I 'member our Texas History classes back in grade school and durin' High School. I am also quite sure that I even took a Texas History class durin' my undergrad years at the University of Texas at Arlington, but I can't 'member there ever bein a mention of this incident in any of my textbooks:
Nearly 90 years ago, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas blazed with a brief uprising of mostly U.S.-born Hispanics – Tejanos – to reclaim the region for Mexico. It lasted little more than a month, unleashing a frenzy of shootings and lynchings by Texas Rangers and local Anglo vigilantes that raged across the Valley. It left a legacy of ethnic segregation and racial animosity that plagued the Valley for decades.Historians estimate that 3,000 to 5,000 people – mostly Tejanos – died over about three years before the killings stopped.
The great majority had nothing to do with the uprising. Jesus Bazan and Antonio Longoria were just two of them.
"Until recently, the border uprising was perceived by historians as a marginal event," said Southern Methodist University history professor Benjamin Heber Johnson, who's written a book on the subject. "But it is a part of Texas history in the same way that the lynching of Emmett Till is Mississippi history.
"It's a part of the American story that should be remembered and understood," he added.
It isn't. [full story, but may require registration.]
OTB trackback pinger ... continue readin'
Hell, yeah, it oughtta be 'membered. Although I often ride the anti-PC high horse, it is 'cause I don't like the see the truth of the past buried for the sake of some child's feelin's. But, by that same token, I sure as heck ain't proud of bein' a part of a society that keeps it misdeeds under wraps for years and years.
The terrors of 1915 helped give rise to the Hispanic civil rights movement, Dr. Johnson contends in a book published last year by Yale University Press, Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans Into Americans.I wondered if there was any information regardin' this event, so went to one of my favorite sites to find out anythin' regardin' Texas History: Handbook of Texas Online. It was not easy to dredge up information with regard to this matter. I tried several different search terms: Edinburg, Longorio, sedicioso with 1915 and was unable to locate anythin' related to this incident. I finally jes' ran a search for 1915, and by examination of each page headers finally say a section entitled Lynchings which, in part, seemed to have some information with regard to this historic rebellion:In 1915, as the chaos of the Mexican Revolution raged across the river, the Valley underwent its own turmoil. For more than a decade, Anglo land speculators and Midwestern farmers flooded the Valley. Ranches of pioneer Tejano families were transformed into row after row of cash crops. New towns popped up like weeds as the population doubled in 10 years.
The newcomers brought their racial prejudices with them. Foreigners and dark-skinned people were not to be trusted. "American" became a synonym for "white" and any brown-skinned person was a "Mexican" regardless of origin.
In January 1915, authorities arrested a man near the border who carried a copy of a revolutionary manifesto. It called for a Tejano armed uprising to reclaim much of the Southwest for Mexico. It also called for Anglo males over age 16 to be killed.
On Aug. 6, 1915, revolutionaries, known as sediciosos– seditionists – struck. Armed riders attacked Alfred Austin's Hidalgo County ranch, killing him and his adult son. Scattered attacks on other ranches occurred over the next few months. The sediciosos burned railroad trestles, cut telegraph wires and skirmished with soldiers and police.
Panic spread throughout the Valley. Vigilante groups sprang up. When major landholders called for help, Gov. James Ferguson sent in the Texas Rangers. He also deputized a number friends and campaign supporters among the local population as "special Rangers."
