This is known as the Zavala Flag. It is perhaps the first official flag of the Republic of Texas 1836 -1845, being designed by and named in honor of the first Vice-President of the Republic of Texas, Manuel Lorenzo Justiniano de Zavala y Saenz guided the erswhile State, part of the Mexico City assignment of the Estado de Coahuila y Texas, during its earliest formative moments. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, thereby legalising the separation of the entity of Mexico from the entity of Texas in terms of political inter-relation.
Lorenzo de Zavala essentially financed the Texas Revolution against Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, spending a sum of 3,000,000 dolares in backing the effort. He was also involved in recommending a firm Republican form of governance, following the template of the United States of America, and steering away from democratic formulas that were being bantied about in Europe and in South America. Lorenzo de Zavala was also a Scottish Rite Mason as well as a devout Roman Catholic. He thought that men of substance should be members of agencies of good, both in the spiritual realm as well as the secular. As a side note, in that day, many Roman priests and officers of the Roman Catholic Church were member s of the York Rite Masonic order, and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a member of the Roman Church, the Scottish, and the York Rite Masonic Order. he wanted to have his bases covered, perhaps, but it is certain that Lopez de Santa Anna never guided his life or politics by the lamp posts established by those august organisations.
M.L.J. de Zavala Saenz was a very close friend of Stephen F. Austin, who is generally regarded as The Father of the Texas Republic. It was Austin who remained loyal to the limit to Mexico and even to Antonio Lopez....the man who served nine times as President of Mexico and eleven times as Vice-President. There are those who doubt that the Flag envisioned by de Zavala was ever approved, authourised, or sewn. Frankly, some of the students of Texas History who come to that conclusion are among those who do not want to allow any credit to any Latin individual for any positive contribution to the Texian cause. The problem with that notion is that it would reqjuire one to disallow contributions of Eisenhower and Nimitz during World War II because they had substantial German ancestry and German surnames.
Conjecture allows that de Zavala might have proposed a variation of Jane Long's first non-Spanish flag in Texas, which was a solid red rectangle with a five-pointed star in the very middle. This flag was presented by Mrs. Long to her husband in 1819, during the last moments of Spanish dominion in Texas.
In "The Lone Star Flag of Texas", an article which appeared in the September 1948 issue of Frontier Times, author Adina de Zavala suggests a meaning for each point of the star. According to the article, the five points of the star represent the characteristics of a good citizen, which are fortitude, loyalty, righteousness, prudence, and broadmindedness. Once again, various Texans were inculcated with this legend....although it might be a "Washington and the Cherry Tree" moment in history. But! On the other hand! M.L.J. de Zavala y Saenz could well have proposed that the points did stand for something like what his great-granddaughter suggested, because they are core principles of Scottish Rite Masonry. It would have come from a translation from the words, "fortaleza, lealdad, moralidad y catecismo, prudencia, y optimismo en el porvenir''.
This is all but a fuzzy prologue to point out that "Here we are again". We were treated shabbily by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna when he abrogated the Mexican Constitution of 1824 (written in large part by M.L.J. de Zavala y Saenz). We were treated shabbily by the United States after annexation, and they failed to strictly adhere even to the agreements solemnly made by Texas with the Caddo, Alabama, and Coushatta nations and other indigenous tribes, and committed all nature of arrogance against Texas and Texans up to and during the War Between the States. The liberation of the Negro resulted in little or no improvement in his lot, proving that the process of manumition would have been immensely superior to the release of the Negro by sudden emancipation from the wretched institution of slavery. Manumition would have made better citizens of freed slaves than would have any emancipation and flood of laws. Manumition papers would have been something a Black person could stuff in front of the nose of any white person to show..."The people who know me best said that I am worthy of liberty!" And the white skeptic would have had to yield, then, to the obvious truth of the statement. That would have been something far better than laws written, essentially, in a foreign land, to control and manage something the writers could never really understand. They could hate slavery, but they had no idea how to end the institution in such a way as to be beneficial in the long run to all.
From that point, through Reconstruction and then finally into the Progressive Movement, we find ourselves ever more surrounded by wise fools who want to improve and regulate our lives. Income tax, public assistance, programs to solve this problem and that problem. Housing, health, urban problems, education, family disintegration, energy problem, farming and ranching, wildlife and fish conservation, postal service, train service, how far parking metres are spaced, one from the other....it is never ending.
We now live in a Nation wherein all the problems we are facing are traceable to a central government program and/or initiative. Efforts by the progressives to control everyone's lives and form a Utopia on Earth have left the central government bankrupt, and in the position of changing all the rules concernng our previously agreed association with that central government. In cyber-jibber, it is Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna 2.0 . Throw in the repeated disasters of the Progressive marxist agenda's affect on Texas, and we have Destroy Texas 3.2 .
At last best count, there are probably 1,200,000 Texans who are affiliated with a non-militia Texas Nationalist or Texas Republican movement. There are many more who are beginning to move from the posture of "should re-establish" the Republic, to the default setting, "We never should have joined the Union."
When the "control" group....someone like Barbara Bush can tell the world that she and her husband really like Billy Jeff Blythe...he's like a son to us..." then there are real problems with the perceptive and procedural processes of the Poobahs. Billy Jeff is a piece of marxist white-trash who managed to brutally assault and/or criminally sexually assault various women of different category. He was in no way a purposeful or great economic thinker or fiscal magician. He was surrounded by a Republican Congress for three-fourths of his term, a term that was marked by four years of economic stagnation and malaise, but that now is regarded as some kind of Golden Epoch. It was not. It, in fact, laid the groundwork for the mess that Barak Obama and his marxist minions have managed to foist upon us...and Texas is left with no control. We are governed by earmarking robots, taxing and spending automotrons, and organic law national socialists working to impose total control on every aspect of human activity in Texas.
We must withdraw, in the calmest and friendliest way. Texas can live without the United States, although it is doubtful that the United States can long endure without Texas. We must turn in our tribute back to the Republic of Texas, settle our own arguments among ourselves, reduce our taxes, establish schools that are primary and secondary - grades 1 through 9 - and then University or Advanced Blue Collar Academies offerring two and/or three year BA diplomas and Master Technician Certificates depending on the chosen field, and run from unions, FmHA, FHA and the panoply of alphabet program ruination.
We are arriving evermore to this conclusion, along with increasing numbers of Texans. If it is possible that an election could generate polling numbers by Rasmussen that would show that there are more Americans who would vote for Obama than Romney at this stage, pretty much means that the Republic is lost. The stupid, the gimme-gimme people, the people who couch their desires for government action based upon what they want or "need" for themselves, the lazy, those who hate and resent the next person who "has" the least one smallest thing that the "exploited person" does not have, the people on marginal disability, the people who take unemployment compensation for 99 weeks, the people who live on AFDC and Lone Star Card as if it is their Divine Right.....are now dangerously close to that point where their mass overwhelms the Little Red Hen's ability to pull the wagon. We are nearing the storming of the Bastille and the assault of the bread factory.
It is drawing nigh the time to say "Good Bye".
More later. I am sad this dark night.
El Gringo Viejo
