The Southwest was once a part of Mexico, but that doesn’t mean that Mexicans have always felt welcome there. Land disputes led to segregation, discrimination and even state-sanctioned violence. Latino USA looks into the history of resistance leaders like Juan Cortina and Reies López Tijerina, the dark side of the Texas Rangers and school segregation in an episode dedicated to the often untold history of blood and betrayal in the Southwest.
Featured image: Texas Rangers mounted on horses in 1915. (PHOTO by Robert Ruynon from the Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History)
Stories from Blood and Betrayal in the Southwest
So sad this was left out of our History books as I was growing up.
no wonder Texas is so screwed up.
The American history lessons have never taught true history of any nationality, they only teach what they want you to believe. Sad though, I really hope all will actually read, learn, and listen to their parents and grandparents for the real history lesson.
Now after listening to this I understand why my 84 year old Grandmother was diagnosed with PTSD because of her childhood. Pobre mi jefita.
the truth is an ugly reality we must face every day even now with dignity and resolve brother. viva !
For anyone interested in learning more about Juan Cortina, Carmen Boullosa’s “Texas: The Great Theft” is an expansive, gun-slung tale about border life during the Cortina Wars – requisite reading for anyone swooning for a studly vaquero! Published by Deep Vellum Publishing, and shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Award.
What is most amazing is that given the prevailing attitudes, a few Tejanos were able to place a fantastic monument (the Tejanos Monument) on the entrance to the Texas Capitol in Austin Texas. We unveiled it on March 29, 2012. I encourage all Tejanos to go visit the monument on your next trip to Austin.
When those in power go to great efforts to exclude your story from history they are not only silencing your existence in the past, they are eliminating you. If Mexicans have no history they were never here. Therefore, you have no genuine claim to be here and their abuse of you is legitimated. In order for Anglos to rationalize their position of privilege and power the original settlers and founders of southwest culture have to be minimized. Ironically, the very symbol of American individualism, the cowboy, is nothing less than the Anglicized version of the Vaquero, who is the very personage Texans are scripting out of history.