A 1878 WHODONIT: DID SABAS CAVAZOS DIE AT DIAZ'S ORDERS?

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

For many years before he died in 2014 P.G. Cavazos said that his family's lore included a suspicion that longtime Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz had Sabas Cavazos - a pioneer ancestor - poisoned during a banquet in Mexico City when the San Pedro rancher went to collect on a debt that funded his Tuxtepec revolution.

Correspondence related to the business between the two men is said ti be listed in an archive in the Biblioteca Iberoamericana in Mexico City and quoted on some historical bibliographies that may shed light on the alleged debt Diaz owed Cavazos, but so far none of those letters have come to light.

Now, a researcher from the University of Houston, Dr. Marie Theresa Hernandez, has unearthed some Mexico City newspapers (El Siglo Diece Nueve) that confirm that Sabas was in Mexico City in search of his payment in mid-1877, but there is another intriguing thread running that might explain his presence there; his interceding with Diaz for the life of his brother, General Juan N. Cortina, the quintessential bad boy of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Cortina was arrested at Diaz orders in March of 1877 and none other than John "Rip" Ford contends that Diaz ordered General Servando Canales to execute him for being involved in an alleged plot contained in compromising correspondence indicating that Corina was conspiring with Gen. Julia Quiroga, among others, to overthrow the president, who himself had just overthrown democratically-elected president Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada and sent him into exile in New York City.

Ford wrote the Daily Herald much later that he personally delivered the documents proving Cortina's involvement in the conspiracy and that Diaz sent him to Puerto Bagdad where Cortina was delivering a herd of  cattle for sale to deliver his orders to Canales to arrest him and carry out the execution.

But here is where it gets muddled. Ford says that Sabas Cavazos - Cortina's half brother - got wind of his capture and went to Mexico City to intercede on his behalf with Diaz.

Ford wrote that Diaz, after Cavazos communicated with him, sent emissaries to countermand his order to Canales and instead had Cortina placed on boat in Bagdad (La Libertad) and delivered him to Mexico City's Santiago Tlatelolco Prison. That was according to the Ford letter to the Brownsville newspaper.

But the chronology and timeline doesn't jive with the historical record.

Dr. Hernandez unearthed a newspaper account of a November 1877 court ruling indicating that Sabas Cavazos had been arrested and jailed on a criminal charge of leaving the jurisdiction of a civil court in October on a complaint filed by a General Francisco A. Velez, who charged that Cavazos had traveled to Veracruz on a train trying to escape the responsibility of a debt that he had co-signed on behalf of his brother to the general's wife, a Senora Carlota Canizo.

Cortina was arrested on March 1877. Cavazos did not go to Mexico City immediately to barter for Cortina's life with Diaz as Ford wrote the Herald. Dr. Hernandez believes it was closer to August, which would have placed him closer to the date July 20,1877 when the debt was allegedly incurred.

Cavazos was arrested as he traveled by train in Veracruz on Velez's orders between then and October 8 when a court absolved Velez and two colonels from Sabas Cavazos' lawsuit charging them with his arbitrary arrest and imprisonment when he was detained in Veracruz by the two officers based on Velez's orders.

Cavazos would never live to see the end of his case against Velez and the two officers - where they were cleared - because it was issued in November 1878, eight months after he died allegedly of entero-colitis in Mexico City on February 24, 1878.

Sabas Cavazos had been among American bankers and financiers - which included James Stillman Richard King and others who sought railroad and telegraph concessions in Mexico - and who had supported Diaz in his revolution in return.

Family lore – later confirmed by historians – is that Cavazos gave Diaz the loan listed in the Porfirio Diaz papers in the Universidad Iberoamericana files dated August 30, 1877, Document 001000.

Historian John Mason Hart writes that 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?"

This is the money Sabas allegedly went to collect - or if Ford was right - to use it to barter for this brother's life.

Does the role of the military in his death - the general Velez who detained Cavazos on the alleged loan from his wife to Cortina and the witness on his death certificate, also a military man - indicate that he was the victim of a plot hatched by Diaz and his collaborators to not pay him the money he lent him?

When he died, his body was shipped to "Puerto Matamoros" and delivered to his family.

The 142-year-old whodonit involving one of Cameron County's leading citizens and landowners continues. We look forward to Dr. Hernandez's forthcoming book on Juan Cortina to see if some light is shed on this mystery.

To read her essay on the issue, click on link: https://www.facebook.com/marietheresa.hernandez.9/posts/2580491425502496

As she quotes well-respected anthropologist Michel Rolph Trouillot at the beginning of her essay: "History is messy."

And the history of Cortina, Diaz and Cameron County and Brownsville, in particular, is particularly so.