Heywood Sanders Presentation; Extra Credit

Education is a major role in an economy’s growth, so cities with high percentage of educated people will attract people to these cities. San Antonio is one of the lowest educated cities in America. Educated young people want to go to big cities that will pay more than other cities. Cities that are more centralized attract people because everything is in walking distance. San Antonio is one of the most spread out cities in America. The median household income is low in San Antonio. Cities with tons of colleges tend to have more growth in population and economic growth. People go where the jobs are. Working at H.E.B. part time will be $17,000 a year.

San Antonio has a lot of school districts. North side of San Antonio is growing and the rest of San Antonio is moving away from the middle of San Antonio. North Side of San Antonio has the higher incomes. Hispanic population is located south-central San Antonio. Hispanic population is moving out of central San Antonio. African American is located in East San Antonio and is also moving out to the east. Due to the outward movement schools are growing away from San Antonio and school in the heart of San Antonio are losing students. Not only are they moving out but they are moving mostly north. Hispanic population is moving north and northwest. Jobs are moving away from San Antonio. San Antonio has a problem with competing with other cities. UTSA accepts almost everybody but less that 50% attend.

"The Alamo"

I chose the movie “The Alamo” with Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Quaid. The movie was made in 2004. For the most part the movie was good and did a good job keeping my attention. This movie was pretty real telling in how the battle happened they way I was taught in school. It had everything I learned about the Alamo and more. There is no way it can be one hundred percent correct, shot for shot. Since there was no cameras only writing and what people say. The movie was based on what the Tajonos/Anglo settlers point of view. Seventy percent of the movie was film around the Tajonos/Anglos, like the at the Alamo and the rest was about Mexicans attacking and planning. This is when less than two hundred Texan and Tejano volunteers led by William Berret Travis took on general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and thousands of Mexican forces to gain their independence from Mexico. This movie does a good job of showing the courageous effort and dedication the Tejano fighter contributed. The ulimate sacrific for freedom. William Travis even drew a line and said if you wanted to stay and fight cross the line, only one person did not. Even though they all knew that they would be killed the fought to the end.

The Bexarenos called it the Alamo after Alamo de Parras, a Spanish Calvary unit that moved in 30 years ago. It was said “as goes the Alamo, so goes Texas”. Texas was a republic before it was a state in the United States of America. The Alamo was established as a Spanish mission in 1718. In 1824 Texas swore allegiance to Mexico under The Federalist Constitution. Santa Anna tore the document up and named himself Supreme dictator. After the Alamo Santa Anna decides to split his troops up and then meets his fait at the battle of San Jacinto. Sam Houston and his troops stormed Santa Anna and his forces and defeated them in only eighteen minutes. During the battle Santa Anna shows what a coward he really is, by removing his general’s uniform and trying to hide amongst his soldiers. In the end it was his own men that recognized him and pointed him out. After the fall of the Alamo, nine years later Texas became the 28th state of the United States.

Remember the Alamo. DVD. Dir. Josheph Tovares. PBS Home Video, 2004, 54 min.

The Alamo

The history of the Alamo is normally told by the Tejanos/Anglo settler’s side of view, so the Mexican perception of what happen is normally overlooked. Originally named Misión San Antonio de Valero, the Alamo served as home to missionaries and their Indian converts for nearly seventy years. Construction began on the present site in 1724. In 1793, Spanish officials secularized San Antonio's five missions and distributed their lands to the remaining Indian residents. The soldiers referred to the old mission as the Alamo (the Spanish word for "cottonwood") in honor of their hometown Alamo de Parras, Coahuila.

On February 23, 1836, the arrival of General Antonio López de Santa Anna's army outside San Antonio nearly caught them off guard. Surprised, the Texians and Tejanos prepared to defend the Alamo together. The defenders held out for 13 days against Santa Anna's army massive army. William B. Travis, the commander of the Alamo sent forth couriers carrying pleas for help to communities in Texas. Many of these pleas were not answered. On the eighth day of the siege, a band of 32 volunteers from Gonzales arrived, bringing the number of defenders to nearly two hundred. At this time Colonel Travis drew a line on the ground and asked any man willing to stay and fight to step over, only one person didn’t cross the line. They were ready to give their lives rather than surrender their position to General Santa Anna and his army.

Among the Alamo's garrison were Jim Bowie, an awesome knife fighter, and David Crockett, famed frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee. The Battle Alamo is known as heroic struggle against impossible odds — a place where brave men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.

Espada Dam

I must of drove by Espada Dam hundreds of times in the past and didn’t even know it. Today we are used to turning a knob and out comes water, but back in the day they used acequias to get water to remote places. It pretty much looks the same as it did before except for the noise of traffic and the paved streets. Espada Dam is located north of Mission San Francisco de la Espada and Mission San Juan de Capistrano and south of the Alamo and Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo. It is in the San Antonio River and has withstood many years of destructive floods with only minor repairs required to maintain its sound condition. Espada Dam was constructed sometime between 1731 and 1745. The dam was originally two hundred and seventy feet long and was built on a natural rock foundation.

The Espada Dam and Aqueduct had a huge impact on the initial survival of a new mission which depended upon the planting and harvesting of crops. In south central Texas, intermittent rainfall the need for a reliable water source made the design and installation of an acequia system a high priority. It wasn’t only the little unpredicted rainfall but the fact that the Indians were not used to living in one place. Most Indians in Texas were nomadic and traveled were their food did so staying in one place was unheard of. Irrigation was so important to Spanish colonial settlers that they measured cropland in suertes -the amount of land that could be watered in one day. The dam and irrigation system was engineered by Franciscan Missionaries and constructed by Indian converts. It raised the level of the river so water could enter the acequia. The eight foot tall structure diverts approximately four thousand five hundred gallons of water per minute into the four mile long irrigation ditch known as "Acequia de Espada". By gravity flow the acequia provides irrigation water for four hundred acres of land in the vicinity of Mission San Francisco de la Espada. A system of floodgates, the mayordomo, or ditch master, controlled the volume of water sent to each field for irrigation.

The importance of the Espada Dam today is that it is a historical marker for what the missionaries accomplished. The Espada Dam is the oldest continuously used Spanish diversion dam in Texas. It still diverts water from the old San Antonio River channel into the acequia madre, or main water ditch, to irrigate Mission Espada’s fields. Espada Dam is also important today because it does still work so it is still used to water farm land around the mission. It is also a tourist attraction which brings people and money to San Antonio to help it to continue to grow. It is also a way to experience a different way of living since most of the things at Mission Espada still work and for the most part still look the same as they did when they were built.