The British Broadcasting Company Radio 4 produced one of its "Documents" programs on the Jose Enrique de la Peña diary, which is the account of one of Santa Anna's officers during the 1836 campaign into Texas. The program, broadcast on March 6, featured a discussion of the diary, which Carmen Perry translated and edited in 1975, and which Texas A&M University Press has just reissued in paperback with a new introduction by James Crisp of North Carolina State University.

The program focused on the controversy surrounding the diary. Several writers, especially Bill Groneman and Thomas Lindley, disagree with de la Peña's account of how David Crockett died. De la Peña wrote that Crockett surrendered along with several others and was executed at the order of Santa Anna. Groneman and Lindley contend that the diary is a forgery, while Crisp maintains that it is authentic.

Also interviewed on the program are Dora Guerra, director of Special Collections at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where the diary is housed; David Gracy, who teaches a class in forgeries at UT Austin; and Tejano scholars Adan Benevides and Andres Tijerina of Texas A&M at Kingsville.

Summer 1997 - Riding Line, the Newsletter of the Texas State Historical Association, © 1997 TSHA.

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