SOUTH TEXAS HISTORY IS THE CRUCIBLE OF LOST HERITAGE

By Juan Montoya

Even as many are crowing up the rehabilitation of downtown Brownsville, the state and federal governments continue to raze historic sites that harken back to the origins of Cameron County and actually predate this city "On the Border by the Sea," as the chamber of commerce boys like to call it.

A prime example of this is the historic cemetery built by Doña Estefana Goseasocochea de Cavazos de Cortina, one of the first settlers to the area. She was born in Camargo, Mexico, in 1782 (the Rio Grande wasn't a border then) and died on 1867 on her El Carmen Ranch at 85.


The late P. G. Cavazos, her great-great grandson, from San Pedro, was instrumental in getting the Texas Historical Commission to erect a marker on Doña Estefana's family cemetery off Military Highway where she and her family once operated her ranching empire.

Hers was one of the first ranches established in Cameron County. El Carmen Ranch was named after Doña Estefana’s daughter. Rancho Viejo was established by her father in 1770 and the King of Spain gave Salvador de La Garza the royal grant in 1781.

Think about it. That was only five years after the United States came into existence, and eight years before the French Revolution.

The Republic of Texas didn't even exist (1836). Statehood was 64 years in the future (1845) and  Brownsville wouldn't exist until 1850.

Spanish explorers reported seeing 30 to 40 Indian villages when they came up the river in the 1500s.
But until the settlers came from Mexico years later, the land was said to be inhabited by wandering hunter and gathering nomads who neither cultivated the land nor developed it. With the coming of Salvador de la Garza and the other land grantees all that changed.

If you stop to read the historical marker off Military Highway just north of the river levee and now topped by the Border Wall, you will learn that vandalism, weather, the construction of the levee and now the wall, have obliterated what once was one of the first cemeteries in Cameron County.

The cemetery, unfortunately, was in the way of progress.
When the levee was built to stave off the annual flooding from the river, it was covered by tons of dirt and a small part of it remained on the other side.

Today, with the Border Wall topping the levee, whatever may have remained is off limits to anyone by the landowners who now grow sorghum on what was then Doña Estefana's final resting place.

One of her sons (Jose Maria) went on to become a tax-assessor collector for the eventual Cameron County and another (Sabas) would become a wealthy and successful rancher and livestock grower dominating the local agrarian economy.

Sabas lies buried in another historical cemetery in San Pedro a few miles upriver. Her other son, Juan Cortina, was exiled to Mexico City for fighting against the land-grabbing new settlers sided and abetted by the new laws and the military.

According Cavazos, "the cemetery, established by Doña Estéfana prior to 1867 for her use, is said to be the oldest of the ranch cemeteries on the river road.

"The site probably sustained some damage during the hurricanes of October 6, 1867 and September 4-5, 1933, which devastated he Valley. The devastation caused severe flooding of the area and prompted the U. S. International Boundary Water Commission to build a levee along the Rio Grande.

"The construction of the levee, however, left the cemetery site on the south side of the levee and completely obscured it from view and made it practically inaccessible. It remained unnoticed for decades. Locals hardly recall burials at this site after the construction of the levee and the hurricane and, if there were any burials, they were few and unnoticed.

"Her cemetery is located on what was once her property, Rancho El Carmen (El Carmen Ranch) in Cameron County, Texas, within what is known as the Espíritu Santo Grant. Part of that grant was her allotted portion of the grant. The site is in Precinct 2 in Rancho El Carmen, a community established and settled by Doña Estéfana in early 1840’s about four miles west of Brownsville on the Old Historic Military Telegraph Road (US Hwy.281).

"The cemetery, which once was a large dedicated cemetery, is all but gone. A single headstone still standing, is obviously endangered, as the top has been chipped off. Mr. Guadalupe Becerra, whose father’s headstone is the only one standing, remembers the very, very old cemetery in the early 1950s.

"He recalls 15 to 20 graves still visible at the site, and some graves had markers. His father, Erasmo Becerra, died in 1924. Headstones and markers were torn or pulled away from the graves and scattered away from the site. Larger ones, as the one recovered (no markings) from the water canal, were pushed away from the graves apparently with heavy equipment and piled into the canal. Smaller pieces of markers lay about the graves."

Only through the efforts of Cavazos and members of the Cameron County Historical Society did it become possible to erect the historical marker on the south side of U.S. Highway 281 where it is overshadowed by the Border Wall which not only effectively bars visitors to the original site and stands like an obstacle, but also helps to hide sn important part of our true local history.