Congratulations to SMU History Professor David Weber

[MrMustang1965]

By JEREMY ROEBUCK / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

You could sum up the work of historian David Weber with a maxim: "The winners write the history books."

On Thursday, SMU professor David Weber received the medal of the Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca, the highest honor the Mexican government can bestow upon a foreigner. The phrase brings home the point Mr. Weber has made in more than 60 academic articles and 10 books – as American settlers populated the Southwest, they erased the history of thousands of Mexicans and Spaniards who were in the area before them.

"When you go to places like San Antonio or Santa Fe, you realize history didn't start on the East Coast," said Mr. Weber, a history professor at Southern Methodist University and director of the school's Clements Center for Southwest Studies. "We've robbed our country's Mexican immigrants of their own history."

For his career-long focus on relations between the United States and its southern neighbor, Mr. Weber received the medal of the Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca at a ceremony Thursday.

Known in English as the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the award is the highest honor the Mexican government can bestow upon a foreigner. Previous recipients include migrant worker advocate César Chávez, former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros and former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

"Mr. Weber has been very active throughout his professional career in trying to get our two cultures to know each other better," said Carlos García de Alba, Mexico's consul-general in Dallas.

When Mr. Weber first began writing about the Southwest in the '70s, his emphasis on Mexican and Spanish settlers put him on the fringes of accepted American and Latin American history. Stories of Anglo frontier heroes such as Stephen F. Austin and California's Jedediah Smith had long dominated the literature.

But over the years, his work caught the attention of his colleagues, foreign governments and historians worldwide. The Spanish government knighted him in 2003, and his research helped land a donation from former Texas Gov. Bill Clements to open the university's Center for Southwest Studies.

"He's one of the greatest historians of his generation," said James Hopkins, chairman of the William P. Clements Department of History at SMU. "He is known throughout the academy as a man of enormous human sympathy, and it shows in his research, his writing and his teaching."

Today, Mr. Weber's central argument is almost taken for granted.

"We live in a new America now," he said. "Many of my students are Mexican immigrants, and this history resonates more with what they know to be true."

But by reframing the history of the region in terms of the Mexican and Spanish settlers, Mr. Weber helped define a heritage for the millions of Mexican immigrants who live in the area today, Mr. García de Alba said.

"He has proven to be a good friend to Mexico," he said. "The Mexican government owes him this award."