05/18/2024
Art Martinez de Vara’s latest book is now available from Tap Pilam Press, "Beneath Sacred Ground: The Mission San Antonio de Valero Burial Records Transcribed, Translated and Annotated” Hardback, 795 pages, 8.5 x 11, 137 illustrations.
BENEATH SACRED GROUND by Art Martínez de Vara documents the lives, struggles, and ethnogenesis of the residents of Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) through the vehicle of their burial records. This work includes a full transcription of the original Spanish records, dating from 1706 to 1782, as well as modern Spanish and English translations for each entry. The records are annotated to provide information not contained in the original manuscript, such as indigenous names, ethnonyms, family structures, compadrazgo relationships, social status and political offices held. In this way it is possible to understand the people of Mission San Antonio Valero in ways never intended or envisioned by the friars who created the burial records. In addition to the 1154 burials contained in the surviving burial books, the appendix contains an additional 34 burials records recovered from external sources. The records, as annotated by Martínez de Vara, reveal tragic stories of famine, epidemic, conflict and forced labor, but also stories of resistance, love, familial ties, cultural integration, and survival. The evidence of these stories is found interwoven in the sacramental records of this historic mission and are revealed from obscurity by applying several innovative research methods to guide the reader and researcher.
Reviews:
"Art Martinez de Vara has compiled an impressive historical account using Mission Valero burial records, tracing his and other Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation descendant’s ancestry to those interred at the Mission Valero Cemetery on the Alamo grounds. His book lays bare evidence that Coahuiltecan people are not extinct but survive today within the ancestral region of the Coahuiltecan Nation. Art provides a detailed chronicle of the mission church’s effort to erase the indigenous identity through the colonial period, and effort that has extended into recent times." -- Harry J. Shafer, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University
"Beneath Sacred Ground is a gift to researchers and readers who seek to learn about indigenous peoples’ experiences in Spanish-era Texas. Making Mission Valero burial records accessible is only a part of the accomplishment of this immense project. The notes provided with the burial entries deliver context for interpreting the entries, highlight the indigenous voices, and offer additional information about family members and other related archival documents when possible. The images in the book are beautiful and support the experiences detailed in the records." -- Amy Porter, Ph.D., Professor, Texas A&M University-San Antonio
"Martinez de Vara Combats long-held belief systems enforced by 20th century scholars that the Coahuiltecan Nation and Indigenous bands of Texas and Northern Mexico had become merely a relic of the past. Martinez de Vara uses the colonial blueprints employed to subjugate the Mission Indians through conversion to the catholic church to liberate the voices and identities of the Native Peoples of South Texas. Martinez de Vara amalgamates his lived experience of indigeneity, scholarship, and the law to bear unassailable witness to the process of colonization through cultural assimilation, as dictated through the records of the colonizer themselves." -- J.A. Barron, PhD, Bioarcheologist and Researcher, Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University
"No scholar is better positioned than historian and anthropologist Art Martinez de Vara to tell the story of the near-genocide and miraculous survival of Texas’s Coahuiltecan peoples." -- Michael Cepek, Ph.D., Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio
"Definitely a different kind of book for a number of reasons, in terms of methodology, technology, and polemically. It is bound to raise much discussion in various quarters with its publication. Most importantly, it provides a voice to those overlooked in our local history." -- Francis X. Galán, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History Texas A&M University-San Antonio
"More than a simple apology for the rightful place of the Coahuiltecan peoples, Martínez de Vara’s book is the unquestioned legal as well as historical documentation of their continuous role in Texas history and their viable presence in today’s San Antonio." -- Andrés Tijerina, Ph.D.. Professor of History Emeritus, ACC"
BENEATH SACRED GROUND by Art Martínez de Vara documents the lives, struggles, and ethnogenesis of the residents of Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) through the vehicle of their burial records. This work includes a full transcription of the original Spanish records, dating from 1706 to 17.....
