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Pesos and Dollars
Entrepreneurs in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1880â"1940
By Alicia M. Dewey Texas A&M University Press
Copyright © 2014 Alicia Marion Dewey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62349-209-0
CHAPTER 1
BORDERLANDS IN TRANSITION (1820–1880)
IN THE DARK OF an early September morning in 1859, about seventy men crossed the Río Bravo/Rio Grande near Matamoros on horseback. Residents of Brownsville, many asleep in their beds, awoke to cries of "¡Viva Cheno Cortina!" "¡Mueran los Gringos!" and "¡Viva la República Mexicana!" Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, son of an elite Tejano family, quickly seized control of the town and dispatched several small bands of his armed followers to search out and kill individuals who had reportedly harassed, physically abused, murdered, or defrauded his fellow countrymen. In Cortina's words, some members of the new, rising Euro-American elite of the border region had "connived with each other, and form[ed] ... a perfidious inquisitorial lodge to persecute and rob us, without any cause, and for no other crime on our part than that of being of Mexican origin." They "form[ed], with a multitude of lawyers, a secret conclave, with all its ramifications, for the sole purpose of despoiling the Mexicans of their lands and usurp[ing] them afterwards." Many of Cortina's countrymen praised him as a hero.
Anglo-Americans, however, saw things differently, viewing Cortina and his followers as thieves who sought to steal and destroy that which they had rightfully acquired. On October 8, 1859, John Hemphill, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, sent a dispatch to President James Buchanan, reporting that he had "just heard of an outrage on our frontier, at Brownsville, of a character so flagrant and astonishing that I would not believe it possible, if the information were not on undoubted authority. A party of Mexicans crossed the river from Matamoras [sic], captured the town of Brownsville, liberated the prisoners from jail, and murdered five of the citizens, retaining possession of the town for an hour.... This frontier is encompassed with difficulties from other quarters, and the ravages of marauders will not be less terrible than the hostilities of the savage. The same force that entered Brownsville could have captured Brazos St. Jago, with the custom-house and the immense property and funds belonging to the government and others. I trust that the troops will be speedily ordered to the abandoned posts of the Rio Grande, and that outrages will become impossible."
This 1859 conflict was the first of several raids known collectively as the Cortina Wars, which continued through the 1860s and 1870s. The Cortina Wars were not only ethnic struggles triggered by the US conquest of Mexico in 1848 but also responses to an economic shift that had begun a few decades earlier, almost immediately after Mexico gained its independence from Spain and opened an international port at Matamoros. The merchants from Europe and the United States who flocked to Matamoros in the 1820s, drawn by the lucrative trading potential in the rich silver-mining districts of northern Mexico, were instrumental in incorporating the delta of the lower Río Bravo/Rio Grande into the global capitalist economy. As they seized control of the region's trade, they began the process of "creative destruction" (a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter) of the local ranching economy; this process lasted for more than seventy years. The wealth the merchants accumulated as they forged a new economy based on trade and commercial capital provided the resource base for the dispossession of the landrich but cash-poor Tejano landholding rancheros. Compounding the problems of the rancheros was their loss of herds due to periodic but intense raiding by Comanches, Lipan Apaches, and their allies in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s. The US conquest of Mexico and subsequent annexation of the Trans-Nueces in 1848 only exacerbated the already existing economic disparities between the Tejano landowners and the new merchant class.
This competition for land and resources among nomadic Indian tribes, the descendants of the original Spanish vecinos, and a rising European and Anglo-American merchant class was central to the unfolding story of the lower Río Bravo/Rio Grande Valley borderlands between 1820 and 1880. By 1880, the merchants and their allies had clearly won, paving the way for the modernization of the region in subsequent decades. They were also responsible for fostering trade between the United States and Mexico in silver, cotton, and manufactured goods, which would lay the foundation for transnational economic integration in theborderlands in subsequent decades. Not all Tejanos followed Cortina's example; some chose to pursue a path of cooperation and accommodation in attempting to adapt to the tremendous changes that occurred during this period.
ROOTS OF THE TEJANO RANCHING SOCIETY ALONG THE LOWER RÍO BRAVO
The land bordering the lower Río Bravo was one of the last areas the Spaniards settled along the rim of their empire in North America. Like much of the rest of New Spain's northern frontier, the region seemingly had very little to offer—no gold or silver, a relatively inhospitable climate, and an unreliable water supply. Yet despite its apparent lack of resources, the area was strategically important as a buffer zone between the valuable silver mines of Durango, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosí and lands inhabited by the hostile tribes of the North American grasslands and claimed by rival European empires. The threat of British expansion from Jamaica to the Gulf Coast provided the impetus for colonization in 1749, more than 150 years after the founding of Santa Fe on the upper Río Bravo and only twenty years before the Sacred Expedition into Alta California, Spain's final settlement in North America. A colony along the western Gulf Coast would clearly stake Spain's claim to the territory between the towns of Saltillo and Monterrey on the edge of the mining frontier to the south and San Antonio de Béxar, a trading post, mission, and presidio about two hundred miles to the north.
