THE BATTLE CONTINUES

Native Americans File Legal Notice to Declare Alamo Grounds as Cemetery

The filing is likely to delay San Antonio’s $450 million project to restore the Alamo.

A Native American group in Texas has filed a legal notice declaring the Alamo to be an abandoned or unknown cemetery, according to court documents. The filing is likely to delay San Antonio’s $450 million project to restore the Alamo, The San Antonio Express-News reports. The American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions also launched a fundraising campaign to file a federal lawsuit alleging discriminatory practices in San Antonio’s project to restore the Alamo. The group said that city and state officials did not consult with them when creating new guidelines about how to handle human remains unearthed during the planned restoration work, despite the group’s direct lineage to the indigenous people who lived, and were likely buried near the Alamo. The group’s director, Ramon Vasquez, said that they would have never agreed to the planned protocols, like excluding descendants from having a say in how human remains are treated and prohibiting DNA testing.