Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
The Street of Ten Friends, La Calle de los Diez Amigos, now Main Street, was intersected by streets named for friends of the fledgling colony of Victoria, founded in 1824 by Martin De Leon.
“The only names on the Street of Ten Friends that lived here were De Leon and (Rafael Antonio) Manchola. The others were military officers that may or may not have served with De Leon,” Blanche De Leon, a sixth-generation descendant of Victoria’s founders, said Wednesday.
“It is my impression,” she added, “They were intended to provide defense support for the colony when needed” against hostile Indigenous people.
The list includes the name of one military officer who would become an enemy to Victoria in later years.
Martin De Leon laid out his Mexican town, according to age-old Spanish design. Street layout was mandated by Spanish colonial law, with streets gridded around a central plaza.
He named the town for the Patroness of Mexico, Our Lady of Guadalupe, now the Patroness of the Americas.
The name of the town was changed to Guadalupe Victoria later, perhaps by someone who processed De Leon’s empresario contract in San Antonio. “Victoria” was likely tacked on as a nod to the first president of independent Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria.
The president’s birth name was Manuel Felix Fernandez. He changed it to Guadalupe Victoria in honor of the Patroness and Mexico’s 1821 victory in its fight for independence.
Guadalupe Victoria’s name appears as one of the ten friends on a historic marker designating the Street of Ten Friends near the intersection of East North and North Main streets.
The other names are Mateo Ahumada, Captain Artiaga, Anastacio Bustamante, Rafael Chovel, Vincente Ramon Guerrero, Jose Manuel Rafael Simeon de Mier Y Teran, De Leon, Manchola and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Perez de Lebron.
It may be hard for Texans to see Santa Anna as a friend of anyone.
“This, after all, is the man generations of Texas politicians have compared to every loathsome dictator from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein, the Voldemort of Texas schoolchildren’s nightmares, the great Mexican bogeyman,” historians Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford wrote in 2021.
But before Santa Anna became the Texas bogeyman, he was an intensely popular Mexican hero — and Victoria was a Mexican town.
Santa Anna joined the Spanish colonial army in 1810 at the age of fifteen and gained rank as Mexico revolted against Spanish rule and later succumbed to political strife.
He rose in power and popularity quickly and knew how to “smell the winds” of change, T.R. Fehrenbach wrote in “Fire & Blood: A History of Mexico.”
“Interestingly, his full name is Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón,” University of Houston-Victoria research assistant Kevin Oliver said Wednesday.
He was named for St. Anthony of Padua, Oliver added. “ And his father was a Lopez, so it looks like his father was from “Santa Anna,” a town in Spain. I don’t know about Lebron, from his mother’s side; it was a popular surname in Andalucia.”
“He speaks very friendly about Texas,” Stephen F. Austin wrote about Santa Anna from Mexico City. “I am of the opinion that if you all keep quiet and obey the state laws that the substance of what Texas wants will be granted.”
Santa Anna did give concessions to the Texians in an attempt to avoid losing the northern province.
He “withdrew government tax collectors from Texas for a year” and allowed Anglos to buy cheap land and make English a state language, among other concessions, Burrough, Tomlinson and Stanford noted.
The Texians admired Santa Anna enough to consider themselves his followers, at one point.
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