation, I was horrified. He's gonna return from one of those rather nations to come and reclaim even Indian dresses that put in a squad in Indian dresses. It is so shameful, I was crying out, I'm gonna do an inventory and we will reclaim all those objects. Red McCombs and I finished the city and the Alamo Trust, Guadalupe Dolmen, Guadalupe Foundation, the three non-profits. It is sad for us Indians. It is very, very sad death. You know, we have this kind of a people. Remember, George P. Bush, I was their president, just to find for the charges that were put against him, he lost the public trust because of his management and when one of the senators, and I finished all the Texas financial meeting, Wilson asked him, why so many non-profits which he was legally? Why not put the manager that will manage the Alamo and the payroll of the Texas general annual office? Simple than that, that is correct, simple than that. He answered because the ability, he had to protect these filthy, very wealthy millionaires that he put in these three non-profits as a board. And now we know that one of them has secret objects of many or more Indian tribe brothers or relatives and is shocking when you will see the collection displayed. It's sad, it is a very sad day. You know, today, and we're happy that you are bringing all these issues and challenges because we're gonna shut that project. We're gonna shut, I don't care, it is 4,500 cents, 450 cents, it's not enough what they're doing, seeing, and I can't even take every bone over people who are with them. And I am Pacoche, my mother's Pacoche, how they dare to take every more bone for the last two months? There's these two now, we're gonna enter it and back it. It's all that I can tell, okay? The project is cursed, it's an Indian curse. I think that we just have to understand that the history of the marginalized communities that have been historically marginalized continues to this day with this very important project that's half a billion dollars that's gonna stay in San Antonio. And I think that we have to remember that, that it's happening right now. And they're counting on people that get athletic. They're counting on people not caring enough about the issue because that's just the way our communities are, right? That's how we can get, that's how people get things, that's how things get, how we get rid of other things because I want to, so one of the things that I was told one day I was on the, I was on the community and police relations committee and I was appointed by the mayor. And the mayor said, we, this was during the time of what was going on in Shardonsville and in Baltimore. And the mayor said, well, we're not San Antonio and we're not Baltimore and we're not Shardonsville. We don't have those problems. And I responded by saying, but you know what? San Antonio's worse because we don't talk about those problems, we suppress them and our communities are used to doing that. That's just the way we are treated. We were used to being treated this way. Many of our families have been shamed out of our cultures for centuries and here we have an opportunity of taking a $450 million and helping it put, be put back on the right track and tell the true stories and the history, the rich history of this site so that all of Texans can enjoy it so all the future generations can enjoy it and our children that are gonna inherit this project can be proud of the decisions that we made as a community or they're gonna be ashamed of what we did or didn't do. That's our reality. We will be judged by the morale of our time. Is there any way of getting Mexican law to say they have perfect workers with all their military? Where are the fallen soldiers? Where did they put them? Where did they bury them? What did they do with them? Well that's where the investigative research would come in. That's why it's so important to do it. We have to have paid professionals come in and do that, investigate that in-depth research on the site because we're gonna miss it. We're gonna, they're gonna miss it. I mean that's why Dr. Pudano gets paid $2,000 a day. She will. It only has to work 14 days a month. Because she's been in the city for the last six weeks. Yeah, so they're good to do it. They have to think in those six weeks. Yes, they do. We're gonna hear that. The consultants on this project, the amount of money that's spent on this project, the amount of money that's being taken out of San Antonio, right, because of this project, is going to, all these consultants are gonna go home and they're gonna leave us here with this. And we'll never see them again. Right, but we will see every single person that helped make these decisions along the way. The great ones. And we have to remember that. You have to remember it in elections. You have to remember it in council meetings. Whenever you can, remind them. Inaction is the same. What did Martin Luther King say? It's not the words of my enemies that we will remember with the silence of our friends. And to me, that is what's driving this right now. Is are you going to be silent or are you going to speak up? If you're not gonna speak up, if you're not gonna get into this little battle, then step aside. And don't be a hindrance. Get out of the way. Because some people have chosen to battle and to fight and to try to protect the only history that we have left of the first families of this city. Whether they were mulacos, American Indians, mestizos, lobos, coyotes, whatever Spanish cost that you want to give them. You know, that's why we're fighting. And so, I think that's the other time. Yeah, so before, I can just, couple more minutes if you'll barrel off with us. So what you've received here is a sample letter that you can use to communicate with our local leadership. If you wanted to have it translated to send it to the Mexican consulate at Alameda, we're trying to encourage leadership, you know, from everyone to be able to take this on in a personal way, in a way that matters to you, because it should matter to all San Antonioans and all Texans, right? So there's that sample letter and if you need it digitally, holler at me and I'll get it back to you later. On our website that's listed on here at the bottom and it's highlighted as pepilan.org. On that website, there are Apple videos, graphics, history, or you can nerd out and have a great time reading the website. There's tons of content contextualizing the pepilan and this Alamo struggle, so you're all welcome to go on there and read. There's a link to a poster like this that we are asking for our supporters to download, print and put either on your homes, on your cards, your favorite coffee shop, places of business, any other publications that you're involved in to be able to, we have to create waves around this and so this is one of those beautiful visuals that represents our future. This young man here is an eagle dancing so we want to take this beautiful image and put it out on our workplace. This is our free download. And make the cry stop lying to our children. Because they're lying to our children, exactly. The children are gonna say, what do they mean, mom, that you're lying to us about what? So exactly on that point, leave it to the elders, is that that dominant society despises the idea of us telling our kids their true history because it's more convenient to the dominant society to have us work with horse blinders made out of the fabric of the white supremacist history of this place. Can't put it any other way, right? So we're creating this coloring book that can be used for parents to use as an educational tool with the children, right? Because at least our babies need to know and be proud of who they are. And that is something which we ask that you download as an educational tool for a dollar and it is something that you can take to your fourth grade teachers, seventh grade teachers, so that they can use these also as educational tools in the classroom. And then there's gonna be other really cool pieces that we'll continue to create. But we don't know what those we try out, you know? And I operate out of the mentality that I can knock on nine doors and they'll say no and I'll attend when they're gonna say yes. So we only fail by not trying. So, and thank you all so much for your willingness and being here to fare along with us. If you have other platforms that you want us to explore, having conversations with folks here in San Antonio and beyond for mucho gusto. And then we have invitations for an event that we have this Friday night. This is the 25th year of operations of American Indians in Texas at the Spanish colonial missions, which is the nonprofit agency that was created by the FICNAM to manage a lot of its outward community pieces and things to all of the hard work and sacrifices of our elders that we've been able to make it to 25 years and into the leadership of Ramon keeping the ship above water. So come eat with us, eat, drink, we marry. It's on Friday evening at the Vanessa Hall. Invitations are in the back. We also have an Indian market that's gonna be taking place on Saturday the 14th at the Spanish governor's palace. We're gonna take over the palace for the whole day. And they'll be music and food and drinks, vendors, performances, a free tree giveaway, early Texas history project with these really beautiful photographs that we'll have out for display. And that's free, family-friendly, bring everybody your clothes, your mom or your dad, good food, of course. And then we'll be shutting down until January where we'll be hitting the ground running and there'll be more surprises there in store for everyone. Please follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Leave your contact information and we'll be sure to circle back around to you. Have a blessed evening. Thank you. We'll see you all later. Thank you all. Thanks. Thank you.