OLD MYSTERY: DID DIAZ MURDER CAVAZOS, OR TAKE RANSOM?

By Juan Montoya

When Porfirio Diaz was fomenting revolution in northern Mexico against the democratically-elected government under Benito Juarez in 1875, he came to Brownsville and met with many leading men of the time.

Diaz met with several U.S. supporters of his "revolution," including James Stillman and other bankers who promised to help him with men, money and arms in return for concessions in Mexico's railways, electric grid, and other public services.

In fact, the Stillmans let Diaz stay at the family home, now next to the Stillman House Museum while he planned his insurrection against the Mexican government.

Among some of the local leaders of the Mexican-American community who met and supported Diaz was Sabas Cavazos, the half brother of Juan Cortina, the colorful character in local history who was the bane of the newly arrived U.S. settlers and military.

The Cavazos portion of the Espiritu Santo Grant encompassed more than one-quarter million acres of land and included the future sites of Fort Brown and the City of Brownsville. Sabas' mother Doña María Estéfana Goseascochea de Cavazos y de Cortina was the granddaughter of Jose Salvaor de la Garza, who established Rancho Viejo, the first settlement in the Brownsville area. The communities of San Pedro, El Carmen, La Gloria, and La Puerta were established by her. A cemetery named after him dates back to 1878.

Family lore – later confirmed by historians – is that Cavazos gave Diaz a sizeable loan totaling about $50,000 in gold. Cavazos' cash contribution is listed in the Porfirio Diaz papers in the Universidad Iberoamericana files dated August 30, 1877, Document 001000.

In February of 1876, Diaz met with a group of railroad financiers representing New York syndicates and South Texas land barons at Kingsbury, Texas. Kingsbury, about 40 miles east of San Antonio, was the rail head of the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad. John "Rip" Ford reported later that during the meeting, Richard King, who purchased $30,000 in Mexican Railroad stock, promised Diaz financial aid if he would rid southern Texas of Cortina.

That February, Diaz received $40,000 in American contributions followed by separate grants of $14,000, $20,000, $50,000, $60,000 and $320,000 forwarded by King, Sabas Cavazos, Juan Bustamante and Alberto Castillo.

Ford wrote in his Memoirs: "Diaz asked if the Americans would loan him cash. He was told 'you are no doubt fully aware of the trouble that General Cortina is causing on this frontier. If you will give your word that, if successful in the revolution you are about to inaugurate, you will order Cortina to be removed from this frontier, Americans will loan you money.' General Diaz gave his word. He obtained money from American citizens. General Cortina was ultimately under Diaz's surveillance for nearly 20 years and forced to move to Mexico City. Can any gentleman dare say President Diaz has not fully redeemed his pledge?"

His forces used Stillman's Civil War facility in Bagdad and established a flow of supplies during the winter and spring of 1876. Arms from New York began arriving in March and Brownsville merchants provided Diaz with ordinance that included 250,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000,000 recharging cartridges from Remington Arms, and after a prolonged siege made possible by supplies shipped by Whitney Arms Company and the Wexel and Degress Arms Company of New York, Diaz's forces seized Matamoros in April.

When Juarez died in 1871, Lerdo assumed power and then won the election of 1872. Lerdo was to finish his four-year term in 1876, and it was then, when Lerdo’s reelection to another four-year was confirmed by the Mexican Congress, that Diaz launched his revolution in earnest.

Diaz had initially called for revolution against the Lerdo government in January, 1876, in the village of Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. The Plan de Tuxtepec called for the “non-reelection” of Lerdo, and mentions vague assurances of universal suffrage. The plan names Diaz as general of the “regeneration army” which was to return the popular liberties to the people of Mexico.

Sensing that his revolution would be crushed by federal government troops, Diaz seized the moment and fled to Veracruz where he wrote a government official that he was fleeing because the government was attempting to arrest him “without any reason.”

Diaz left Veracruz on a ship to the United States and arrived in Brownsville and set up his new headquarters. Historian John Mason Hart contends that U.S. industrialists – including the Stillmans – gave Diaz financial and moral support to wage his revolution for promises of concessions in the Mexican economy.

Diaz continued inciting his revolution through April and May of 1876 in northern Tamaulipas. His revolt was basically in suspended animation, since those months went by without the revolt making any appreciable gains in territory or conversions of the population.

Toward the end of May, Mexican General Mariano Escobedo defeated the Diaz forces in Tamaulipas, and Gen. Carlos Fuero, military commander of the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon, dealt a crushing defeat to the remnants of Diaz’s forces at the Battle of Icamole, a town near the city of Monterrey.

Diaz fled back to Brownsville, and from here he left aboard a ship to New Orleans.

Thus ended Diaz’s attempts at revolution in northern Mexico. But a postscript to this story is that when Diaz finally overthrew Lerdo later in 1876, he invited Sabas Cavazos to an official ceremony in Mexico City to celebrate his great victory. Lerdo by then was in exile in New York, vowing never to return until the dictator had died.

“The story goes that when Sabas Cavazos attended the banquet to toast to Diaz’s victory, he had two glasses of wine and that after he drank them he became violently sick and later that night he died,” Cavazos said. Many of his relatives thought that Diaz had poisoned him so he wouldn’t have to pay him back the 50,000 gold pesos. Sabas died Feb. 25, 1878.

Days later, the Mexican president financed a lavish funeral that carried Sabas Cavazos to his grave in a black, silver-trimmed hearse, he said.

That account has been disputed by other sources, including Francisco DeWitt Foster, a former aide to Tamaulipas Gen. Servando Canales, who says that Diaz uncovered compromising correspondence indicating that Corina was conspiring with Gen. Julia Quiroga and Gen. Ignacio Revueltas in early 1877 to thwart his efforts to unseat Lerdo. 

John Ford said he personally delivered the correspondence to Diaz as he advanced on Guadalajara and that Diaz ordered all the conspirators captured and shot. But he also mentions hat when Sabas Cavazos heard of the capture of his half brother and Diaz's orders to execute him, he traveled to Mexico City and offered that the loans he made to Diaz be used as ransom for his life.

The Cavazos-Diaz correspondence at the Universidad Iberoamericana was dated August 30, 1877.

After much haggling, Diaz is said to have acquiesced to Cavazos' offer and had Canales send Ford to escort Cortina to the boat La Libertad and taken to Mexico City where he remained jailed in the military prison of Santiago Tlaltleolco until his release to house arrest where he died October 30, 1894.

There is also another curious angle to the story. One researcher whose university had access to the Diaz archives went looking for the documents cited by historian Hart in Mexico City and found that those specific letters from Diaz to Cavazos – and vice versa – were missing from the archives.

Until they are found in other collections and the contents revealed, will the real circumstances of Sabas Cavazos' death in Mexico City be finally cleared. Did Diaz murder Cavazos, or did he not?