Every so often, the local daily features some story about Juan Nepomuceno Cortina featuring a new book, a Carl Chilton fantasy, or such other.
The latest came out in today's Brownsville Herald front page about a local writer publishing a book about the famous Cameron County personality who gave the the newly-arrive Anglo settlers and power brokers fits so that they had to call out the Texas Rangers, the Brownsville Tigers and finally, the U.S. Army to keep him in check.
We're looking forward to reading Rodolfo J. Walss, the local doctor who has just published his book “Pride and Dignity: The Saga of Cheno Cortina.”Cortina, born on May 14, 1824, in Camargo (before this part of Texas was in the United States) and was the son of a large ranch owner who founded Santa Rita and El Carmen Ranch. In fact, she was the daughter of Salvador De la Garza, who established the first ranch, now Rancho Viejo, Texas. That woman, Doña Estefana Goseascochea Cavazos de Cortina, owned thousands of acres that included the present-day ranch down Carmen Road (named after her daughter) and abutted the Rio Grande River near what is now Military Highway.
The family moved to that land when Cortina was still young.
When Zachary Taylor arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande, Cheno, like a good Mexican patriot, joined his fellow countrymen and fought as a part of an irregular cavalry against the invaders under Gen. Mariano Arista in the Tamaulipas Brigade at the battles of Resaca de la Palma and Palo Alto.
After the defeat of the Mexican armies, he continued to live in the area around San Pedro at his mother's ranch and witnessed the ravenous new arrivals dispossess local Mexican-Americans of their land through legal subterfuge, naked force, and by using the power of the state and the Texas Rangers to run them out or kill them.
He also witnessed the abuse of the local inhabitants at the hands of the newly-arrived Anglos and grew resentful.
After the war he returned to the north bank of the river, where he was accused on at least two occasions of stealing cattle by the Cameron County grand jury. He had grown in popularity and political influence among the Mexicans here and even though he was seen frequently in public, he was not arrested on the indictments. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Cortina developed a hatred for a group of judges, attorneys and land speculators whom he accused of stealing land from Texas Mexican unfamiliar with the American judicial system and in the process became a leader to many of the poorer Mexicans who lived along the banks of the river.
Cortina had sworn he would kill these men for stealing land from the Mexican Americans. The incident that ignited the first so-called Cortina War occurred on July, 13, 1859, when Cortina saw the Brownsville, Texas, City Marshall, Robert Shears, brutally arrest a Mexican American who had once been employed by Cortina. Cortina shot the marshall in the impending confrontation and rode out of town with the prisoner. Early on the morning of September 8, 1859, he rode into Brownsville again, this time at the head of some forty to eighty men, and seized control of the town.
Only the intervention by his relatives and officials on the Matamoros side persuaded him to lift the occupation.
Cortina afterward also fought the French invaders, with Ignacio Zaragoza in Puebla (Cinco de Mayo), another Texan from Goliad. He quickly rose to general in the Liberal Mexican Army of Benito Juarez and was present at the execution of Maximilian in Queretaro, served as military governor of Tamaulipas, and would later support dictator Porfirio Diaz when he overthrew Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, Juarez’ successor.
He was an adroit political player, surviving the Imperial government of Maximilian, the Byzantine political changes in Mexico, and even the spillover of the Civil War, taking sides first with the Confederates, and later, with the Union.
It was the internal politics of Mexico that eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment.
Mexican presidents, especially Diaz, eager to soothe the wounded feelings of Cortina’s enemies in South Texas and anxious to placate the U.S. government, ordered him kept at the military prison of Santiago Tlaltelolco, without being tried or sentenced. He remained there until 1890, when he was paroled to home detention in a big hacienda below Mexico City. His home imprisonment in Mexico City ended with his death in 1892.
Even then, when his family tried to have his remains buried in the family cemetery in San Pedro, his political opponents objected and the project was shelved.
2 comments:
Camargo has never been part of Texas. It is South of the river.
His full name was Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Goseacochea, making him half basque and he apparently had red hair and was also called el huero and "the Red Robber of the Rio Grande".
Maybe he is related to "Canelo". Let's hope he fought better.
Cortina was a very very bad man with low morals and evil intent. People are known by the heros and roll models they have.
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