A JUAN N. CORTINA PRIMER: BROWNSVILLE'S OWN TEJANO HERO TOOK OVER THE CITY 166 YEARS AGO

(Ed.'s Note: Who was Juan N. Cortina? Some say he was a bandit, others saw him as a hero. Brownsville's own J.T. Canales said he was the predecessor of later Mexican-American defenders of Hispanic rights in Texas and that LULAC and the G.I. Forum were merely carrying out the work he started when he took over Brownsville in September 28, 1859. But school children won't get taught about him in Texas schools for a reason. Decide for yourself.) 

 

"That Friend"

(With apologies to Pablo Neruda's "Aquel Amigo")

Then Cortina crossed the chaparral

and cast his sacred gunpowder

against bandit Rangers

in Austin grown and paid:

He burned the earth, the mesquite resounded.

The Rinches did not expect what happened,

so well dressed were they  for slaughter

their boots, Colts, and Remingtons shone

but from experience they soon knew

who Cortina and South Texas were:

everything was the grave of blond thieves;

the air, the trees, the road, the water

Cortina's Aguilas Negras emerged

even from the tequila they uncovered

And putitas they had bought

and fell ill with sudden death

The glorious slave hunters of this Texas

used to hanging blacks

showing superhuman bravery:

two thousand hooded thugs 

busy with one black man, 

a noose, and a branch

on a southern live oak

Here things were radically different:

Cortina attacked, and waited,

He was the coming of the night from Santa Rita

and then he was the light that killed them from Bagdad

Cortina was Palo Alto with flags,

He was the rifle with hope.

The lessons were very different here

in the plantations the teaching was clean:

they never taught them there

that he who kills can be killed

the Rinches didn't learn

that we love our poor coveted tierra

and that we will defend our ranchitos

created with love and pain.

Neither did the KKK (Kenedy

Kleberg, King) nor Stillman, 

Or even Ford

Y el sureño Robert E. Lee

Victorioso en Harpers Ferry

Vino, vio, y perdío aquí

If they didn't learn this in Austin or West Point

they got schooled with blood on the Bravo

there the captain of the border waited:

Juan Nepomuceno Cortina was his name

And in this song his name will remain

Like a flame

so that it gives us light and gives us fire

in the continuation of our war