The height of Texas Ranger violence against Mexicans occurred from 1915 to 1919, with some 300 ethnic Mexicans murdered between 1915 and 1916 alone. Also not unlike Trump, Hudspeth concocted a phony immigration crisis based on xenophobic fear. Rangers pictured above in their trademark hats, One of the most well known cases in the La Matanza slaughter is that of Antonio Longoria, who was the elected Commissioner of Hidalgo County, and was shot dead by Texas Rangers as he rode his horse on a dirt road in 1915. Lauro Cavazos managed to shoot the horse out from underneath one of the rebel leaders. Heres What We Want at the Park. Undated photo. Mimi Swartz is a staff writer based in Houston. Tickets. The plan called for a race war to rid the American border states of their Anglo-American population and for the annexation of the border states to Mexico. Thousands of Rangers patrolled the frontier, fought in military battles, and arrested cattle rustlers. However, the Seditionistas could never launch a full-scale invasion of the United States and so the faction resorted to conducting small raids into Texas. The guerrillas dismounted and returned the fire. Texas has had its share of lawlessness. Never was a group of Mexicans so happy to see a Texas Ranger. Image is in the public domain via Wikimedia.com. Texas Rangers center fielder Leody Taveras climbs the wall but is unable to reach a two-run home run hit by Detroit Tigers' Jeimer Candelario that also scored Harold Castro in the sixth inning of . It lives on in moldering court records, yellowed newspapers, obscure archives, and the forgotten memoirs of his fellow lawmen. He was accused of murdering 40-year-old white woman Effie Greer Henderson on November 2, 1910 who was found on her porch with a bullet wound to the head and back. They were carried out by Mexican rebels from the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. This time, a squad of eight army signalmen was besieged by the Mexicans at Ojo de Agua until it was relieved by 12 men from the 3rd Cavalry, under Captain W. J. Scott. The defenders, afraid of hitting railroad hands in the section house, did not fire at it. They covered the retreat of civilians from the Mexican army in the famous "Runaway Scrape," harassed columns of Mexican troops and provided valuable intelligence to the Texas Army. 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During the two-hour battle that followed, at least a dozen people were killed or wounded and possibly many more before the rebels retreated back towards Mexico. Frank Hamer stepped cautiously along the railroad tracks, his high-heeled boots skittering on the ties and the gravel. At a range of forty yards, Pinkie Taylor shot and killed the leader, and the attack faltered. In 1914 U.S. forces seized the port city of Vera Cruz, cutting off arms shipments to Huerta from Germany. Well essentially, the Matanza resulted because of reprisals by state and local authorities against a guerrilla uprising that had occurred, says John Morn Gonzlez (no relation), associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and part of the group of scholars. Hutchings sent a telegram to Captain Fox in Marfa and ordered him to bring his entire company to Brownsville. They demanded he open the gates that connected the ranches so the group could pass. Years later, Warrens account served as confirmation of what transpired that day. John Boessenecker, author of TEXAS RANGER: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde, a San Francisco trial lawyer and former police officer, is considered one of the leading authorities on crime and law enforcement in the Old West. On July 29, a Mexican, Adolfo Munoz, was killed near San Benito for "scheming to rob a local bank and having connections with armed raiders." . He has also been a contributor to the Village Voice, Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, and Houston Press. Tensions along the border ran high in the final years of the Mexican Revolution. ARLINGTON, TX - AUGUST 27: Jeimer Candelario #46 of the Detroit Tigers celebrates his two-run home run against the Texas Rangers during the sixth inning at Globe Life Field on August 27, 2022 in . Their deaths made the Rangers into the group that we know today, but they need to acknowledge what they did and apologize, so that my great-grandfather did not die in vain., Christina Fernandez Shapter, who produced the film alongside her husband Andrew, says that while they started on the documentary three years ago, the themes of injustice and racial discrimination that emerge through this story have since become even more relevant. The changing face of Chinatown: Could new, trendy restaurants replace beloved institutions? One time she wrote