164 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 28, CHENO TOOK BROWNSVILLE

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Following his raid and takeover of Brownsville with a band of some 75 followers September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno (Cheno) Cortina waged a war with city posses, the Texas Rangers and, eventually, with the U.S. Army which defeated his followers upriver on December 27 of that year.

In several pronunciamentos issued from his mother's ranch in Santa Rita, Cortina stated that he had staged the raid to punish certain men in town who had killed Mexicans wantonly and against a cabal of "vampires in the guise of men" who used the law and the courts to dispossess Mexican-Americans and Tejanos of their land.  

On December 9, 1859, Cortina and a score of his followers were indicted (see photo above) by a Cameron County grand jury of the murder of five men, including the city jailer, who were shot during the raid, as his men raced through the streets shouting "Death to the Americans" and "Viva Mexico."  

Cortina was never captured by the Americans,  including then-colonel Robert E. Lee, who was ready to chase him into Mexico if need be. 

After Texas seceded from the Union and the Civil War ensued, Cortina returned to the border and became military governor of Tamaulipas under Benito Juarez, who was in internal exile battling the French imperialists under Maximilian. He briefly flirted with the Imperialists, but turned on them and helped to defeat them and drive them from the border.  

After being imprisoned by President Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and then released when Lerdo was overthrown by Porfirio Diaz, Cortina again returned to the border, only to have Diaz succumb to the pressure by the U.S. Government to remove him from the border in return for recognition of his government.

American diplomatic pressure was largely responsible for his arrest in July 1875 and his removal to Mexico City. He died in Atzcapozalco of natural causes on October 30, 1894 and was buried there.