Martín and Patricia de León

Martín de León, c. 1920. [source]

Martín and Patricia
Martín de León was born to a wealthy family in what is now Tamaulipas  in 1765. Though his family usually educated their children in Europe, Martín decided not to go. Instead, he became a merchant and then joined the army. Because he was born in New Spain, he couldn’t rise above the rank of Captain. In 1795, he married Patricia de la Garza, the daughter of the Commandant of the Eastern Internal Provinces, a woman 10 years his junior. The couple settled in Tamaulipas and began ranching.

Ranching and Resistance
In 1805, Martín took a trip north to several cities in Tejas and decided to move the family ranch up to the area north of present day Corpus Christi on the Aransas River. The cattle were branded with the de León brand, EJ for Espirtu de Jesus. The brand was registered in 1807, the first cattle brand in Texas. Martín quickly became interested in creating a colony in the area, but his repeated requests were denied by the Spanish government, which questioned his loyalty, with good reason, as it turned out. The De León family sided with the Republicans during the Mexican War for Independence. The family spent most of the war in San Antonio, but returned to their ranch in 1816, as hostilities on the frontier died down. In 1823, Martín purchased cattle in New Orleans and drove then to Texas, adding them to the 5,000 head of cattle the family already owned.

Empresario
Martín had not given up on his idea of establishing a colony in Texas. In 1824, he petitioned the provincial government for permission to settle 41 families on and found a town on the Guadalupe River. His contract was approved, and since he was a Mexican citizen, he had almost no restrictions and several benefits, including exempting his colonists from taxes and duties for seven years. Patricia contributed $9,800, as well as cows, mules and horses that she had inherited from her father. The De León family arrived at the town site late in 1824 along with a few other families, and the rest joined them the following spring. The town was called Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Jesús Victoria and the colony was named Guadalupe Victoria, after the first president of Mexico. Each family received a plot in town, a league – 4,228 acres- of grazing land and a labor – 177 acres – of arable land. While Martín set up the land, Patricia focused on the culture. She founded a school and a church, donating funds as well as furniture and other items. Though their house was rough, with dirt floors, Patricia brought beautiful furnishings from Mexico. The De León colony was the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, though it also included American and Irish families. Because the borders of the De León colony were undefined, they came into frequent conflict with surrounding colonies, especially the DeWitt colony. In 1829, Martín got permission to bring 150 more families and expand the colony, which brought more conflict with the DeWitt colony. However, in 1831, DeWitt’s grant expired and the De León colony was able to expand into the vacant land. By 1833, when Martín died in a Cholera epidemic, the colony had given out more than 100 titles, making the De León family the only empresarios in Texas other than Stephen F. Austin to fulfill their grant.

St. Mary’s Church in Victoria. Built on the De León homestead, donated by Patricia de León. [source]

Revolution and Heartache
Even without their patriarch, the De León family were ardent supporters of the Texas Revolution. Two son-in-laws served in the Texas army and much of the rest of the family contributed horses, mules, and supplies. Because of their support, the family was targeted by General Urrea when he occupied the area and two of Patricia’s sons, Fernando and Silvestre, were arrested. Despite their support, the time after the Texas Revolution was not an easy one for Tejanos. The youngest De León son was murdered by cattle rustlers and the family was forced to flee to Louisiana. They later moved to Tamaulipas, Patricia’s childhood home and Patricia sold some of the family’s land to help make ends meet. In 1844, Patricia returned to Victoria, only to find her fine furnishings spread among the newcomers. Despite the lack of welcome, Patricia spent the rest of her life in Victoria devoted to the community, particularly the church. When she died, Patricia donated her homestead to the Catholic Church. Today, St. Mary’s Church stands on the site. 

Jovita Idár

Teaching Frustrated
Jovita Idár had a lifelong drive to improve life for the less fortunate. Born in 1885 in Laredo, she attended school and obtained her teacher’s certificate at age 18. Idár taught for a few years, but soon became frustrated by the terrible conditions in her school and her inability to do anything about them. She resigned and went to join her brothers in writing for their father’s newspaper, La Crónica.