The Rangers and their helpers launched a reign of terror. Being "Mexican" was enough to be suspected of insurrection. Real lawbreakers and the innocent, alike, were turned over to the Rangers. Few reached jail. Roadside lynchings and impromptu firing squads became common. Piles of corpses were left across the Valley as an object lesson. Grisly photographs of dead "bandits" became popular postcards. [link to book listin' on Amazon.com added]
In 1885 an estimated twenty-two mobs lynched forty-three people, including nineteen blacks and twenty-four whites, one of whom was female. After this the number of lynching victims generally decreased, dropping to five in 1893, but increased again to twenty-six in 1897. The number of victims continued to decline (to twenty-three in 1908 and fifteen in 1909) until 1915, when there were thirty-two. The 1915 figure, which is probably an underestimate, reflected an increase in racial hostility that accompanied the spread of Jim Crow laws and border troubles growing out of the Mexican Revolution.qv Six mobs in Cameron, Willacy, and Hidalgo counties accounted for twenty-six of the victims.That li'l qv symbol is a key that there is a section regardin' Mexican Revolution:
Motivated by anger against decades-old discrimination and contempt, Tejanos joined in a movement of armed resistance against oppression in 1915. Specifically, they joined in support of the Plan of San Diego,qv a call to arms apparently hatched in San Diego, Texas, by individuals who called for the establishment of a new nation of Mexican Americans and other oppressed minorities in the lands lost by Mexico in 1836 and 1848. Luis De la Rosa and Aniceto Pizañaqqv led the PSD uprising with recruits from South Texas as well as from the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Coahuila. The conspirators conducted raids on both sides of the border; targets on the Texas side included newly developed farms, irrigationqv systems, and railroad lines. With these raids, widespread panic enveloped much of South Texas. Non-Hispanic whites organized vigilante groups to administer justice. The Texas Rangers,qv their ranks increased for border duty, arrived in the region to carry out law-enforcement activity-but their actions degenerated into repression and violence against both immigrants and Mexican Americans. Ricardo Flores Magón spoke out in Regeneración against what he perceived as genocide directed against Tejanos. Conditions became so volatile that Governor James E. Fergusonqv threatened to send forces into Mexico after the raiders. In November 1915, however, the governor and Mexican president Carranza met in Nuevo Laredo and agreed that they would take whatever steps were needed to stop the border troubles. Soon after this meeting, activities associated with the PSD subsided.So, the story seems to be that there was a lot of racial tension in the Texas border area durin' the time of the Mexican revolution, when Pancho Villa and his band of banditos. On one hand, I would think there was a lot of confusion, that a war, whether declared or not was bein' fought on US soil. In fact, I seem to 'member Black Jack Pershing himself was sent to the border area to deal with Pancho and his banditos [PERSHING, JOHN JOSEPH]:
In April 1914 Pershing took command of Fort Bliss,qv which had been an infantry post. By 1916 he had set up a field camp outside of El Paso. More than 50,000 American soldiers, most of them National Guard, lined the border at Columbus. Their objective was to subdue revolutionary forces and to capture Francisco (Pancho) Villa.qvBut, there were lynchin's and by no stretch of the 'magination has there ever been a justified lynchin'. The U.S. Constitution mandates the right to a fair trial. I guess DAVID McLEMORE of the Dallas Morning News and, especially, SMU history professor Benjamin Heber Johnson need to be applauded and recognized for yankin' the lid off of this ol' can o' worms. We all owe it to a lot of families to 'member the sacrifices and martyrdom of their ancestors and forgotten victims of the early struggles between brown and white. Posted by Tiger at November 29, 2004 03:02 PM | TrackBack
Jesus Bazan and Antonio Longoria were my Mother-in-law's (Melba Flores Coody), Great Grandfather and Great Uncle. Her Grandmother, Josefa Bazan, was the daughter of Jesus Bazan.
Melba and all the family have heard this story all their lives.
People may think the wounds have healed after all this time but they have not.
Just the other day my mother-in-law called me crying after I had e-mailed her the front page article from the Dallas Morning News.
She was crying over a paragraph in the story that she, herself, remembered hearing as a young girl.
It read, and I quote Richard Martinez(son of Ernestina Longoria Martinez).
" It all came out. How she had seen the bandits ride up to their house one morning when she was 7 years old. How they forced her father to give them horses. She told me how afraid it made her. She remembered how a few days later, her dad rode away with her grandfather. And soon, the horses came back alone, blood covering their saddles. She never talked about it again."
This documentary has started the healing process.
What a shame that it took 90 years to begin.
By telling the story and saying Jesus and Antonio's names out loud, we are honoring their memory.
We are letting the world know, we will never forget.
Sherri Coody