EN EL D.F., JUAN CORTINA YEARNS TO COME BACK HOME

By Juan Montoya
When Juan Cortina died in Mexico City under home arrest in 1892, he was buried at El Panteon de Dolores in Mexico City, Mexico, even though he yearned to be buried alongside his mother at her ranch in Santa Rita, the first seat of Cameron County.

His descendant, the late  Praxedis Cavazos of San Pedro, said that at least two attempts were made to bring his body home but were thwarted by World War I and later, the Great Depression. His wishes to be buried alongside his mother were never realized.

What P.G. Cavazos failed to point out – as he was characteristically diplomatic – is that the Cortina name often incurred the wrath of his enemies who remembered him as a particularly effective resistance fighter to the encroachment and usurpation of the lands of local Mexican-American families, often at the head of an armed following.

Cavazos points out that Cortina was born in Camargo, Mexico on May 14, 1824. His aristocratic mother was one of the heirs of a large land grant in the lower Rio Grande valley, including the area that included and surrounded Brownsville. 

In fact, she was the daughter of Salvador De la Garza, who established the first ranch, now Rancho Viejo, Texas. His daughter Doña Estefana Goseascochea Cavazos de Cortina's ranch was down Carmen Road (named after her daughter Carmen) and abutted the Rio Grande River near what is now Military Highway. At that time, the area from the Rio Grande to the Nueces River was still part of Mexico and the river was just a geographical feature.

The family moved to that land when Cortina was still young.

In the Mexican War Cortina served as a part of an irregular cavalry during the battles of Resaca de la Palma and Palo Alto under Gen. Mariano Arista of the Tamaulipas Brigade.

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 there 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 Mexicans 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 marshal 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 and U.S. investors who supported him financially to overthrow Juarez's successor Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada,  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 a big hacienda below Mexico City. His home imprisonment in Mexico City ended with his death in 1892. He is buried in the Cemeterio de Dolores de los Hombres Ilustres.

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.  World War I and the Depression further erased his wishes to be buried here.