I don’t know where they got the 10 to 1 number – that was never there. It was 2 to 1 at best. Frequently censuses put together after Texas was annexed by the US deliberately left out people not of European ancestry and ignored the Mexican records stored in Coahuila. In 1806 the population was made up of Spaniards, creoles, and a few French, Americans, slaves, civilized Indians, and half-breeds, for a total of about 7000 people, but somehow only the Spanish, Americans and French were generally counted. They numbered about 3500, so about half the population was always left out until modern scholars examined all the records.
In addition, many accounts refer to “Americans” when they should actually refer to “republicans.”
And Mexico offered land to all immigrants between 1824 and 1830, not just Americans, per the National Colonization Law of 1824. However, the law was written to be able to exclude Americans easily because of the phrase: “Until after the year 1840, the general congress shall not prohibit the entrance of any foreigner as a colonist, unless imperious circumstances should require it with respect to the individuals of a particular nation.” In 1830, Mexico closed the gate to Americans and in 1832 it passed yet another law that gave even greater inducement to Mexicans and non-Americans to settle. As a result, total population on the eve of the Texas Revolution in 1835 was about 35,000 people.
And Stephen F. Austin, whether you like it or not, was an empresario (An empresario was an agent who received a land grant from the Spanish or Mexican government in return for organizing settlements). His original grant was from Spain. When Mexico broke away from Spain Austin was able to transfer the grant and thereby keep it by registering it in the name of his father, Moses. He didn’t get “pissed” as you so elegantly put it. Instead he fought to keep his grant and succeeded.
Historically, the Mexican influence in Texas has been much stronger than the American influence, particularly in South, West and Central Texas. Not so with the panhandle or the Dallas area, but the entire rest of the state. Texicans as they called themselves actually wanted to be free from both the US and Mexico. They opted to be annexed by the US eventually primarily because the US would let it continue to be Texas, government and traditions intact, while Mexico wanted it to be just another province. That is in part why so many settlers actually came to Texas by ship, arriving in Galveston, which was the legal port of entry to the Republic of Texas.
However, because history books have rarely been written by the people of Mexican descent in Texas (and New Mexico), the role of the Mexican people living in the area has been downplayed until fairly recently. Over the past 20 years or so, the Spanish-language archives of legal documents, diaries, journals, and so on have been gradually being translated into English and modern Spanish and made accessible to the people who now are writing the history books.
And TexMex, true TexMex, is actually more closely related to the food of the Mexican state most closely adjacent to it, in large part because that is where the people came from who cook it. Tex-Mex is not ranch-hand chow, which is related to all sorts of influences, including American, Chinese (some of the cooks were Chinese), Polish, German, Czech and what was customary trail food of the day such as biscuits, gravy, steak, eggs, kielbasa-type sausage, brisket and beans.
Tex-Mex is a variant of Mexican food, not American food, just as the language of that name is a variant of Spanish, not English. And Taco Bell is not Tex-Mex.
And just to shake you up even further, Southern Texas was historically sheep country and horse country, not cattle country, and was the largest exporter of wool for military uniforms throughout most of the 1800’s. At least until some wealthy and politically connected cattle ranchers got laws passed that made it impossible to continue raising sheep.
BTW, I live in Texas and was a museum curator deeply involved in creating exhibits on Texas history for two decades. I am also a cook.
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