about sports. S Iglesias, Kiner-Falefa, Perez. The first attack took place on July 4, 1915, when a band of approximately 40 mounted rebels crossed the border and raided Los Indios Ranch in Cameron County. In fact, Martinezs personal activist efforts expose a still-powerful contingent looking to quietly preserve the white-supremacist-fairytale version of Texas history. Martinez traces the group's history from its relatively humble beginnings in the 1830s as a small band of armed men organized by Stephen F. Austin to protect settlers to what it had become by. NL East. Martinez organizes her book around the most egregious extrajudicial killings of Mexicans in Texas in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, incidents that Texas Rangers were either directly responsible for or carried out in cahoots with lynch mobs or local authorities. With Captain Fox at his side, Frank Hamerapproached the bullet-riddled linemens shack. They looted the two general stores, then captured an Anglo farmer and his son and shot them to death. Sixty bandoleer-draped riders, armed with Mauser rifles, were closing fast. [3][4], Some people suspected that the current fighting would ignite a full-fledged war between the United States and Mexico. Candelario gets 3 RBIs, Tigers beat Keuchel and Rangers 11-2 By: Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press Posted: 9:25 PM CDT Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022 Last Modified: 10:21 PM CDT Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022 They werent bandits, they werent squatters, its just not true. Deputy Sheriff Gordon Hill was just as angry. The frontier troops were paid by Texas and provided protection from Indians, enforced Confederate conscription, rounded up deserters and gave protection from renegades and bandits. For the next few weeks, West Texas was plagued by "almost daily killings," the most notable of which occurred on October 19. 2021 Texas Standard. The complex dynamics between newcomers and longtime residents often led to retaliatory attacksthen everything came to a head. We get not only a brutally clear picture of the extent of Ranger complicity in crimes against minorities but also a keen sense of how the imagery of this borderland ethnic cleansing was exploited by mercenary photographers, popular postcard publishers, and other media: Portrayals of the dead as bandits and as a menace to progress became the norm, Martinez writes. They yelled at the Rangers to fall off their horses as Mexicans had the house surrounded. Frank Hamer and Captain Fox quickly ran up the tracks and approached the two outbuildings. The violence broke out following the Mexican Revolution and the influx of Mexican migrants into the U.S. The only men to ride in response to Col. William B. Travis' last minute plea to defend the Alamo were Rangers who fought, and died, in the cause of Texas independence. Then in the 1990s television gave us an updated Ranger myth in Walker, Texas Ranger, where an aging Chuck Norris plays a modernized lone Ranger who dispatches Dallas-area baddies with poorly choreographed karate moves. The comments below have been moderated in advance. The International Bridge in Brownsville, looking towards Mexico, pictured above, In 1916, US President Woodrow Wilson ordered 110,000 National Guardsmen from state militias to the border for patrol duty, pictured above in Brownsville, Texas, to help with the violence at the border. During the 1910s the Mexican population in Texas tripled. For several generations past, Tejanos (Mexican Americans born in Texas), who were in the majority, had lived in relative harmony with Anglos. Tom Foster writes about business, innovation, and creative people. Home Military History Frank Hamer and the Texas Bandit War of 1915. The raiders, who had only expected to encounter a few cowboys, lost heart in the gathering darkness. Take, for instance, the long-running 1950s Lone Ranger TV series, in which Rangers are only portrayed as the victims of wrongdoing never its instigators. The most egregious of cases involved the lynching of law-abiding Mexican Americans in 1915, including that of Antonio Rodriguez, Jesus Bazan and Hidalgo Commissioner Antonio Longoria, that sparked fury that boiled through Mexico. In the early years Frank rode trails near the Rio Grande, captured rustlers, smugglers, bootleggers and bandits with Company C of the Texas Rangers, Captained by John H. Rogers. spewed white supremacist rhetoric and claimed he launched his attack to stop a 'Hispanic invasion of Texas'. Frank Hamer had joined Company B at just the right time. What happened in Porvenir was far from the first act of violence the Texas Rangers perpetrated against Mexican Americans, but by the time of