INTRODUCTION

Andrés Tijerina

South Texas was settled in the mid-1700s by Spanish and Mexican families who were brought to populate the region by the wealthy Spanish count José de Escandón. South Texas was under the Spanish flag as part of the frontier province of Nuevo Santander. Escandón founded his colony between the Pánuco River in present-day Mexico and the Guadalupe River in Texas. To provide for the settlement, he brought ranching families who, indeed, established the foundation of the American ranching industry.

Escandón founded five municipalities along the Rio Grande: Laredo, Guerrero, Mier, Camargo, and Reynosa. To the Mexicans, these were known jointly as Las Villas del Norte, the Villages of the North. The families who came north from the Rio Grande and settled the ranching frontier are the subjects of this book. Indeed, the Tejanos, that is, the original founders of Texas, were not immigrants as so many Americans see them. While many Texans today boast that Texas was once a republic, these ranching Tejano families are Texans who served and lived under all six of the Texas flags. Descendants of the early ranchers founded the Texas ranch towns of Dolores, Zapata, Cuevitas, San Diego, San Juan, Palito Blanco, Agua Dulce, El Sauz, Los Olmos, San Luis, Peñascal, San Ignacio, and Los Sáenz. In fact, all of these present-day towns were founded not as towns, but as Tejano family ranches.

Many modern Americans are confused about the origins of Tejanos because the borders of Texas moved, not the settlers. These early settlers now called Tejanos came before the area was part of Texas or the United States. Texas south of the Nueces River officially became part of the United States when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the United States-Mexico War on February 8, 1848. The treaty established the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas and the United States. By virtue of the treaty, Mexican citizens north of the Rio Grande became American citizens. Although the Mexican settlers became Texans and Americans by the treaty, they retained their strong cultural and family links to their original settlements of Las Villas del Norte located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande. At this time, the northern municipalities were incorporated into the State of Texas under United States jurisdiction, specifically as Nueces County.

The area of Nueces County that later became Duval County was originally populated by Mexican settlers who came north from the village of Mier on the Rio Grande. These Mexican settlers included family members of Mr. Sáenz who would establish Ranchos El Fresnillo and San José. Obtaining land grants from the municipality of Mier in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, they crossed the Wild Horse Desert, known as Desierto Muerto, into present-day Duval County. These hardy settlers included Julian Flores, Encarnación García Pérez, Martiana Pérez de García, and other ranchers who established the Rancho San Diego on the San Diego Creek (about 50 miles west of Corpus Christi) around 1815. Following them, Juan Bautista González and other settlers came who founded the other ranches of La Rosita, El Palito Blanco, and the Peñitas Ranch. Rancho San Diego eventually became a town with the same name. The neighboring ranch towns were Concepción, Realitos, and Piedras Pintas. In 1858 the Texas Legislature established the County of Duval, formally separating it from Nueces County in 1876.

Duval County lay at the crossroads of trade between San Antonio and Brownsville, Corpus Christi and Laredo. Not surprisingly, the town of San Diego attracted stagecoach lines along those two routes. The trade routes were also used in moving stolen livestock, as well as contingents of the U.S. Army and Texas Rangers in pursuit of cattle rustlers. The ranches in this area became a production center for horses, cattle, and sheep. By the late 1850s, Duval County included the large cattle and sheep ranches of Las Conchas, La Trinidad, Santa Gertrudis, Petronilla, Mendieta, Veleño, and Lagarto. By 1880 the county was a major market, home to over one million sheep. Duval County ranches propelled Corpus Christi into the nation’s leading wool port. The county also became the point of origination for the famous cattle trails that took millions of Texas longhorn cattle north to Kansas and Missouri. Around 1880 the Texas-Mexico Railway built a line from Corpus Christi, through San Diego, to Laredo. This expanded the role of Duval County as the crossroads of political and economic activity.