The viceroy of New Spain commissioned José de Escandón, a Spanish-born military officer, to lead the exploration and settlement of the new province, Nuevo Santander, named for Escandón's birthplace of Santander, Spain. Within six years, Nuevo Santander (which comprised the territory that is today the Trans-Nueces, or South Texas, as well as the Mexican state of Tamaulipas) had fifteen missions and twenty-three towns, including six along the banks of the Río Bravo. These six towns, Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana de Camargo (Camargo), Villa de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Reynosa (Reynosa), Villa de San Ignacio de Loyola de Revilla (later Guerrero), Lugar de Mier (Mier), Villa de San Augustín de Laredo (Laredo), and Nuestra Señora de los Doloros, a hacienda consisting of about thirty families, became known as the villas del norte. Camargo, Revilla, Mier, and Reynosa all lay on the south bank of the river. Laredo was the only villa on the north bank to last into the American period. The villas were small, consisting of a few wood and adobe buildings with thatched roofs surrounding a central plaza. The population grew steadily, from approximately 1,479 in 1749 to nearly 14,000 by 1821. The region's demographics resembled those of the rest of the frontier; there were a few full-blooded Spaniards and criollos, many mestizos, and a sprinkling of mulatos and local Coahuiltecan Indians who had intermarried with the vecinos or served as laborers.
The distribution of land among the original families was unequal and based on considerations of length of residence and military, civilian, or community service as well as political connections. Only a few received the extremely large grants consisting of more than 100,000 acres of land. One of these was Juan Cortina's great-great-grandfather, Blas María de la Garza Falcón, founder of Camargo, and initial grantee of the Potrero del Espíritu Santo grant, north of the Río Bravo. The majority received small and medium-sized land grants, such as the 177-acre irrigable farm plots, or caballerías, and larger sections of pasture land, 4,428 acres, labeled eithersitios de ganado mayor for raising cattle or sitios de ganado menor for raising sheep and goats. In order to maximize access to water sources, vecinos in the villas del norte received narrow slices of land along the north bank of the river, 9/13 of a mile wide and eleven to sixteen miles long. Called porciones, these land grants consisted of 4,200 to 6,200 acres, depending on the quality of the tract. Additional land grants called mercedes de tierras, tracts of ten to twenty thousand acres each, lay just beyond the porciones. A 1794 report listed seventeen haciendas and 437 ranchos in all of Nuevo Santander, revealing a society with a majority population of small to middling rancheros. The remainder included the large landowners, a few government officials, artisans, traveling merchants, and some landless laborers such as vaqueros who lived and worked on the larger ranchos.
The vecinos along the lower Río Bravo in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries resided either in the villages for protection or in dispersed rancho community settlements. The villas del norte and the surrounding ranchos had to function in a somewhat self-sufficient manner because of the lack of consistent access to regular markets. They raised cattle and sheep and grew corn, beans, and squash, but frequent droughts and occasional winter freezes precluded the development of agriculture on a large scale. The basic social unit was the extended family, led by the patriarch. Baptisms, weddings, fiestas, and entertainment usually occurred within the context of the home or village community. Literacy rates were low, and education was almost nonexistent. Despite their relative remoteness, however, the residents of thevillas del norte did engage in a regional trade network with residents of the silver-mining districts, Monterrey, Saltillo, and San Luis Potosí. Barter and credit were the primary forms of personal exchange because of the scarcity of specie. Traveling merchants, or comerciantes, used mule trains to carry domestic textiles, metal items, and some foodstuffs to the villas del norte along treacherous inland routes winding through mountains and across deserts and plains. Carreteros guided oxcarts that carried bulkier items, especially hides, wool, salt, and tallow, from the ranchos back to Saltillo or Monterrey. Laredoans exchanged goods with residents of San Antonio to the north. These trade routes established during the Spanish period created a precedent for future commercial pathways, and the lower Río Bravo/Rio Grande region became an important crossroad of commerce and migration between San Antonio, Monterrey, and the Gulf Coast, a status it continues to hold today.
