The Contested Meaning(s) of Houston 1836: A Contemporary Cultural Battle over Memory and Migration within an American Border State.

This paper analyzes a recent debate concerning the naming of a professional soccer team in Houston, Texas and its connection to larger issues concerning national identity, collective memory, and Hispanic immigration within the United States and Mexico. The original team name of Houston 1836, chosen by the mostly white management of the club, was chosen as a way of honoring the year of the city's founding by white settlers from the American South. The proposed name provoked a contentious and highly public outcry within powerful and influential members of the local Hispanic community who argued that the name served as a powerful and divisive reminder of the oppression faced by the Mexican population as a result of white hegemonic rule in Texas. As a result of the controversy and threats of a Hispanic boycott of the club, team officials relented and eventually changed the name to the less offensive moniker of the Houston Dynamo. This decision in turn led to a backlash among some white supporters of the new club who claimed that team officials had given in to the forces of "political correctness" by changing the name. This paper frames this debate within the context of contemporary issues of identity and migration in Texas, arguing that the debate over Houston 1836 is part of a much larger political and cultural war regarding the place of Hispanics within the myths of American national identity. We argue that the controversy is ultimately one localized case study into what has become an increasingly sophisticated and organized movement of resistance against forms of white nativism, both cultural and political, within the American Hispanic community. It also illustrates the divisive nature of the past, as both sides of the debate possess completely different understandings of what the year 1836 means and represents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]