A Bilingual Republic? Spanish in Texas Government, 1836–45

This poster presents my research on bilingualism in the Republic of Texas and its borderlands during the decade between Texas’s rebellion against Mexico and the United States annexation. My core argument is that, at the time of its foundation in 1836, the government of the Republic of Texas included a number of Spanish-speaking political figures who advocated for policies that recognized their community’s language rights. This included the translation and printing of laws in Spanish and the interpretation of legislative sessions. For a brief time, Texas functioned as a “bilingual republic.” But ongoing tensions with Mexico, which did not recognize Texas’s independence, and the continued influx of settlers from the United States led to a decline in support for bilingualism. After 1840, funding for Spanish-language services declined sharply, and by the time of annexation in 1845, Texas had largely marginalized Spanish-language use in the public sphere. Later in the twentieth century, with the civil rights movements and the growth of Mexican American communities, there was a revival of Spanish in Texas, particularly in education and the media. However, the inclusion of Spanish in top-level political processes, such as legislative sessions, remains a highly contentious issue.

My work focuses primarily on the role of language at a critical juncture in the history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. The poster will present efforts to support bilingualism in Texas at the official level from 1835 to 1840, including legislation, Spanish-language Senate speeches, press clippings from Texas’s bilingual newspapers, maps, and land records. A key document is Senator Juan Seguín’s December 7, 1839, speech, in which he defended the language rights of “México-Tejanos,” the Spanish-speakers of Texas, and lamented that “my constituents up have not seen one law translated and printed.” This speech, and similar documents, demonstrate Tejano efforts to maintain their political standing in an increasingly hostile political system. While these document images, numbering about eight in total, will provide a visual focus, they are also the core primary sources for my study of language policy in the Republic of Texas.

This poster’s topic is part of a larger research project and also reflects my experiences teaching history at a university with a bilingual setting. In the Spring 2026 term, I began offering Texas History in bilingual courses that make fuller use of Spanish-language primary and secondary sources. At a time when such inclusive educational practices attract increased attention and criticism, projects such as “A Bilingual Republic” serve as reminders of the very long history of language policy and inclusion in Texas and other borderlands regions. This work also addresses several fields beyond Texas and borderlands history and may be of interest to historians and scholars who cover language policy in many other settings.