Jovita Idár. [source]

La Crónica
La Crónica was a Spanish language newspaper that focused on news and issues important to Mexican Texans. It reported on inequalities in education and economic conditions between Hispanic and Anglo Texans, as well as violence, including lynching, toward Tejanos. In 1911, the paper organized a conference, El Congreso Mexicanista, that brought together Mexican Americans to discuss what was happening. Idár joined many other women at the conference, who attended as both speakers and participants. The conference resulted in La Liga Femenil Mexicanista, which worked to get education for poor children, with Idár as its first president and “Por la Raza, Para la Raza” [By the Race, For the Race] as its motto. The conference also created a network of Hispanic women ready to fight for suffrage. Idár would publish her first of many articles on women’s suffrage that same year. The paper was also vocal in its support of the ongoing Mexican Revolution.

Leonor Villegas de Magnón and Aracelito Garcia with flag of La Cruz Blanca – Front. 1914. Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. University of Houston Digital Library. Web. July 30, 2019. [source]

La Cruz Blanca
In 1913, the Mexican Revolution came to Laredo’s doorstep with a battle in Nuevo Laredo. Idár joined her friend Leonor Villegas de Magnon in crossing the border to nurse and assist wounded soldiers. Magnon took the experience and created La Cruz Blanca, an organization similar to the Red Cross. Idár joined the organization and spent some of 1914 traveling across Northern Mexico to assist the wounded, but returned to Laredo later that year. While Magnon continued working with La Cruz Blanca, opening her home to the wounded and eventually being awarded a medal by the Mexican government, Idár returned to Laredo to fight for Mexican American and Women’s rights on a different front.

Jovita Idar (center) with colleagues in El Progreso’s print shop, 1914. (Georgia State University Library Archives for Research on Women and Gender) [source]

Newspapers
Back in Laredo, Idár joined the staff of El Progreso, and reported on the lynching of Mexican Americans in Texans, leading some to compare her to Ida B. Wells. As part of her reporting, she exposed the violence practiced by the Texas Rangers and protested President Wilson sending troops to the US-Mexico border. Wilson sent the Rangers to shut the paper down, but Idár stood in the doorway and refused to let them in. The victory was short lived, however, since the Rangers came back and shut the paper down later. Idár returned to La Cronica and, after her father died in 1914, she ran the paper.

Married Life
Idár married Bartolo Juarez in 1917 and retired a bit from public life. The couple moved to San Antonio, where Idár continued to be involved with Mexican American life. She served as a translator at the local hospitals and established a free kindergarten. She got more involved in the Democratic Party and continued to work with newspapers, serving as an editor for the Methodist Church’s publication, El Heraldo Cristiano. Idár passed away in 1946, having helped to create the transnational identity of la Raza.

The League of United Latin American Citizens

First Convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 5/17/1929 [source]

Mexican Americans have always faced discrimination in the United States, but particularly in the Southwest. Numerous political organizations have sprung up over the years to fight for the civil rights of Hispanics, but the oldest and most active is the League of United Latin American Citizens, better known as LULAC.

Unification
By the 1920s, there were a few organizations focused on Hispanic civil rights, The Order of the Sons of America and the Knights of America being the most prominent. Ben Garza, head of the Corpus Christi chapter of the Order of the Sons of America, suggested that the groups get together and try to form a unified organization. It was not an easy process. The first attempt in 1927, simply created a new organization, the League of Latin American Citizens. Garza and Alonso Perales of the League of Latin American Citizens called for a convention in Harlingen on February 7th, 1929. The larger Order of the Sons of America refused to send delegates, so Ben Garza’s Corpus Christi chapter split off to attend the convention. Garza was elected chairmen of the convention and a committee was formed, consisting of Juan Solis and Mauro Machado from the KoA, Alonso Perales and Jose Canales of LLAC, and E.N. Marin, A. DeLuna and Fortunio Trevino of the OSA to draft a charter for the new organization. They named it the League of United Latin American Citizens and declared its motto “All for one and one for all,” a callback to the difficult process of unification.