Duval County also attracted unwanted visitors. Mexican rustlers raided area ranches in 1875. Hostile Indians staged a final raid on the county in 1878, killing several ranch workers. As a result of these raids, the state of Texas established a ranger station in San Diego. In 1888 Catarino Garza, a Mexican intellectual, recruited hundreds of local rancheros into an informal cavalry unit. Garza had married into the Pérez family of the Palito Blanco Ranch just north of the San José Ranch in Duval County. Opposed to the government of Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz, Garza led his Ranchero Cavalry from Duval County into Mexico, where he conducted an extended military campaign against the Mexican Army. He returned to the Palito Blanco Ranch, hotly pursued by the Texas Rangers, who found themselves unable to capture him. He eventually went to Cuba and other countries, where he continued to promote revolutions.

Meanwhile, the ranches of Duval County, such as El Fresnillo and San José, continued to develop economically. In the 1890s railroads eclipsed cattle drives as a means of moving stock to market. The sheep industry shifted to West Texas. Compelled by necessity, the ranchers began the transition to commercial farming. Wool bales were replaced by cotton bales being transported to the cotton gins in San Diego and Corpus Christi. Cotton became the cash crop as Mexican settlers continued to immigrate into Texas. Some came in search of work on the ranches, but others took advantage of the cheap land and the Texas land grant programs to establish themselves in the area.

The most dramatic political transition in Duval County occurred after the turn of the century. Anglo-American immigrants began to move in, taking up land grants and buying the cheap ranch land. These newcomers used their political connections and their access to capital to take positions of power in the county governments and in the city of San Diego. This brought them into conflict with the Tejanos, the traditional Mexican-American leaders. In 1914 a political feud resulted in the shooting of three Mexican-American leaders in San Diego–an event that threatened to break out into outright warfare. The turmoil was averted by County Commissioner Archer Parr, an Anglo who sided with the Mexican-Americans. By serving as intermediary, Parr effectively established a political machine that ruled the county for years. His local political control, however, was insufficient to prevent another regional movement. Hundreds of Mexican Americans issued the Plan de San Diego, a political declaration against the U.S. government calling for Mexican independence from Anglo power in South Texas. The U.S. Army dispersed the leader, Aniceto Pizaña, and his followers. The movement dissolved in 1916, but a strong political undercurrent of resistance continued among the area’s Mexican-American citizenry.

Mexican-American citizens of Duval County continued to express dissatisfaction with their political status until the 1920s. By then the residents of the surrounding ranches and towns joined socio-political organizations that stood against Anglo power. In Duval County, the local newspaper, "The Bee" (El Avispa), promoted civil and political rights for Mexican Americans. Many of the county residents joined the League of Latin American Citizens, a Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Harlingen. Lawyer Alonso S. Perales led the group. They eventually merged with groups from San Antonio and Corpus Christi to form the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Founded in Corpus Christi in 1929, LULAC became a force in the Duval County area and grew to be the largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States. Thus, the ranch families that had come north to Duval County in the early 1800s provided leadership for the entire ranch country of South Texas. They developed the sheep and longhorn ranching industry of the nation, and they played a pivotal role not only in the revolution against the dictatorial government of Mexico, but in the American civil rights movement as well.

As one reads the modest family stories of El Fresnillo and the San José ranches, it is difficult to imagine that these were the same families who played so integral a role in the evolution of northern Mexico and southern Texas. Their imperatives appeared mundane, as they worked their ranches to survive the drought and other hardships. But their struggles on the ranches should not blind the reader to the larger role that these pioneers played in the making of Texas. These humble pioneers, along with others, were the Texans who started the western cattle kingdom of over five million longhorn cattle. They produced the longhorn herds that were driven on cattle trails to the northern railheads after the Civil War ended. Ironically, most Americans can name the cattle towns in Kansas and Missouri but know very little of the Tejano ranch families who founded the longhorn cattle industry which fed the nation. The following stories may sound like informal family legends, but they are deeply rooted in United States history. Without these ranch families, the history of Texas would not be complete.