BAD MEXICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK TIP OF THE ICEBERG

By Juan Montoya
As much as I want to get excited and incensed over the current controversy surrounding a proposed introduction of a book on Mexican American history into the public schools of Texas, the bigger story lies closer to home.
The critics of the tome say that it is filled with historical errors and stereotypes, that it depicts Hispanics as slovenly, foreigners, etc., without giving them their due place as pioneer settlers of this state.

Those criticisms are well founded, I'm sure.
But the bigger story is not that our story is badly told by this book, but that our story has never been told at all.
It reminds us of the deliberate destruction of the Aztec and Mayan texts and codices that Europeans (Spaniards, mostly) launched in an effort to discredit the scientific, architectural, and agricultural advances of the natives.
The same applies to our local history.


I could bet that if you asked anyone student in the Brownsville Independent School District what place in history Juan Nepomuceno Cortina holds in local history, they would give you a questioning look, and then the facile answer used by most mainstream historians that he was a cattle thief and a bandit.

That mischaracterization did not come about as a coincidence. Cortina was reviled because he was one person (among others) who resisted the encroachment of new Anglo arrivals after Zachary Taylor invaded South Texas, and then crossed the river and invaded northern Mexico.
As the son of Doña Estefana Goseacochea de Cavazos de Cortina –  the daughter of Salvador de la Garza, who founded the first ranch in Cameron County (present-day Rancho Viejo) – he could see first-hand that the new settlers, armed with Texas laws and the power of the U.S.Army set about to dispossess the land-grant families through guile and subterfuge.

He rebelled and waged a low-intensity guerrilla war that sometimes flared into armed confrontations and even resulted in his occupation of the City of Brownsville in 1859.

Doña Estefana was born in Camargo, Mexico, in 1782 (the Rio Grande wasn't a border then) and died in 1867 on her El Carmen ranch at 85.

Hers ranch was one of the first ones established in Cameron County. El Carmen Ranch was named after Doña Estefana’s daughter. Rancho Viejo was established by her father in 1770. This about it. That was six years before the signers of the U.S. Constitution met in Philadelphia when De la Garza started his ranch. El Carmen Avenue, named after his granddaughter, connected these two ranches. Santa Rita (now Villanueva, and the first seat of Cameron County) was also founded by Doña Estefana.
That porciones granted by a visita general in 1757 eventually formed part of the Espiritu Santo Grant that was eventually recognized by the King of Spain in 1785.

Encompassing more than one-quarter million acres of land, the Espiritu Santo Grant included the future sites of Fort Brown and the City of Brownsville. The de la Garza Family established Rancho Viejo, the first settlement in the Brownsville area.

Here's what our local students will never read about in their history books.
They'll never know that Juan Cortina fought on the Mexican side in 1846 when the Mexican and U.S. armies met at Palo Alto. He also fought at Resaca de la Guerra the next day. Remember, the Rio Grande was not considered the border until after 1848 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Once the battles were over and the occupation of South Texas and northern Mexico were underway, he lived with his mother on her ranch along with his half-brother brother Sabas Cavazos. Cavazos would go on to be one of the area's most successful ranchers and even held elective posts in the new Cameron County.

Even after Cortina left the area because of continuing conflict and strife with the newcomers to South Texas, he remained very much a force in the historical events here and in Mexico. He is credited (blamed) for "starting" two wars along the border.
He was at the Battle of Puebla when Ignacio Zaragoza (his homey from Goliad, Texas) defeated the French on Cinco de Mayo 1862.
He was also – at one time or another – the military governor of Tamaulipas and controlled the customs houses at Puerto Bagdad and provided the sole source of support for Benito Juarez's government in internal exile which was being hunted down by Maximilian's assassins.

He was also in Queretaro when Maximillian was executed by a firing squad despite the pleas of his empress Carlotta and other government of the world.

A survivor in the tumultuous world of Mexican poliics, he at one time or another wore the French uniform, fought against the Confederates in South Texas, against the imperial armies and against various miliraty movements which sought to control Matamoros and the northern Tamaulipas area. He even took part in the encounter between the Union army, the Confederates, and the French at Palmito Hill.
In fact, Rip Ford, the Texas Ranger sent to restore order, and Cortina became friends and Ford voiced a grudging respect for his adversary.

The Texas State Historical Association biography of Cortina states that in 1863 Cortina proclaimed himself governor of Tamaulipas and was promoted to general of the Mexican Army of the North by President Benito Juárez. Cortina appointed himself governor again in 1866 but immediately relinquished the office.

Cortina returned to the border in 1870, and forty-one residents of the Valley, including a former mayor of Brownsville, signed a petition asking that he be pardoned for his crimes because of his service to the Union during the Civil War. His enemies protested and the petition failed in the Texas legislature on its second reading, in 1871.

In the coming years, stockmen in the Nueces Strip accused Cortina of leading a large ring of cattle rustlers. Subsequent American diplomatic pressure forced Porfirio Diaz to place him under house arrest in Mexico City in 1875.
He died in Atzcapozalco on October 30, 1894.
Subsequent efforts to bring his body for burial at his brother's cemetery in San Pedro were unsuccessful.