Remember this name: David Lee Espinoza. He died for us.

The Homestead: Keeping Texas?Texan

Remember this name:?David Lee Espinoza. He died for us.?

One thing that surprises many visitors to south Texas, and especially the border region, is just how intensely patriotic it is. You get American flags on private property all up and down the communities along the Rio Grande, and the men and women who fly them are largely Mexican-American. It doesn’t stop at the outward display: there is also a long tradition of military service within that community. One of the most moving Texas historical documents is, to me, the First World War diary of Jose de la Luz Saenz. He was a schoolteacher in Cotulla — if you’ve ever driven the lonely expanse from San Antonio to Laredo, you know it, because you’ve probably stopped there. Upon volunteering for service on the Western Front, he closed his little schoolhouse with a note pinned to the door:

"My dear students: This is definitely our last day of school … Next Monday, at eleven in the morning, I will become part of the militia that will defend our country. Until now, I have used pencil and pen to wage trying battles for the educational advancement of our people. You will soon hear that I am holding a rifle in the very trenches of France and upholding our people’s pride for the glory and honor of our flag. I do not know if you will have to follow me. I hope not. But if you do, I hope that my example helps you to be brave and strong enough to free yourself from everything that is dear on earth—the sweet peace, your homes, and your families.?

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"I am not going on an excursion, I know that the life that awaits me will be difficult, the most demanding that I will have experienced, but I do not think it will be as difficult as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware and his stay at Valley Forge. If it becomes just as difficult, so much the better, it will be a greater honor for our people.

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"Long live Washington!?

"Long live the Star Spangled Banner!?

"Long live our raza!”

A half-century later, a native of Edinburg, Texas, volunteered for service in the United States Marines. Alfredo “Freddy” Gonzalez was a young man of small stature — only 135 pounds — but his heart was as big as the Texas that made him. In the hellish ordeal of Hu?, in early 1968, Sergeant Freddy Gonzalez performed five days of extraordinary battlefield heroics, enduring multiple wounds, rescuing fellow Marines, and stopping the enemy dead in his tracks. Mortally stricken on the fifth day, he made his way into the St Jeanne d’Arc Catholic parish, and died in the arms of his Church. In his hometown of Edinburg, there are multiple place names honoring Freddy Gonzalez. The Museum of South Texas history there hosts a modest wing devoted to him: his uniform, his papers, his photographs. South Texas remembers.?

That’s south Texas for you. It’s a narrative that sometimes confounds our identity-fixated ideologues of the modern-day: why would a putatively oppressed population — of Mexican-Americans — be so avid in service to the United States? There’s a simple answer to it, rooted in history. The south-Texas Mexican-Americans of Jose de la Luz Saenz’s generation lived through an era of real bigotry and prejudice. (Although let it be noted that they were perfectly capable of giving as well as they got: if you don’t believe me, look up the phrase “Plan de San Diego.”) That experience, at its depths, had a transformative effect.?Instead of rejecting American values, the community at large embraced them, doubled down on them, and threw forth a class of civic leaders determined to assert rights in an explicitly American context.?(A great read on this, by the bye, is Benjamin Heber Johnson’s 2003 “Revolution in Texas.”) One key societal expression of this was, as Saenz exemplified, military service.?

I can point to my own family history in this. I have a great-uncle who fought at Pearl Harbor. (In one of history’s coincidences, I have another relative, albeit from my Anglo family, who was also present that day: he was entombed on the USS Arizona.) I have another great-uncle who fought on Guam, and endured the scarring experience of feigning death while Japanese soldiers prodded the corpses for survivors to kill. I have still another great-uncle who spent much of the 1960s cruising off the coast of North Vietnam. My own father spent most of 1990-1991 in the war room in Riyadh. And I, well, I’m the least interesting of them: I turned in some years in garrison at Fort Polk later that decade. None of this is unusual or exceptional. There are countless south-Texas families, countless Mexican-American families, who can say the same.?

One of them is the family of David Lee Espinoza.

David Lee Espinoza died on Thursday. He was a mere twenty years old. He was — is — a Marine. The photographs of him circulating in media show a young man with an earnest face. His glasses give him a somewhat bookish look, but he has the wiry physique of a young man who has been forged into shape by the timeless methods and attentions of his Corps. There is one picture in particular that moves me deeply: he is in uniform, and he has his arm about his mother. Her expression is proud. His expression is a faint smile, but his eyes betray real joy.

David Lee Espinoza, a son of Rio Bravo, Texas?— a small community upon the Rio Grande just south of Laredo — is not coming home now. You already know the story: as he and his fellow servicemembers struggled to perform their mission of mercy at the Kabul airport, a suicide bomber detonated his vest. The price paid in lives: over one hundred sixty Afghan nationals, twelve Marines, and one sailor.?

The Homestead is about Texas history, Texas identity, and Texas culture, so I won’t go deep into the politics of all this. What I will share is this: I didn’t know David Lee Espinoza, and I don’t presume to speak for him or his grieving family. But I do know where he’s from. I know the context of his region, his community, and his Texas. I know that our entire country, from the Rio Grande to the Red River, is peopled by families and communities like his. I know their hearts. I know they’ll give their sons for a just cause. They always have.?Texas, wrote T.R. Fehrenbach, was “born in blood in a primordial land,” and Texans have been willing to make the sacrifices for our freedom — and the freedom of others — over and over.?From the storming of Matamoros, to the crossing of the Rapido, to the crowded gates of the airport at Kabul, Texans have always been there.?

We, almost uniquely among Americans now, understand that there are times to fight.

David Lee Espinoza stands in a long line of heroes, and?our task is to deserve him?— just as we must deserve Freddy Gonzalez, just as we must deserve Jose de la Luz Saenz, just as we must deserve the heroes of the Alamo, just as we must deserve every Texan who died so that we may live. Texas is imperfect. Texans are imperfect. But I know we’ll do this one thing.?We’ll get it right. It’s who we are.

But there are those who don’t deserve him. They are the hapless, incompetent leadership who placed him in that fatal moment at the airport gate. We Texans give our sons, and in return, we trust that they will be led with competence, with wisdom, with honor. When that doesn’t happen — when young men die at Kabul’s airport because of a situation created mostly by blundering in Washington, D.C., then a trust is violated, and a faith is broken.?

A reckoning must ensue.

David Lee Espinoza, USMC, 2001-2021.

For Texas —

Joshua Trevi?o