Part of the real history of English and Spanish in Texas...

There is a concoction of self-satisfied myth and ignorance about English that is served up at Sunday services, on the floor of the Texas Legislature, in newspaper editorials, and in political party platforms with the alacrity of nachos at a high school football game. This myth holds that English in Texas was God-given, inevitable, and inherently superior. In the immortal words of Ma Ferguson, “If the King’s English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.” Thanks to Mel Gibson, everybody knows that Jesus didn’t speak English but Aramaic. (He probably knew Hebrew and Greek as well.) Maybe if Gibson had made a movie about the multilingual Alamo, where German, French, and Spanish-speaking men died alongside those who spoke English, it would be easier to point out the obvious and make it stick: Texas is populated by recent immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, slaves, and conquered natives....

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