The Alamo Brothers: Gregorio Esparza, Francisco Esparza, Juan Seguín, and the Tejanos.
The 190 Year Untold Story – Its Time For Tejano Truth.
The story of the Alamo is often told as an Anglo frontier legend – Crockett, Bowie, Travis, and a doomed stand for liberty. It’s a great story! Although there is another story running right through the heart of it – the story of Tejano families who fought, bled, and lost everything on ground they had called home for generations. Among them were the Esparza brothers and Juan Nepomuceno Seguín.
Tejanos at the Alamo
In 1836, Texas was not a blank frontier. It was home to Tejanos – Spanish-speaking, Catholic families whose roots in Texas went back to the 1600’s Spanish colonial era: mission builders, soldiers, ranchers, and town leaders. They are the direct descendants of the Conquistadors and the Indigenous Indian tribes of Texas. The word “Texas” means “friends” or “allies” coming from the Caddo Native American word “taysha“.
These original mixed “Mestizo” families had:
- Dwelled & traded among the Indigenous Indian tribes of Texas
- Founded Mission (Church) settlements like on frontier of New Spain
- Thought enlightenment & Christian culture to Indigenous Indians
- Brought horses, cattle, and ranching cultures from Spain to the New World
- Served in Spanish presidios, militias, and missions to protect their people
- Held land grants and vast open range ranches all across Texas
- Intermarried in kin networks to preserve their heritage, culture, and land
The Tejanos had already tried to make Texas independent in 1813 (pre-Mexico) with the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition and the Battle of Medina
A People Divided: Tejanos Between Centralists and Anglo Expansion
When tensions exploded between Santa Anna’s centralist regime and Tejano federalist reformers, the Tejanos faced a painful crossroads. For generations, Tejanos had live on their ancestral lands and ranches. Dwelling, trading, and slowing mixing, and blending cultures with the Indigenous Indians Tribes.
Now, confronted by two rising threats, many Tejanos were forced to choose:
- Stand with the Texian cause, not as outsiders, but as native sons and daughters of Texas, defending their homes, faith, and dignity from Santa Anna’s military dictatorship.
- Or stand with Mexico, fearing—rightly—that many of the new Anglo arrivals brought land-grabbing ambitions, racial prejudice, and plans to marginalize or dispossess the very people who had built Texas.
This was not a simple choice between “Texans vs. Mexicans.”
It was a struggle over identity, survival, and the future of a homeland.
The Tejanos caught in the middle—families in divide —would shape the fate of Texas through courage, sacrifice, and deeply personal decisions that still echo today.
Gregorio Esparza – Alamo Defender
José María “Gregorio” Esparza was a Tejano citizen of San Antonio de Béxar and a member of one of its old Spanish-Mexican families. When the Mexican army approached in 1836, Gregorio made a decision that would lead to his death and define his legacy: he took his family into the Alamo with him.
Francisco Esparza – Mexican Soldier
Francisco Esparza, brother of Gregorio, stood on the other side of the walls – serving in the Santa Ana’s Mexican army. This is where the “Alamo brothers” story becomes uniquely Tejano: one brother inside the Alamo, one brother outside, both tied to the same land and family, divided by politics and duty.
After the battle, when the fallen defenders were ordered burned where they lay, Francisco petitioned his officers and Santa Ana for permission to recover Gregorio’s body. A action that could have ended his life like his brothers. Thankfully, the request was granted.
Francisco, went among the dead to find his brother’s remains
Brought Gregorio out from the condemned pyres. Ensured that he received a proper Christian burial.
In that act, Francisco becomes a powerful symbol of the Tejano story:
family above faction, faith above propaganda. The Esparza brothers’ story reminds us that the Alamo was not just “Texians vs. Mexicans,” but – Good vs Evil, Light vs Darkness – brother vs brother, family versus family, cousins versus cousins, caught in a larger storm of empire, revolution, and identity.
Juan Seguín – Tejano Captain
Juan Nepomuceno Seguín was a young Tejano leader from San Antonio and part of the same extended Tejano kin network as many of the Alamo and Bexar families. A captain in the Texian forces, he: Was ordered to leave the Alamo shortly before the final assault to carry Travis’s messages to Sam Houston at Washington-on-the-Brazos, recruit reinforcements to the Alamo, and scout the Mexican Army.
He fought through the early phases of the revolution, delivered Travis’s last letters during the siege of the Alamo, and was sent out shortly before the final assault to gather reinforcements. Because of this, Seguín survived where so many of his Tejano brothers died. But Seguín did not stand by. He commanded a company of Tejano cavalry at San Jacinto, helped defeat Santa Anna, and later oversaw the burials of the Alamo dead — honoring both the Anglo and Tejano defenders. Yet despite his service, Anglo politicians later drove him out of Texas, accusing him of being “too Mexican.” His life mirrors the larger Tejano experience: central to Texas’s birth, then pushed to the margins of its story.
The Tejanos Legacy
he phrase “Alamo brothers” means more than biological brothers. It describes a kin network of Tejano families who found themselves on both sides of the conflict.
Gregorio Esparza inside the Alamo
Francisco Esparza outside the walls with the Mexican army
Juan Seguín fighting for Texas independence
- Brothers & Sisters inside and outside the Alamo Walls
- Tejano women, children, and noncombatants sheltering in the mission
- Tejano families who supported Texas Independence and Fredom
- Tejano families who supported Mexico to defend their land against Anglo expansion
These were not stories of strangers. They were stories of cousins, in-laws, compadres, and brothers. Their ancestors built the missions, rode as vaqueros, carved ranchos out of the brush country, and shaped Texas culture long before 1836
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