Hispanic Military History

"Guernica" Pablo Picasso

Slit Throat

     During the 1836 Siege of the Alamo, the Mexican Army besieging Texan independence fighters haunted their prey with a military march adopted from Spanish armies called "El Deguello" or "the slit throat" to designate the defenders would receive no quarter. The phrase itself came from the association among Spanish armies that to completely destroy an enemy on the battlefield was likened to slicing the throat of an animal before butchering. Later in the 19th Century, Cuban freedom fighters would cry out "¡A degüello!" as a war cry when entering battle- especially among cavalry during charges against Spanish infantry.

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"Marble bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius" [Unknown Sculptor]

Stoicism and the Warrior King

     Perhaps the most well known among practitioners of Stoicism- a philosophy based on making peace with one's emotions and using logic and reason to make decisions- was the Spanish-born Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius became emperor during a difficult era during the empire and dealt with legal woes, military invasions, and a populace rapidly losing their faith in the government.

     Aurelius responded with trademark Stoicism by ending a war against Parthia (Persia) by taking a Roman army of soldiers who spent more time at taverns than in their camp to reform their lackluster discipline and turn them into a powerful fighting force. Aurelius then returned to Europe to pacify the Germanic tribes in a bloody 14-year war to settle the frontier violence to Rome's north.

     Marcus Aurelius would later lay the groundwork for a more successful legal system for the empire, increased the voice of the senate in decision making, and even established trade with Han Dynasty China before dying in 180 CE as the man most historians would consider the greatest Roman emperor in history.

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Anarcha-Feminism

"Republican militia women in training during the Spanish Civil War" Gerda Taro

     To say the Spanish Civil War was a chaotic conflict would be the understatement of the century. What began as a unified two-sided civil war against an oppressive conservative government quickly became a clustered conflict of several different factions fighting for their own individual causes. Women often found themselves at the heart of the conflict with conservative factions frequently mass-murdering teachers (mostly women) for preaching political messages in the classroom.

     On all sides, women took up arms to protect themselves and the people- and causes- they cared about, with several women fighting against the rising Fascist leader Francisco Franco. But these women did not only fight for the Republic. There were women fighting among the armies of anarchists, anti-fascists, Communists, Nationalists, and Catholics.

     Franco's armies would often use women to lure Republican men from hiding places as night-time sirens attracting men eager to help damsels in distress. Women who dared to fight back against Franco were almost always imprisoned, and frequently executed up to end shortly after the end of the war.

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In Sunshine and in Shadow

     Early during the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, Spanish conquistadors began spreading rumors of a city of gold hidden somewhere in the new world. These rumors quickly spread to officers and explorers who led entire armies in search of the famed city of "El Dorado." The searches frequently led to massacres, either among Spanish soldiers finding themselves the victims of both ambushes and deadly diseases; or mass murder for the indigenous peoples who found their inability to produce a city-scale tonnage of gold to the Spanish soldiers. But while the Spanish may have never found their city of gold, that doesn't mean the myth was merely fiction.

     Hidden deep in the jungle highlands of Colombia, a pre-contact culture known as the Muisca sat on entire mountains of gold and silver. The Muisca used their mineral wealth to establish a powerful series of city-states in the mountains to trade with nearby nations for centuries before the Spanish arrived, but they used that mineral wealth to decorate kings and honor the gods. There were no buildings made of gold, and it was the story of one king comparable to perhaps Midas of Greek myth- who surrounded himself with the shiny stone that inspired a reputation the proceeded him that he was a gold-adorned ruler. This story of such a shiny king- perhaps by mistranslation or perhaps by simply the way oral stories change every time they're told- to there being a city adorned with gold someone just beyond the known world.

     Indigenous peoples were often able to save their settlements by telling Spanish armies in search of the city that "if you just go a bit farther, you'll get there." Spanish conquistadors would often be so thirsty for wealth that they wouldn't have time to ransack a village in their pursuit of the impossible city. Eventually archaeologists uncovered the capital of this wealthy Muisca king; but most of the wealth he adorned himself had already been long gone. Perhaps- just like the conquistadors- we'll always be one step behind this mythical place.

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Remember "The Alamo"?

"The Alamo Theatrical release poster" [Unknown Artist]

     In 2004, the latest film depicting the Battle of the Alamo premiered to mixed results. At the box office, the film was a flop; and Disney pretty quickly scrapped ideas of trying to market the feature; but was the film as bad as people remember it? Several film critics called the movie too "apolitical" for a movie about the beginning of the Americanization of Texas, but- given the context of the year the movie premiered- it was surprisingly honest. In an era where filmmakers were harassed for speaking out about the war in Iraq, the Alamo openly explored the complex ideology of the Alamo's defenders.

     The war occurred because pro-slavery Protestant Americans immigrated into the Mexican frontier region of Texas under promises of converting to Catholicism and freeing their slaves (as slavery was illegal in Mexico), but did neither. The film spotlights two slaves inside the Alamo and the difficult choices they had to make during the siege. While the movies was promoting a pro-American message, it was done with attention to the complexity of the conflict and with a more human approach to the character of Davy Crockett. The climax of the movie when Mexican soldiers finally assault the fort was an epic, well-choreographed battle that showcased the terror of what the final moments of the battle were likely like. In other words, maybe we really should remember The Alamo.

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"Drawing of Former Honduras Chief of State: Oswaldo Lopez Arellano" [Unknown Artist]

The Football War

     Sport has been used for millennia to prevent war going back well beyond the Ancient Greek Olympics; but- on rare occasions- sport has started wars. During Cold War-era Latin America, American fruit companies operated out of Latin American nations under a term known as "banana republics" in order to impoverish those communities to maintain low produce prices among products sold back in the US.

     When foreign landownership in Latin American nations caused infighting among Latin American immigrants to neighboring countries, soccer quickly became a means for celebrating national pride while living abroad. That football nationalism though paired with limited resources and foreign economic instability caused a bloody rivalry between fans of the Honduras and El Salvador national soccer teams.

     In a qualifying match for the 1970 FIFA World Cup, violence erupted between fans of the El Salvador and Honduras national teams which became so deadly that both countries' militaries intervened. In what became known as the "Football War" Honduras and El Salvador soldiers fought in a 100-hour conflict to settle the dispute created on a soccer pitch. Foreign powers quickly intervened, but the war ended with increased militarization of both countries' politics ultimately leading to the even more brutal Salvadoran Civil War.