One of the greatest threats to prosperity in the villas del norte and surrounding ranchlands were the indíos bárbaros who inhabited the southern plains. For much of the eighteenth century, the Lipan Apaches, who lived seasonally in rancherías in the canyon lands of the upper Nueces River, raided ranchos around Laredo for livestock and captives. The Comanches arrived out of the north in the latter half of the eighteenth century and developed a vast commercial network of raiding and trade extending south from the banks of the Arkansas River across most of Texas and into northern Mexico. They frequently attacked ranchos north and south of the Río Bravo, stealing captives and cattle as well as horses and mules to exchange for guns. In order to pacify the Comanches, Tejanos in Laredo and nearby settlements gave gifts of cloth, tobacco, food, metal utensils, and other items, which depleted their resources substantially and on an ongoing basis. The Spaniards managed to achieve a tenuous peace in the late eighteenth century with both the Apaches and the Comanches, which, by providing a respite from the raids, led to a 210 percent increase in the numbers of cattle, horses, mules, sheep, and goats (799,874) between 1768 and 1795. The peace agreement proved to be temporary, however, collapsing when Spain's defenses crumbled from Tejas to Alta California during the final two decades of Spanish rule.
The wars for independence that erupted as Mexico sought to throw off Spanish colonial rule created havoc along the border for a decade and disrupted the livelihoods of rancheros along the Río Bravo. After Father Hidalgo's revolt in 1810, different groups vied for control in the growing power vacuum in New Spain, leading to protracted civil wars that lasted eleven years. Although the villas del norte experienced little of the violence, other than some sporadic rebel activity, they suffered from extreme supply shortages and inflation. The Comanches, allied with the Lipan Apaches, took advantage of the chaos to extend their control over the region, participating in especially destructive raids along the Río Bravo in 1814 and 1815.
THE RISE OF MERCANTILE ENTERPRISE
Shortly after gaining independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican government instituted more liberal trade policies that not only changed life along the Río Bravo forever but also transformed its entire northern frontier by connecting it more fully to transatlantic and transcontinental trade networks. Although Spain had prohibited its colonies from trading outside of the Spanish empire, smuggling was endemic in the far north. Comercientes along the Gulf Coast had carried on a limited trade in contraband with the merchants of New Orleans, for example, for a number of years. Still, the policies had curtailed trade between Hispanic frontier communities and the United States. With the opening of Mexico's borders, Mexican commerce with the United States surged despite rather high tariffs frequently instituted by the Mexican republic. Merchants in the United States pioneered new trade routes overland into Mexico such as the Santa Fe Trail, which opened in 1821. While the Mexican economy stagnated, its northern frontier boomed as market ties shifted toward the United States and away from the expensive and lengthy overland trade on the rugged trails through Chihuahua to Mexico City. Cheap, imported foreign goods flooded into the northern territories and states of Alta California, Nuevo Mexico, and Coahuila y Tejas as they moved into the orbit of the US economy.
In 1823, the Mexican government designated the small Villa del Refugio at the mouth of the Río Bravo, Nuestra Señora del Refugio de los Esteros, as a puerto del altura and renamed it Matamoros in honor of a hero of the Mexican wars for independence. Matamoros rapidly became one of the most important Mexican Gulf Coast ports. It lay at the crossroad between the silver districts of northern Mexico, serviced by the inland towns of Saltillo and San Luis Potosí, and the maritime routes from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, New York, London, and other Atlantic world ports. If the Río Bravo could be navigated all the way to Santa Fe, it would potentially link the St. Louis–Santa Fe–Chihuahua trade and the Matamoros-Saltillo trade.
Merchants, adventurers, and financiers from the United States and Europe flocked to Matamoros because of its strategic location. Their primary trading partners were the merchants of New Orleans, who carried the much-coveted European goods that northern Mexicans preferred over those coming from the United States. (Great Britain was the primary competitor of the United States for control over the Mexican trade prior to the US/Mexican War.) Most of the foreigners were young men seeking to gain experience and improve their financial position. They were part of a larger migration of Europeans into Mexico, seeking to fill the void left by the peninsulares, who had long controlled the international and wholesale trade of New Spain but were forced out due to intense hostility toward Spaniards in the aftermath of independence. The city's population boomed, growing from 2,320 in 1820 to 7,000 in 1829 and 16,372 in 1837. By 1832, at least three hundred foreign residents resided in Matamoros. It became a culturally diverse, cosmopolitan seaport. Walking through its streets, a person could hear the sounds of Spanish, English, French, Italian, and German being spoken.
One of the most prominent of the new foreign merchants in Matamoros was Connecticut-born Yankee Charles Stillman. He remained in the Río Bravo/Rio Grande delta for more than thirty years and played a pivotal role in its economic transformation. In fact, he was so important that virtually every person who became extremely wealthy in South Texas prior to 1880 had some tie to him. He furthered the careers of a number of people in northern Mexico as well. Historian John Mason Hart called him "the most important American capitalist in Mexico" by the 1850s. He built "a trading and manufacturing nexus in northeastern Mexico which was anchored in Monterrey and the Matamoros-Brownsville area" by investing in mines, textile mills, land, and mercantile operations. His career illuminates the important role of access to credit in the economic development and distribution of wealth in the region.
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Excerpted from Pesos and Dollars by Alicia M. Dewey. Copyright © 2014 Alicia Marion Dewey. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
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