Heritage, Volume 18, Number 2, Spring 2000 Page: 22
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"black sheep," someone who was
"impervious to all good influences,"
an individual who "inherited
personal charm . . . flair for
leadership . . . [and the] disposition
of a gambler."
Webb admits that the Rangers,
especially those under Capt. William
G. Tobin who arrived in
Brownsville in 1859, were "a sorry
lot" and were responsible for the
hanging of Tomas Cabrera, a 60year-old
lieutenant of Cortina.
This hanging, Webb maintained
accurately, helped to generate
much of the violence that followed.
However, in a line or two without
comment, Webb excuses the seemingly
indiscriminate hanging of
Mexican-Americans by Texas
Rangers before and after the fight
with some of Cortina's vaqueros on
the Palo Alto prairie near
Brownsville in 1875. Nor is Webb
critical of the senseless burning of
a number of Mexican jacales by the
Rangers at Las Cuevas. In the end,
then, Webb's heroes were the same
as Dobie's-the Texas Rangers.
't oday Cortina continues to fascinate
writers and students of Texas history.
He appears to be alive and well in Larry
McMurtry's epic and prize-winning "Lonesome
Dove" in the character of Pedro
Flores who ran "the best armed ranch in
northern Mexico" and who "had more or
less held nearly a hundred mile stretch of
the border ... for nearly forty years." In
one scene in which two wayward and helpless
Irish youths were stranded in Northern
Mexico near the Rio Grande, someteh ri& t q jp .
the Lowerr t Gracnd through h Art of ;
Jose Cisneros, one of the Je (S S W S
the spirit and rich history of the borderlands of the lower Rio Grande
of Texas in 56 full-color illustrations. One of the largest privately-owned
collections of its kind, HCHM'sJose Cisneros Collection should be enjoyed
as an artist's interpretation of a region's heritage, and as a valuable reference.
Introduced by a brief, but fact-filled overview of four centuries of borderland
history, and accompanied by lively commentaries, these illustrations serve as
jumping-off points for the imagination-colorful places to step back in time and
the true drama of this little-known frontier.$35+ $3.50 h=$38.50
Checks, Visa and MC o
accepted by mail, phone,Juan Cortina's grave in Mexico City.
Image courtesy of Jerry Thompson.how looking for Galveston, Capt. W. E Call
warned the Emerald Isle teenagers of Old
Pedro: "He ain't a gentle man, and if he
finds you tomorrow I expect he'll hang you."
In the character Benito Garza, Cortina
lives also in James A. Michener's novel
"Texas." At the end of the Mexican War,
Michener has a scene where Benito and his
brother, disillusioned with the war and
Mexico's humiliating defeat, return to the
border and their homes: "As the Garzas approached
the Rio Grande before turning
east toward Matamoros," Michener writes,i A daz ling illustrated
history othe lower
^^_11^, Rio Grande!
![kfP;lt..; : : 8.5" X 11" vertical format.
Full color. 160 pages.
W .' ^\, x: 0 0i:: ^Hard bound cloth cover with
full color dust jacket.
i: .a ^ H I D A L G O C O U N T Y
'a HISSRKIC4L
expenence MJSELM
Hidalgo County Historical Museum
rders 121 E. McIntyre * Edinburg, Texas 78539
,or fax. (956) 383-6911 FAX (956) 381-8518"they paused to look across the
river into the still-contested
Nueces Strip, and resting in their
saddles, they reached the brutal
conclusion... 'there is no chance
of turning back the norteamericanos.'
But in the depth of
their despair they saw a chance for
personal salvation and Benito, his
mustache dark in the blazing sunlight,
phrased their oath: 'The
yanquis who try to steal that Strip
from us, they'll never know a
night of security. Their cattle will
never graze in peace ... they'll pay
a terrible price for their arrogance."'Over several decades of border
history, Cortina emerged from an
idealistic Brownsville ranchero determined
to end the brutalization
of Mexicans in Texas in 1859, to
an emerging border caudillo and
governor of Tamaulipas struggling
to hold power in Mexico, to a vain
revolutionary caged in Mexico
City's Santiago Tlatelolco prison
in 1875. As a youth, a determined
ranchero, or a soldier on the march, he loved
the bleak savannas of Northeastern Mexico
and South Texas, yet he spent the last decade
of his life at Santiago Tlatelolco and
later under house arrest in the soothing
heights of Mexico's great central valley. As
he grew old, he yearned to return to
Matamoros, the city where he had enjoyed
his greatest triumphs and where he had spent
much of his life. Yet he died of pneumonia
in the small village of Azcapotzalco on October
30, 1894. He was buried with military
honors just west of the Hill of the Grasshopper
in the Pante6n de Dolores, near the
Rotonda de los Hombres, the final resting
place of Mexico's greatest heroes. Today his
neglected grave is covered with weeds and
his tombstone has been vandalized. In another
century, this frontier caudillo established
his unique and violent niche in the
history of the Texas-Mexico border.
Dr. Jerry Thompson is dean of the College of
Arts & Humanities at Texas A&M International
University in Laredo.
*Parts of this article were previously read
at meetings or published in journals.HERITAGE * 22 * SPRING 2000
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 18, Number 2, Spring 2000, periodical, Spring 2000; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45390/m1/22/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.