Pete Hernandez (center) with LULAC attorneys Gustavo Garcia (left) and Johnny Herrera, c. 1953. [source]

Desegregation
In the first years of the organization, LULAC focused on promoting voter registration and campaigning for candidates friendly to their goals, as well as gaining rights to a good education for their children. In 1947, LULAC filed Mendez v. Westminster, which ended school segregation for Hispanics in California. This case helped LULAC expand across the Southwest. Building on their success, in 1948, LULAC filed Delgado v. Bastrop ISD, which effectively ended segregation for Hispanics in Texas. These two cases would later be used as precedents for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. LULAC continued to be heavily involved in desegregation efforts. In 1954, they argued Hernandez v. State of Texas, which proved that Texas had been discriminating against Hispanics when selecting juries, preventing Hispanic defendants from being tried by a jury of their peers. [Great podcast on this from Stuff You Missed in History Class here.]

LULAC Today
LULAC membership has fallen in recent years, thanks largely to the diversification of Hispanics in the United States and a long history of anti-immigration in the organization, but it continues to campaign for Hispanic rights. It recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to protest gerrymandered districts, and campaigned strongly against SB4, which would allow officers to ask immigration status at any kind of stop. LULAC also continues to serve their communities as a civic organization, advocating for education, doing toy drives, and helping the elderly.

El Corrido de José Mosqueda

Lomax, John A, Ruby T Lomax, and José Suarez. El Corrido de José Mosqueda. Brownsville, Texas, 1939. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/lomaxbib000075/.

A Train Robbery
On January 19, 1891, José Mosqueda and a group of outlaws robbed the Rio Grande Railroad near Brownsville, Texas. They got away with about $75,000 in silver pesos along with some government mail. The general manager of the railroad, Simón Celaya, turned to the Brownsville City Marshall and Texas Ranger, Santiago Brito. Feuding with the local sheriff, Matthew L. Browne, Brito and his men did some solid detective work, interviewing witnesses and tracking clues to find the men who had robbed the train. Though Brito refused to hand the men over to Browne, the only nearby jail was in Brownsville, landing the men in Browne’s jurisdiction. Mosqueda was sentenced to life in prison and one co-conspirator was sentenced to 10 years. Very little of the money was ever recovered. Both Browne and Brito were shot within the next two years, while Mosqueda and his co-conspirator died in jail.

A Story for the Ages
However, the story doesn’t end there. Only a few years later, a new corrido, or folk song ballad, appeared commemorating the incident. Though the song originally celebrated Brito’s capture of the Mosqueda gang, over the next 50 years the song morphed. Mosqueda and his men became folk heroes who distributed the silver they had stolen among the poor of the Rio Grande Valley, while Brito became a cowardly lawman who fled from an encounter with Mosqueda and his men. Some claim that Mosqueda also buried the silver along the river and that some of it is still waiting to be found.

The version of “El Corrido de José Mosqueda” at the top was recorded in 1939 as sung by José Suarez, a folk singer, but has also been recorded as recently as the 1990s by Oscar Chavez, a noted Mexican singer.

The Battle of Palo Alto

Print of the Battle of Palo Alto, by Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot, Carlos Nebel [source]

Spoiling for a Fight
At the end of 1845, Texas joined the United States and Mexico, who had never agreed that Texas was independent, was understandable enraged. To add to the insult, the United States admitted Texas with the Republic of Texas’s preferred boundary: the Rio Grande, rather than Mexico’s, the Nueces River. President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to the strip and Taylor ordered a fort, called Fort Texas, to be built just north of the Rio Grande. It is more than likely that Polk deliberately meant to provoke a war. Mexico obliged and declared a “defensive war” on April 23rd. A skirmish broke out in the space between the rivers on April 25th, 1846, where the Mexican army overwhelmed a much smaller American force. In late April of 1846, General Mariano Arista of Mexico crossed the Rio Grande, moving to besiege Fort Texas. US General Taylor took men south to relieve the fort, but Arista moved north to intercept him in what would become the first major battle of the war

Cannons on the Mexican battle line at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park, By Pi3.124 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, [source].

