It's 1996 in a chain hotel conference room in Dallas. The walls are beige, the carpet is gray, and the most colorful thing in the room is a big Texas flag. It hangs vertically, flutters lightly, as a man passes in front of it. He's handing out pamphlets. They meet at least twice a week, armed with what they say are legal documents they plan to use to get the United States out of Texas. There's a buzzy energy in the room. It's packed with people in various states of business casual. Some of them scribble notes vigorously. Others nod intently. They're paging through documents stamped with a seal. The Republic of Texas. They are the Republic of Texas, and they intend to force the IRS and the rest of the federal and state governments out of Texas, their sovereign nation. This is people trying to form their government the way it should be, the way it should have been all along. We're Texans. We're sovereign. We'll live free or we'll die. I will say remember the Alamo and remember Waco. God bless the Republic of Texas. These are the so-called citizens of a so-called nation, an independent Texas. And at the front of this room, there's a guy with wild hair pacing around. He's explaining something, the way this can all work legally. that the world they live in isn't the world they have to live in. Because if you take a close enough look at the documents, there's a different reality just under the surface. They have no walk away from any things in the universe because we were never walking in the universe. Listen close. That's the scourge of the DMR, Richard Lance McLaren. We left off with Rick in the early 1990s, terrorizing people in the DMR. He'd filed at least 100 false liens, claiming that some mismatched maps and surveys meant that his neighbors didn't really own their land. And he was winning, amassing property and wealth by filing so much paperwork that people gave up fighting him. But as Rick had been doing his local property rights research, He'd stumbled upon a different property story, a bigger one. It had to do with the history of Texas itself. And now Rick was spreading the word in hotel rooms, on the radio, on the steps of the Texas state capitol. It wasn't just the DMR that had been fraudulently got. It was the entire state of Texas. Giving them notice, it's time to vacate the soil and get out of Texas. I'm Zoe Kurland, and this is A Whole Other Country. As I've been doing my reporting, and also just living my life, I keep spotting these bumper stickers on the backs of trucks or tacked onto a friend's fridge. They look like a Texas state flag with one word printed on top. Secede. The Secede sticker, is that like an ironic joke? No, that goes way, way back. It's totally not ironic. I've loved that. I've had it for years, and I've had come and take it for years. It feels like the idea of secession, the idea of an independent Texas, is kind of just in the air here. I actually took the title of this show from the former official state tourism slogan. Come to Texas. It's like a whole other country. Texas is like a whole other country. Texas, it's like a whole other country. Texas, it's like a whole other country. And actually, way back in the 1800s, it briefly was. That's where this whole concept of Texas secessionism comes from. So the Texas origin myth is that a group of white people who had settled in Texas threw off the yoke of Mexican tyranny in 1836 to establish a free republic. That's author Chris Tomlinson, who wrote a book about this history. In the 1800s, Anglo settlers were living in Texas, which at that point was still a part of Mexico. They wanted to be independent, so they started revolting against the Mexican government. The Mexican army fought back. And that's when the story of the Alamo comes in. The Alamo! For the uninitiated, the Alamo is a fort in San Antonio. It was the site of one of the big battles that the settlers fought against the Mexican army. The traditional story of the Alamo is that 189 patriots fighting for liberty sacrificed themselves to slow the Mexican army as it was advancing to attack the rebels led by Sam Houston at Washington-on-Nabrazos. The settlers at the Alamo were super outnumbered and lost the battle. But the core idea here also is that these are people who sacrificed themselves for liberty and justice. Well, the myth was, you know, a handful of patriotic Texans defended this shrine against a marauding army of invading Mexicans. Journalist Jonik Petoskey. He told me that growing up in Texas, he learned about the story of the Alamo in school, like everyone else. You know, as we've come around now, I know in my lifetime, I have a much different take on what transpired at the Alamo and what the Alamo was all about. All this Anglo colonization of Texas was basically done in the name of slavery. The Anglo settlers, who called themselves Texians, had moved to Texas to grow cotton using slave labor. Mexico then banned slavery. When the settlers started fighting for independence, it was because they wanted to secede and join the U.S., where slavery was legal. And in 1836, after a few more battles, including one very big one that they won, the Battle of San Jacinto, The settlers declared that Texas was its own country, the Republic of Texas. Mexico never acknowledged the new nation, and Texas became a part of the states nine years later when the U.S. officially annexed it. But in Texas that early independence movement the revolution it important This has been a common story ever since Texas became a state That's always kind of fostered a sense of independence and we're