this attack, the community was desperate for justice. Much of the fighting involved the Texas Ranger Division, but the US Army also engaged in small unit actions with bands of Seditionist raiders. Martinez traces the groups history from its relatively humble beginnings in the 1830s as a small band of armed men organized by Stephen F. Austin to protect settlers to what it had become by the late 19th century: a state-sponsored terror squad directed to secure white racial hegemony along the Texas-Mexico border. The next day, Munoz's body was found about two miles from town and had been "riddled with bullets" and hanging from a tree. On July 25, they burned a bridge belonging to the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway and then cut some telegraph wires near Harlingen. They are damned bandits!, President Carranza in La Caada, Quertaro, 22 January 1916. Yet none of the Rangers implicated in the Porvenir massacre were ever found guilty of murder. The back of her head had been blown entirely off. Since the 1820s the chief deterrent to crime in a multi-million acre territory has been the Texas Ranger. Gonzales's family was one of many affected by some of the worst state-sanctioned violence in the history of the U.S. . Just after Frank Hamer rejoined the Rangers, the Plan of San Diego suddenly took on new life. , between 1914 and 1919. The Photo the Dallas Cowboys Never Wanted the Public to See, Nolan Ryan Threw as Hard as He Could for as Long as He Could. After Texas claimed independence from Mexico in 1836, the Texas Rangers were developed as a "fighting force" for Anglo settlers in the ongoing war for racial supremacy battling Mexican. Home On July 25 the band torched and destroyed a rail- road bridge near Sebastian. A lawyer in San Benito, William G. B. Morrison, said that Munoz's lynching had been "the spark that fired the flame among the white people." These dates coincided with the reign of not only the disgraced governor James Pa Ferguson but also, starting in 1917, the often-venerated William P. Hobby. He arrived by train, and learning that the robbers had fled, borrowed a horse to trail the bandits. Prior to that, the Texas Rangers knew pretty much anything goes.. The Texas Rangers killed Serda, no questions asked. The Rangers are often depicted as infallible noble guardians of public order. Detroit Tigers' Jeimer Candelario celebrates his two-run home run in the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022. 1 weather alerts 1 closings/delays. The repression, however, was not just directed at the bandits, but at the Texas-Mexican population as a whole. On July 11, two Mexican-American police officers were shot from a distance near Brownsville, both died. Javier Bez hit an RBI single in each of the first two innings and Jeimer Candelario connected for a two-run homer against Dallas Keuchel, helping the Detroit Tigers pound the Texas Rangers 11-2 . They led away 15 unarmed men and boys of Mexican descent to a nearby bluff, where they shot and killed them. The first attack took place on July 4, 1915, when a band of approximately 40 mounted rebels crossed the border and raided Los Indios Ranch in Cameron County. According to author John William Weber, Ransom was in charge of an "assassination squad" that conducted a "scorched-earth campaign of annihilation" against both guilty and innocent Mexicans. Ultimately, the Rangers were found guilty of gross violations of civil and criminal laws, including the, killing of up to 5,000 people, largely of Mexican descent. Despite that accusation, no evidence suggests that Pizana ever had any significant ties with the rebels though he was a friend of Luis de la Rosca, a known raider who owned a store in Rio Hondo. A civil war broke out as Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Alvaro Obregn battled one another for control. Nevertheless, the Texas Rangers were called in to control the situation. In accordance with the jingoistic ethos of that era, the Rangers posed proudly. 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But Portus Gay, squinting into the bright evening light, saw Mexican sombreros and exclaimed, Look at those big hats and that white flag. The defenders first thought the approach- ing horsemen were raiders, until Lauro Cavazos recognized Tom Tates voice. Cobb says the exhibit will be a look into what life was like leading up to, during, and after this violent period. Caesar Kleberg was an avid hunter and an impassioned defender of wildlife. 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Then General Hutchings, the two captains, Frank Hamer, and the rest of the Rangers mounted up, and Tate led them toward a water hole twelve miles southwest, hoping to strike the trail of the raiders.