Battle Engaged
Early on May 8th, Arista led about 3,200 Mexican soldiers and encamped them on a flat prairie called Palo Alto, or Tall Timber, for the wooded rises that surrounded it. Around midday, General Taylor moved from the woods to intercept the Mexican army. The Mexican cannons fired and General Taylor returned fire with 18-pound siege cannons meant for the defense of Fort Texas. Supported by the lighter artillery, these cannons continuously checked the Mexican charges and the light artillery, using tactics called “Flying Artillery,” even advanced across the field. Eventually, night fell and both sides fell back to camp. The Mexican army had suffered heavy casualties and, after spending much of the night burying their dead, the Mexicans retreated. A second battle took place the next day and gave the Americans a decided victory.

Aftermath
The United States declared war on Mexico on May 13th, 1846. The resulting conflict would be relatively short. The United States invaded first the Mexican possessions in the north, Nuevo Mexico and Alta California, before invading Mexico and eventually marching into Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo forced Mexico to relinquish its claim to Texas, as well as Nuevo Mexico and Alta California, together about one-third of Mexico’s territory.

Henry B. González

An official portrait of Henry B. González, Briscoe Center for American History, Henry B. Gonzalez Collection [source]

Starting Local
Henry B. Gonzalez was born in San Antonio in 1916. Born Enrique Barbosa Prince de González, he was the third of six children of Mexican immigrants who had fled the Mexican Revolution. González worked hard at school and received a law degree in 1943. In 1950, he turned his attention to politics, unsuccessfully running for the San Antonio City Council. He ran again in 1953 and succeeded, then, just three years later, he successfully ran for the Texas State Senate. He would be the first Mexican-American members of both those bodies.

Aiming Higher
At both the city and the state level, González fought against segregation and discrimination. In 1957 he performed the longest filibuster in the Texas Senate to that time, speaking for 22 hours, and successfully killing eight of the ten bills trying to circumvent desegregation after Brown v. Board. González unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1958 and US Senator in 1961, but was able to win a seat in the US House of Representatives in a special election later in 1961.

Henry B. González in front of the Texas State Capitol. UTSA Special Collections [source]

”An Inconvenient and Unwelcome Obstacle”
Thus began his 37 year career as a US Representative. He had campaigned for John F. Kennedy and fought for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs (despite losing to him in the 1961 Senate race). González was also outspoken and uncompromising, calling for the impeachment of three presidents, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. He was not afraid to get into literal fights, as well as political ones. He shoved a fellow rep on the House floor for calling him a slur, and punched a man in a San Antonio restaurant for calling him a communist. Despite his sometimes controversial time in the House (he would call himself “an inconvenient and unwelcome obstacle“), he was greatly beloved by the people of San Antonio and kept a sign outside his office that read “This Office Belongs to the People of Bexar County.”

In 1998, with his health failing, González retired from the House, only to die two years later. His son, Charlie González, took over his seat and served in the US House for another 14 years.

Sgt. Alfredo Cantu Gonzalez

Alfredo Cantu Gonzalez, circa 1965-1968 [source]

A Young Marine in Vietnam
Alfredo Cantu Gonzalez was born in 1946 in Edinburg, Texas. Right after graduating high school in 1965, he joined Marine Corps. He served for a year in Vietnam in 1966 before returning to the US as an instructor for the Marines. In 1967, he learned that most of his platoon had been killed in an ambush in Vietnam and requested to be sent back to the fight. In early 1968, he was involved in the Battle of Huế. From January 31st to February 4th, he led his men in clearing the area. Despite repeatedly receiving wounds, he continued to fight, eventually checking the North Vietnamese advance and destroying one of their fortifications. On February 4th, he was wounded by the last enemy rocket and passed away shortly after. For his actions in the Battle of Huế, Gonzalez was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, which was presented to his mother, Dolia Gonzalez, in October of 1969.

