DAILY RANCHERO'S FALSEHOODS DEMONIZE JUAN N. CORTINA

(Ed.'s Note: When Juan N. Cortina went into battle with the Mexican Army against Zachary Taylor on May 7-8, 1846. he was fighting on his own land, a part of his mother's share of the Espiritu Santo Grant from which Cameron County and the City was Brownsville were eventually carved. But the newspapers of the time saw him – even though he was defending his birthright – as an obstacle for their plans to take the land from its owners with the assistance of the military and later the Texas Rangers. For that reason, he was demonized by the "leading " citizens of Brownsville and newspapers on both sides of the Rio Grande. 

We will break this article posted in July 7, 1865, after the confederacy surrendered into two parts. Notice the ad in the bottom which refers to pardon applications. The pardons were desired by confederates from the United States and the Ranchero could give you a recommendation, for a slight fee, of course.)

Part 1  

By H.A. Maltby, W. H. Maltby and Somers Kinney
Editors, publishers and Proprietors
The Daily Ranchero
Matamoros, Tamps. Mexico
July 7, 1865

Juan Nepomuceno Cortina

WHY MINCE MATTERS?

This notorious character was born in the town of Camargo, of highly respectable parents. The name is an honorable one, and but for the startling and almost appalling exception under consideration, would stand before the country without material stain.

His is an equal mixture of the Spanish with the native blood of the country: than which no man can boast of more noble and honorable extraction, During that period, when the character of the man is forming for good, bad or indifferent, Cheno Cortina (as he was familiarly called by his vaquero surroundings) was a captive among the savages in the northern mountain fastness of Mexico.

From boyhood to manhood he was with those savages, a participant in their hellish schemes of plunder, robbery and murder; drinking in draft after draft of infernal poisons; and vitiating his appetite for the enjoyment, in after years, of a hecatomb. Here is to be found the true cause of his unnatural thirst for blood. Here he derived his ideas of proprietary rights. Here were sown the seeds which ripened into fruit more fatal than the fabled Upas (Ed.'s Note: a Javanese tree alleged to poison its surroundings and said to be fatal to approach.)

After six or eight years of captivity, he found gis way to this border, and measurably returned to civilization. He was variously and questionably employed during the war between the United States and Mexico, but always in sub capacity.In fact, he was no more than any other vaquero. He was subsequently employed by various stock drivers from the Nueces, and it is said herded horses very well. As to whether or not he actually engaged in stealing caballados and secreting them in the various chaparrals along the Rio Grande, the courts never determined; and not being able to read and write, he has made none of those damning records by which most villainy is detected.

Passing over the first worthless thirty years of his life, we find him merging from his horse-herding vocation into the more genial pursuits of the desperado. In this laudable pursuit he easa seconded by a floating scum of outlawed cut-throats from all quarters of the continent. For his crimes he was indicted by the court at Brownsville: which indictments stand unrequited at the present day.

Among the grand jurors who returned a true bill against the lawless Cheno Cortina, we recognize some of the first men of this commercial emporium. We again repeat, the indictment stands unrequited by the federal courts, because, forsooth, the outlaw could never be brought to trial. Those jurors are among the steadfast supporters of federal authority through prosperity and peril. They are here to reiterate the truth of our statement in this connection.

In the Spring and Summer of 1859, when the people of Brownsville has been left on a forlorn border, by the federal authorities, to shirk for themselves, and worn down and decimated by a two-years scourge of yellow fever, Juan Cortina began to make himself both felt and feared. To let the public know his real character, he rode into Brownsville and without provocation shot the city marshal (Shears) down whilst in the discharge of his duties, and then fled.

Various reports floated on the ever sensitive atmosphere of Brownsville, of organizations of thieves and robbers, but they would die away or give place to a variation of the same thing. But no notice was taken of the thrice-told tale until the banditti in force made their appearance, which was on the 28th of September, 1859.

On the morning of that day, just before daylight, Cortina at the head of from sixty to one hundred
and twenty men, stormed the town and killed six of its citizens. Sixteen of the best citizens of Brownsville were on the list for the hecatomb, and the city was to have been sacked and burned to the ground. But two or three of the sixteen marked victims were murdered and the city was not burned. The only reason why it was not done, was the appeals made by influential citizens ( some of them relatives of Cortina), residing in this city who had large interests at stake in saving Brownsville from the flames.

In dogged silence, and with vengeance in his soul, Cortina withdrew his outlaws from the city.

Instantly the citizens organized an commenced the work of defense. Fortunate that they did so, for almost immediately Cortina and his invested the city and held it in a state of siege for months. Almost every night from this time until the month of December, the city was fired into by this banditti. All the highways were guarded by Cortina and his freebooters, and the number of inoffensive man who surrendered their lives to this cruel devil has never been known.
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