separate, we're different from everybody else. And in the 50s, that story got a new champion. During the Cold War, Walt Disney was looking to history for people he could turn into American heroes. He was ultra-conservative and worried about the spread of communism. Davy Crockett wasn't exactly hero material. In real life, he was a politician who served a couple of terms in Congress and was basically a notorious buffoon. During his lifetime, six books were written about his ridiculous behavior, and he was the subject of a Broadway play written to mock him. But he was also one of the guys who died at the Alamo, fighting to secede. And that was good enough for Walt Disney. When Disney released The Davy Crockett Show in 1954, Davy showed up on screen as a handsome pioneer clad in a coonskin cap, cutting a cool frontier shape in Congress. Mr. Speaker, fellow members of the Congress of these United States, you can fold up your grins and put them away, for you'll hear no jokes from Davy Crockett today. The last moments of Disney's Alamo battle show Davies swinging his gun like a baseball bat at an incoming horde of Mexican soldiers. He thrashes, one soldier against hundreds, until the scene fades. If you only watch the show, you might never know that Davies surrendered before he died. The story moves tell they were all cut low But the truth of it is, this just ain't so Their spirits will live and their legends grow As long as we remember the Alamo The show was a huge hit. Disney adapted it into two movies, and by the end of 1955, Americans had purchased over $300 million worth of Davy Crockett merchandise. Hats, trading cards, bubblegum. They were singing his song. And as a kid, you know, I bought into the myth 110%. We all bought into the myth. And so, yeah, when I was five years old, I got a Davy Crockett outfit for my birthday to match the coonskin cap. And the story of the Alamo, a bunch of charismatic agitators dying in the name of an independent Texas, became a national fable of bravery. And that myth is what appeals to a lot of these secessionists. We're outnumbered. We may lose this, but we're doing the right thing. We're in the right place. Which brings us back to Rick McLaren in the 1990s in the DMR, staring down a very exciting new trail of archival paperwork. Rick, who up until this point had focused his historical research and subsequent rabble-rousing on the relatively small area of the Davis Mountains Resort, had started zooming out. And he had made what he categorized as a discovery. According to him, the way that the U.S. annexed Texas back in the 1800s wasn't legal. This is incredibly finicky, but Rick argued that legally, annexation had to be completed via a treaty. In this case, the annexation had happened by joint resolution, approved by the United States Congress. Remember, Texan settlers wanted to be a part of the United States. The annexation proposal was ratified by a Texas constitutional convention and then overwhelmingly by Texan voters. The U.S. Constitution provides no correct way to annex territory. But according to Rick, because of the treaty versus resolution argument, the Republic of Texas had never died. It was just illegally occupied. by the United States. So in 1995, Rick had gotten together with some like-minded people. They'd met at an old cotton gin, and there they'd reinstated a constitution from the original Republic of Texas, and declared that they were a sovereign nation. They chose a president, a vice president, and a foreign ambassador, Rick himself. Their mission was to evict the federal government from Texas, to return it to sovereignty, a nation where they could have whatever land they wanted without having to pay taxes. Rick was convinced they could do it all with an avalanche of paperwork, basically a way bigger, more ambitious version of his schemes in the DMR. There's always been a great interest about Texas returning to being an independent republic. And, you know, it had been going on long before Rick McLaren came along. He's not a native Texan, but you run into a lot of natives, like third or fourth generation Texans. They get squinky on this and they like talking about, you know, well, you know, when you look at the law and stuff and how these things went, maybe things aren't as they appear to be. In interviews he did at the time, Rick claimed that this cause, making Texas an independent nation, had been brewing within him since he wrote a book report about the Alamo in elementary school, in the third or fourth grade, depending on which article you read. It's hard to know if that's true, or if the whole Republic of Texas thing was just one giant step further in his land grab scheme. But to Rick's new followers, that didn't seem to matter. Rick and his Republic of Texas co-founders slash countrymates had started holding meetings, gathering people in hotel ballrooms all over Texas to talk about history and laws, trying to convince people that Texas was in fact its own country and that the state should hold a referendum on secession. In his role as foreign ambassador, Rick would go on local radio shows talking about the Republic of Texas, the ROT for short. He and the others were holding rallies calling themselves Texians like the olden days Anglo settlers You like this is a movement that starting and you on the ground floor and you're meeting all the principles involved. It felt like we were making history and changing things for the good. This is Mark Hernandez. In 1996, he was young and working construction when he heard about the Republic of Texas and about Rick. And