Timothy Matovina and Jesús F. de la Teja offer this tantalizing volume about Antonio Menchaca, a military veteran from San Antonio, Texas, whose larger-than-life story moves beyond the Alamo. Menchaca originally dictated his recollections with the help of a transcriber around the mid-1870s, but only the first part from his youth on the northern frontier of New Spain through Mexican and Texas independence appeared in English by 1907 and again in 1937. Matovina and de la Teja surgically edit the whole manuscript and publish the second half continuing the Battle of San Jacinto through the Mexican-American War, suturing both parts with razor-like precision and placing it among other testimonios, or self-narratives, about conquest in the US-Mexican borderlands.
Matovina and de la Teja acknowledge the many challenges of editing both the published and unpublished halves of Menchaca's manuscript, especially the thorny issue of the transcriber's influence. We do not know...
