Andrés Tijerina

Well, Don Andrés Sáenz wrote it. His work was simply too unique a collection of rare information to ignore. I can only imagine the obstacles this gentleman had to overcome to write his manuscript, but he completed it. He has written a book that many others have proposed, tempering his chronicle with objectivity, compassion, and a rare insight.

Andrés Sáenz is a scion of the two pioneering Texas families whom he describes, the López and the Sáenz families. He was born on August 9, 1927, at the Rancho de Santa Cruz, in southern Duval County, Texas. His parents were Praxedis Sáenz, and Ydolina López, both raised on early Texas ranches. Andrés attended a ranch school in Rancho Vera Cruz, graduating from San Diego High School in 1945. He married Jovita Treviño of Alice, Texas, on February 3, 1953. During the Korean conflict, Mr. Sáenz served on the U.S.S. Iowa in Korea and in Europe. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he returned to South Texas and worked twenty years for the Falfurrias auto dealership. This was followed by another nineteen years as owner of his own Falfurrias Auto Supply, Inc. As a personal avocation, Andrés taught Catholic Christian doctrine for twenty years and is a member of the Spanish-American Genealogical Association (S.A.G.A) in Corpus Christi, Texas.

In 1997 Andrés Sáenz responded to a public announcement about staff from the Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) coming to San Diego in search of documents, photos, and stories of the pioneering Tejano families of South Texas. Having developed a keen sense of history while a member of the S.A.G.A., Don Andrés responded to the ITC announcement. He provided the Institute with an impressive set of manuscripts. These are the manuscripts that I have had the pleasure of editing. My goal has been to make the narrative readable while preserving the original content, compassion, and literary integrity of Mr. Sáenz.

Andrés Sáenz joins a small cadre of other writers who wrote Tejano ranch history before him. They include: Fermina Guerra, author of "Mexican and Spanish Folklore and Incidents in Southwest Texas;" Jovita González, author of "Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties;" Emilia Schunior Ramirez, author of Ranch Life in Hidalgo County after 1850; and Roberto M. Villarreal, who wrote "The Mexican-American Vaqueros of the Kenedy Ranch: A Social History." Most of these other writers wrote their works as master’s theses at various Texas universities, under the tutelage of professors such as J. Frank Dobie. Andrés Sáenz did not have the advantage of a college education. Nonetheless, he wrote with the same meticulous care and research of the other authors. Most importantly, Mr. Sáenz and the other writers had a deep personal conviction to preserve the history of their Tejano heritage–a heritage missing in the textbooks found in public schools. All wrote with the intention of passing on the knowledge to their families. And amazingly, they wrote as if coordinated by some unseen hand to fit the pieces of a puzzle together for posterity. Indeed, each wrote basically the same story about their respective region of the South Texas Tejano ranching frontier. Guerra wrote about the ranchos in Laredo, Ramirez about the ranchos in Hidalgo County, González about the ranchos in the deep Rio Grande Valley, and Villarreal about the vaqueros in the Corpus Christi and Kenedy County area.

Sáenz’s work fits into the geographic center of the others. His story is about the region in the counties of Jim Hogg, Brooks, and Duval. These counties were carved out of Nueces County in the nineteenth century. Together, these regional histories provide the modern reader with a story of the true Texas pioneers. Although written in different decades by writers unknown to each other, the various narratives present an amazingly cohesive story. With the present work, Andrés Sáenz takes his place among the authors of Tejano historiography.