then I had a friend of mine who I guess was listening to some radio station, and they were interviewing Richard McLaren, and they were talking about the Republic of Texas. And then so he said, he's going to be in Dallas. You need to come hear him. Mark told me he had also done a book report on the Alamo and Davy Crockett in elementary school. I went to that one meeting. It was interesting. So I went to another and another, you know, and then I would hear more about it and then see that they're in the media. After that first meeting, Mark got to talk to Rick one-on-one. He heard about the details, Rick's vision for waging what he'd begun calling a paper war against the state and the federal government. On behalf of the Republic of Texas, Rick had filed a huge lien against the state of Texas for $60 trillion, attempting to declare eminent domain over the state's assets to free the Republic of Texas from the U.S. That's what gave it more the appearance of what I liked, you know, is trying to prove something. And, you know, if you know somebody did something wrong, you know, you take them to court, you know, and that's what he was doing. Mark told me he was captivated. I was just blown away about everything he was telling me. I'm like, I never imagined in my life that anybody else would be even remotely interested in this. And there it was. Daniel Miller also joined the Republic of Texas in the mid-90s. He told me he'd come across the idea of Texas nationhood on his own. So when he saw a group taking action, he was moved. You know, the fact that it had such a broad appeal, and there were other people that were seeing it the way that I was seeing it, that Texas could be like those 140 other nations that had been birthed since World War II, that was pretty compelling for me. Daniel was a little less rah-rah about Rick, specifically. And so he was there. Passionate. I don't know if I'd say charismatic, but, you know, passion can be charisma sometimes, I guess. Yeah, I found what he said interesting. But it seems like for a lot of people, Rick was the draw. The broader Republic of Texas movement sold his speeches on VHS, along with an I Love America's Heritage Freedom calendar. As Rick and the Republic made their way around Texas promoting the cause, Rick was gaining fans. Everybody would always get on the phone and call somebody. You need to come down here and see this guy. He's just like a rock star. He was like, you know, everybody wanted to meet him and talk to him and ask him questions. Mark Hernandez was becoming a loyal ROT follower. He and Rick were getting closer. We talked about history all the time. And he was mainly talking about his movement. I mean, he was 24 hours about that. 24 hours always filing court documents and doing things. I mean, stuff that was above my understanding on a lot of things. But I was there listening and learning. Eventually, Mark was rewarded for his dedication with a title, Chief Advisor to the Vice President. What does that role entail, you may ask? It's just a title, almost like an honorary thing. Kind of like running errands and stuff and be at meetings. and just help out in general. This was a period when, you know, the outsiders were becoming a little agitated nationally. Journalist Jonik Petoskey. He's challenging the established system. And, you know, that's where he found sympathy, just kind of in other people that were on the fringe. In the mid-'90s, anti-government movements were having a heyday. They were kind of a new, shiny thing. In 1992, there was the Ruby Ridge Standoff, an altercation between the right-wing Weaver family and U.S. Marshals in Idaho. Two people died. Then there was the Waco Siege, a 51-day standoff between the federal government and the Branch Davidians, a religious cult led by David Koresh. That happened in 1993, in Texas, just about 500 miles east of the Davis Mountains. Seventy-six people died. And in 1995, on the two-year anniversary of the Waco siege, there was the bombing in Oklahoma City of a federal building. There were lesser-known movements, too, like the Montana Freeman, an anti-government group who had declared themselves sovereign citizens of a new nation. And so here was a local agitator who was making frequent trips to the Jeff Davis County Courthouse, filing petitions, all kinds of writs and challenges to the existing order. If you're on the outside looking in, you're thinking, oh, this is my kind of guy. By late 1996, after months of appearances in the paper, on the radio, gatherings at Texas hotels, Mark Hernandez told me that the whole ROT movement was starting to feel big, important. Like, he told me this story that I can't fact check about a time he went to rent a van, and he showed his official ROT business card to the guy at the front desk. And he recognized it. He said, are you those guys that are in the news all the time? And I said, yes. And he called his boss, and he came out, and he saw my card. He says, oh, my God. And he called out all his employees out to the front, and he told them, you see this young man right here? You'll be able to tell your children and your grandchildren that you met him on this day. It's rare you ever get to meet a true revolutionary while he's still alive or not in jail. Those were Rick McLaren's followers. There were a lot of people out there. Oh, yeah, Texas in the state? No, we should be independent. And he's going to be the head of it, and I'm going to be a lieutenant. He's already told me that there's a place for me here. Zoe, where are we? We are at the Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library