Davy Crockett Surrendered?! Jim Bowie, a Slave Trader?! Sam Houston, a Coke Addict?!
In the early 1980s, revisionists were shrouded in searing denunciations - from the right, but also from the left. A case in point was Seguín from 1982 by Chicano director Jesús Treviño, a public service biopic about Juan Seguín. "I was interested in telling the Chicano side of American history that both John Wayne and American textbooks ignored," said Treviño. "In Wayne's version, Mexicans are portrayed either as bandidos, dancing senoritas, sleeping drunks or fiery seductresses." Meanwhile, on the left, Acuña, who acted as the film's advisor, actually resigned because of Seguín's portrayal, calling him a traitor to Mexican Americans, and comparing his alliance with the Texans to that of the French Vichy government with the Nazis. Then came the big bang of Alamo revisionism. Released in 1990, the well-researched Duel of Eagles by Jeff Long was a screaming banzai indictment against everything John Wayne cared about. The tone was haunting and almost ...