A Series on the Women of Texas--Francisca Panchita Alavez--The Angel of Goliad

The Presidio at Goliad.  Walls three feet thick and ten feet high.  Fannin abandoned this fortress and allowed his troops to be trapped on the open plains at Coleto Creek.

     

  If Santa Ana had stayed in Mexico and sent the very competent General Jose de Urrea to Texas with orders to “bring me the heads of Sam Houston and Stephen Austin,” the Texas Revolution would have stalled in its tracks. The skulls of Houston and Austin would be artifacts in a museum somewhere in Mexico City, probably next to the Texian flag taken from the Alamo.  The “Napoleon of the West” however, had far too much ego for such foolishness, and was determined to gain the glory involved in quashing the rebellion, no matter how many peons he had to sacrifice.

     To keep General Urrea out of the limelight, Santa Ana sent him and 1200 men to Matamoros, with orders to move into coastal Texas and clean up any pockets of resistance.  The emperor, in the meantime, would lead the bulk of his army to center stage at San Antonio and take out the twenty-six year old, gonorrhea-ridden Buck Travis and his garrison at the Alamo.  Santa Ana’s intention was to put all rebels to the sword—take no prisoners and give no quarter.  General Urrea, a much better soldier, disagreed and considered executing prisoners a blueprint for disaster.

     Telesforo Alavez, a young captain, was paymaster for General Urrea.  Alavez had enlisted in the Mexican Army as a private when he was eighteen years old and, by age thirty-three, had worked his way up through the ranks to captain.  Anyone with military experience knows this guy was special.  Moving through the ranks from enlisted man to commissioned officer requires intelligence, ability, ambition, tact, polish, and good luck.  Captain Alavez was devilishly handsome, immaculately dressed, and very charming.  Women loved him.

     The young captain was married.  His wife, Maria Augustina de Pozo, lived in Toluca with their two children.  In 1834, Telesforo abandoned this family and continued his career in the military, eventually going off to Texas to fight the rebels.  Documents show Augustina tried unsuccessfully for years to get some sort of pension from the army.  She and the children were penniless and starving.

   Free of family responsibilities, Captain Alavez still required that precious commodity only a warm and willing woman can provide. The Mexican army allowed some officers to bring travelling companions, and he was accompanied to Texas by a black-eyed beauty named Francisca, who was assumed to be his wife.  Francisca (Panchita) Alavez generated a lot of attention.  For starters, she was knockout good-looking.  According to those who wrote about her at the time, she was “a high-born, black-eyed beauty.”  Barely twenty years old, she was idealistic, moralistic, and had the kind of beauty that caused lonely soldiers to lie awake at night and bite tent pegs in two.

      Accounts of a high-born woman rescuing Texian prisoners from certain death during the march of General Urrea’s forces are well documented.   From military records following Captain Alavez’s movements, we can surmise that Panchita was most likely that woman.  She was called “Senora Alavez” by one survivor; “Madame Captain Alverez” by another; “Pacheta Alevesco, wife of Captain A.” by yet another.  Some referred to her simply as the “wife of a Mexican officer.”

     General Urrea’s forces fought and won skirmishes at Copano, San Patricio, Agua Dulce, Refugio, and Victoria before capturing the inept Col. Fannin’s entire command at the battle of Coleto Creek.  With the exception of Coleto Creek, Panchita Alavez  was present at all these locations and was almost certainly the lady who intervened on behalf of the prisoners. 

     In Victoria, she and a priest stood between the firing squad and a group of Texians, telling the Mexican officer in charge that he would have to shoot her first to shoot the prisoners. The prisoners were spared.  She was instrumental in having prisoners relocated to Matamoros before they could be executed.  Later, she saved more than forty condemned men at Goliad, then proceeded to harangue Colonel Portillo unmercifully as he marched almost four hundred prisoners to their doom.

     Imagine the scene in Captain Alavez’s tent that night.

     “Francisca, you must cease to interfere with army business.  We must follow the orders of Generalissimo Santa Ana and execute all prisoners.   I will not allow you to interfere again.”

     “You only call me Francisca when you are angry.  Oh Tele, I wish you would call me your little Panchita.  I would be nice to you if you called me Panchita.”

      “Pay attention to me!  You should not have called Col. Portillo a ‘scum-sucking dog.’  He is my superior officer and can make life miserable for me.”

     “I would make life very nice for you if you called me your little Panchita.”

     “You cannot continue to—how nice?”

     “Very, very nice.  How would you like that little place behind your ear scratched?   You know what I mean.  I'll scratch it with my toe”

     “Ooh—my little Panchita—you know what I like.  Just one thing.  Can we hold down the noise tonight?  The quartermaster tells me the army is running out of tent pegs.”

     To be continued.....

Fannin's last request, "Boys, I'd appreciate it if you would not shoot me in the head," was ignored.  He was shot several times in the head  while he sat blindfolded in a chair in this courtyard.  I expect the WPA added the sidewalks and grass about a hundred years later.