And my favorite slowest automatic doors Before we go I need to take you through these slow doors to the archives of the Big Bend Very nice. Climate controlled. Super chilly. And we are looking for... Information. I went there with my co-worker, Carlos Morales. Hey! How are you? Alright, yeah, welcome back. I have the vertical file that I talked to you about all set up for you in the conference room. As I was learning more and more about Rick's story, I couldn't stop thinking about the DMR. I was starting to feel a little like a conspiracy theorist, but it seemed like no coincidence that Rick's whole Wild West fantasy had played out here, in this very frontier-feeling place where people built their own houses, lived close to the land. kept telling me about how rugged and independent things were. I thought maybe by going to the archives, I could find something tangible. Standard policies and procedures. As you know, the only thing aside from this, I do ask everyone to thoroughly wash and dry their hands before handling any material. That's Victoria Contreras, the archivist. However, all our bathrooms are down. Okay. So I have gloves that you can use instead. If you need a different size, let me know. Thank you. You're very welcome. I put on the gloves, and Victoria led us to an empty room with a long wooden table. A thin tan folder sat at one end. The label on the folder was typewritten, Davis Mountains Resort, Texas. It felt like Mission Impossible. I'm really excited to open this and potentially find absolutely nothing. But, all right. The folder was full of newspaper clippings, mostly things I'd already heard of. The Republic of Texas and the neighborhood fight between Rick McLaren and Joe Rowe. But then... Whoa, hunter's guide. Camper's guide. Rockhound's guide. Wow. At the bottom of the folder, I see this glossy brochure. A square about six inches by six inches that unfolds into this gigantic tablecloth-sized poster with grainy, full-color photos of happy people traipsing around in nature. That kind of glowing 1970s saturation. The Davis Mountains Resort is an ecologically planned leisure area. Leisure area? Where nature blends with history. And they're basically saying, like, buy a vacation home here. As I'd been doing my reporting on the DMR, people kept raising their eyebrows at the name, saying stuff like this. Where's the resort part of the DMR? That was always just like, really? Is there tennis courts? Is there a swimming pool? I'd heard this type of joke many times, and for some reason, I hadn't really thought that much about it. I'd assumed the word resort was just a fancy way of describing a neighborhood. But according to this pamphlet, published by the Global Land Development Corporation, it looked like the Davis Mountains Resort was developed not as an isolationist community for rugged individuals trying to get away from it all, but as a Wild West paradise, TM. Condos and vacation homes in the style of ranchettes. Those hokey road names like Six Shooter Gulch and Tomahawk Trail. It was all part of a marketing plan. This is so interesting, actually, because it looks like it was really made to be like a playground for people who wanted to come visit Far West Texas. Global had been selling this Wild West fantasy, just like Disney had sold the Davy Crockett cartoony frontierism, just like the Airbnb hosts sell their Western escapes. Rick had walked his fantasies right into a setting built to play them out. I have to say, I feel somewhat validated in my investigation of all of this Western myth stuff. We have a way of encapsulating our entire history all at once. Victoria Contreras, the archivist, told me she thinks a lot about how time works in Texas, how history crops up. So, especially certain parts of Texas feel like it's both the 1850s, the 1950s, and 50 years in the future, all at the same time and all at the same place. That's what the DMR feels like. And Rick fit right in. A guy promising people a better future that actually looked a lot like the past. And that promise was about to get a lot more concrete. In the first year of its existence, the Republic of Texas had been a disembodied group, hopscotching between hotel ballrooms, enticing followers with the promise of a new nation, with no actual manifestation of this utopian, lawless place. But then, Rick decided to bring the Republic of Texas to life. And he got to work building an embassy in his neighborhood and convincing a slew of followers to trudge up the mountain to join him. They were really stupid people. Except for McLaren, I think was pretty smart, but so crazy that he did stupid things. that's next time on a whole other country this episode of a whole other country was reported written and produced by me zoe kerland liza yeager edited and also co-wrote the show original music by andy stack editorial support from lindsey hauck artwork by carolyn mccartney and lindsey hauck This episode features additional field recording by Carlos Morales. Special thanks to Travis Bubenik, Jeff Smith, Rachel Monroe, and Victoria Contreras at the archives of the Big Bend. Thanks also to Chris Tomlinson, as well as his co-authors Brian Burrow and Jason Stanford. For more on everything we talked about in this episode, check out their book, Forget the Alamo, The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. A Whole Other Country is a production of Marfa Public Radio. a non-profit public radio station in the middle of the West Texas desert. If you'd like to donate to support the station's work, head to marfapublicradio.org.