The guided missile destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG-66) underway in the Atlantic Ocean, 2003 [source]

The USS Gonzalez
In 1996, the US Navy commissioned the destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66), the first US ship named after a Mexican-American. Gonzalez’s mother has become a “mother” to the USS Gonzalez. The crew write letters to her and often call her during their deployments. They also save her a seat at most of the major ceremonies involving the ship. According to Dolia Gonzalez, “It means life in my blood; it’s for my boy. This is my life. My son is here with me.” 

Cmdr. Brian Fort, commanding officer of USS Gonzalez, presents Dolia Gonzalez with a painting of her son before turning command of the ship over to Cmdr. Lynn Acheson at Naval Station Norfolk. The ship’s crew commissioned the painting as a gift for Dolia Gozalez’s upcoming 80th birthday. [source]

The San Antonio Missions

• 

  Mission Espada

• 

  Mission San Jose

• 

  Mission Concepción

• 

  Mission San Juan

You may remember the Alamo, but it was only one of a string of missions built along the San Antonio River in the 1700s. The other four, Mission Espada, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan, and Mission Concepción, are now part of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park and are all part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Missions were an attempt to convert and “civilize” local Native tribes through prayer, discipline, and hard labor. Many Natives accepted the Missions’ strict discipline in return for protection from their now mobile enemies, the Comanche and Lipan Apache. Though the Missions were largely able to provide that protection, they also became epicenters for diseases which decimated the Native populations. Nearly all of the Native cultures in the area were destroyed by a combination of population loss, conversion by the Missions, and intermarriage with Europeans.

All pictures by me.

Edgewood ISD v. Kirby

Disparity in Education
While Texas does not have an income tax, it does have a property tax, which has long been used to fund local school districts. Over the years this has led to a major disparity between poor and wealthy districts, as districts with higher property values are able to build better schools, attract better teachers, and buy better supplies.

Fighting for Change
In 1984, one group of parents from Edgewood ISD in San Antonio had had enough. On May 23rd, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed suit against the Commissioner of Education, William Kirby, charging that the current funding system for Texas schools discriminated against students in poor districts – for example, Edgewood ISD had $38,854 property valuation per student while Alamo Heights ISD, also in San Antonio, had $570,109 per student – and violated the state constitutions, which obligated the state “to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

A Landmark Court Case
Edgewood ISD v. Kirby would take five years to wind its way through the courts and would eventually include 75 school districts and numerous parents. In 1989, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously sided with Edgewood ISD and the other plaintiffs and ordered the Texas legislature to create a plan to address the inequity. The first two attempts were rejected, but the third plan is still currently in place. Created in 1993 and upheld in 1995, the plan allows for several options by wealthy districts to redistribute funding to poorer districts, including moving taxable property to the tax rolls of poorer districts, consolidating school districts, and moving students from poorer to wealthier districts.

Continuing Challenges
The system is often referred to as the Robin Hood Plan and is still very contentious in Texas. Many from wealthier districts argue that the plan goes too far while those from poorer districts argue it doesn’t go far enough. Part of the 1995 ruling declares that the state must still work to equalize education throughout the state. In 2019, Governor Abbot declared school funding an emergency item for that year’s legislative session.

McAllen Rocket Mail

Photograph of the launch of some rocket mail. [source]

A Local Fundraiser
In 1936, an enterprising young rocket enthusiast in McAllen, Texas decided that the appropriate way to raise money for the local American Legion post was to hold an international rocket mail exchange. Thus rockets filled with postcards with both the appropriate US and Mexican air mail stamps and commemorative stamps were fired over the Rio Grande between McAllen, TX and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The event did not go off without a hitch. The first rocket blew up over the Rio Grande, the second landed in downtown Reynosa at the US Bar (though it did minimal damage), and one shot from the Mexican side landed in a farmer’s field and started a fire. Despite these mishaps, many of the postcards were recovered and properly cancelled by the postal officials on each side. They were then sold to stamp collectors and other enthusiasts.

Rocket Mail sent from McAllen, Texas to Reynosa, Mexico. [source]

As for the young man who came up with the event? Keith Rumbel returned to McAllen to fire more rockets for the 25th anniversary of the event…as a rocket scientist.