No less than Carlos Cascos, former Cameron County judge and now Texas Secretary of State, has said that when he was a recently immigrated boy from Matamoros growing up in Brownsville, he was reluctant to admit he was from Mexico.
"In those days, people would look down on you," he recalled when he addressed the National Honor Society students at Oliveira Middle School. Ironically, all the students listening to him then were young Hispanic middle-schoolers.
Other attribute it to the differences in culture and language. And, also ironically, many of those who turn their nose at anything Mexican are themselves of Mexican heritage.
But those are recent phenomena.
At one time, the Border Patrol would turn a blind eye to agriculture day laborers who would swim the river daily and be picked up by ranchers at restaurants near the downtown area or in front of the old Valley Transit bus station. And each Friday evening, local residents would drop off their live-in maids who lived in Matamoros and pick them up early Monday morning. These women would end up being surrogate housewives and raise their charges while the American parents worked.
But the sentiment appears to go even further back. It went back prior to the Bracero Program that saw millions of Mexicans recruited to toil in the fields while U.S.residents served in the World wars.
Trains were sent to the border by agricultural interests from as far north as Minnesota to ferry laborers to address the worker shortage.
There is other proof contained in Texas Online article about the population of Cameron County that states that: "The 1850 census showed a population of 519, two-thirds of whom were from the states along the Atlantic seaboard; most of the remainder were Mexican, Irish, French, English, and German. The culture of the town reflected the cosmopolitan character of its inhabitants: a large number of the early residents had previously lived in Mexico and many had absorbed Mexican customs and practices. Because of Brownsville's extensive trade network and large European contingent, a large percentage of the residents were fluent in several languages, including Spanish, English, French, and German."
Among those who spoke Spanish was a contingent of spies from Mexico who had been working on behalf Gen. Winfield Scott in his conquest of Mexico City which ended the war in 1848. These were the members of the famous Dominguez Spy Company which had been evacuated from Mexico when the Americans won and obtained the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. These people – 200 or more and their families – had been brought to the United States to keep them from being murdered by the Mexican government for their services on behalf of the U.S. Army.
Their handler, Maj. Gen, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, insisted that they be brought out with the army and tried to get them some sort of resettlement allotment from the U.S. Government. The government, finding rewarding turncoats distasteful, refused.
Their leader, Dominguez, eventually ended up in New Orleans. The rest of the spy company were resettled in the newly-established Cameron County on the border of the United States and Mexico.
It's no wonder then, that these pioneer settlers of Cameron County would not harbor nay love toward their former country. They were, after all, traitors to the Mexican cause in their work of helping the U.S. Army conquer their native country.
One could hardly blame them for embracing their new lives and culture instead of wanting to yearn for a return to certain death.
One could hardly blame them for embracing their new lives and culture instead of wanting to yearn for a return to certain death.
We are in the process of obtaining a passenger manifest of those Mexicans brought out by the U.S. Government from Mexico in 1848. We will then compare this to the 1850 handwritten census of Cameron, Starr and Willacy counties. Will we find the ancestors of our county's pioneer families among them? Can anyone point us in the right direction on where to look?
12 comments:
The genealogical resources now available online are staggering in number and scope. If took a look back at 6 generations of Juan Montoya's family I wonder what I would find?
There is indeed plenty of anti-Mexican sentiments here in Brownsville. There is also plenty of anti-Anglo, anti-Mexican American sentiments here as well.
As long as their is more than one culture or ethnic background, there will be all forms of anti sentiments. Even if everybody was alike the shorts would be anti-tall and the skinnies anti-fat. Everybody is anti-somebody and every has somebody that is anti them.
So the philosophical question behind this is; Who gives a shit and why? I don't give a shit.
It was always U.S. Design to absorb the vast South West from Mexico. It led to outright thievery of private properties and displacement of populations. Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa is today's guilt sentiment .
You don't give a shit because you live in Shitland. Get your Ass out and vote my dear Ignoramus.
In agreement with post :
As long as their is more than one culture or ethnic background, there will be all forms of anti sentiments. Even if everybody was alike the shorts would be anti-tall and the skinnies anti-fat. Everybody is anti-somebody and every has somebody that is anti them.
* I remember arriving in Brownsville in 1971 and attending Canales Elementary. There was no bilingual education, no ESL, kids were disciplined if they spoke Spanish in the classroom. I had no knowledge of the English language and THAT helped me learn it because I was FORCED to speak the language. When I got to intermediate school, the principal asked my parents if they wanted me to be placed in an ESL classroom and my mother said NO; my daughter will learn English and Spanish, and she will be successful in BOTH languages. She signed a waver and while the rest of the kids in my "barrio" spent half day in a contained ESL classroom, I went through the regular curriculum and graduated from high school in the top 5% beating kids that had been here all their lives and whose knowledge of the English language was better than mine. I also graduated from college and was one of the 3 people who got out of our "barrio" with a college degree. At the present time, I see a form of discrimination by people that think that just because you live in Brownsville or in the RGV the automatically think they need to speak to you in Spanish, they see your brown skin or dark hair and you are from the other side of the river. My heritage is Mexican, my nationality is American and I care about what goes on in my hometown because I live here. The current population in Brownsville just says"I dont give..." "I dont care", "politicians are rats", "they always do what they want", "they will not listen to us" but we dont express our selves unless we use insults or bad words against eachother, we dont work together, we expect others to do the work while we sit back and expect everything for nothing and when it hits us we become law experts while before we didnt give a ...." and we call it discrimination against mexican-americans, latinos, hispanics, etc.
You are the problem.
Brownsville began its life as a colonia of Matamoros and continues so to this day. Accept it and you can move forward. Go pocho and you will live in ignorance and poverty all your life. Go back to your roots, be proud of Mexico.
A dumber analysis you couldn't make .
Brownsville began as an American city in new American territory. Mexico was,is, and always will be a shit hole. Only a fool would be proud of a shit hole.
I thought Brville was/is in the U.S. Mexico is on the American continent . Thus Bro. And Matamoros both are in America.
"The Meskins are coming, the Meskins are coming". Paulo Rivera.
Bolches yarboclos pa todos
PAOK
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