Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865-1874

Chapter 11: Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Violent Struggle between Anglos and Tejanos for Land Titles in South Texas during Reconstruction

305 CHAPTER 11 Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Violent Struggle between Anglos and Tejanos for Land Titles in South Texas during Reconstruction by Andrés Tijerina W e were really a vigilante committee.” In these words, a raider admitted that though they acted under the color of law as “rangers” or “Minutemen Militia,” scores of Anglo-Texan vigilantes in the 1870s raided Tejano homes and ranches, killing, lynching , and driving them out of Texas. The Tejanos who survived fled sometimes to Mexico, sometimes to neighboring counties, but always out of prime lands coveted by Anglo ranchers, land speculators, and squatters. The raids occurred in different parts of the state and varied according to circumstances, but the attacks had a few basic commonalities: The raiders often acted in cooperation with lawmen and used terror tactics to acquire Tejano lands. As such, the violence waged against the Tejanos represented a continuation of a struggle that predated the Civil War by more than twenty-five years—a dispute between Hispanics and Anglos over land titles in Texas. The story of Tejanos during the Reconstruction era is a tale of continued violence that was a pervasive and constant phenomenon beginning in 1836, when Anglo-Americans seized control of Texas government. Despite the large population of Tejanos living in Texas, Anglo control of the state was expanded after the United States defeated Mexico in the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846–1848. The traumatic manner in which Mexican Texans were forced to become U.S. citizens through conquest created inequalities between them and Anglos. For the next three decades and beyond, Tejanos endured economic, social, legal, and political hardships . They were denied access to law enforcement, economic power, and government protection from their assailants. Thus, racial violence “ 306 Andrés Tijerina and discriminatory treatment became a central characteristic and a constant thread in the relationship between Mexican Americans and AngloAmericans especially during the Reconstruction era. Anglo-Americans consistently used their advantages to disenfranchise Hispanics, steal their lands, exploit their labors, and destroy their cultural heritage. Just as Anglo Texans used violence to assert their political dominance over blacks and Radical Republicans in the state government, their objective vis-à -vis Tejanos was clearly directed at ethnic cleansing and the forced acquisition of valuable Tejano land grants. This chapter examines a few of the violent episodes that Tejanos experienced during the Reconstruction era in Texas. This brief narrative does not pretend to provide a broad history of the Tejano community, for Tejanos were engaged in major demographic changes, migratory shifts, commercial expansion, and land acquisition from El Paso to Houston during this same time.Those constructive trends are not described herein, though they do provide a major argument for a rebounding agency of Tejanos toward the turn of the century. The major thesis of this chapter is that Anglos accelerated their efforts to steal vast landholdings from Tejanos during the Reconstruction years, a process that began shortly after the conclusion of the Texas Revolution. To understand this point, it is necessary to examine briefly the history of the conflict between Anglos and Tejanos between 1836 and 1866. Tejanos founded Texas under a European style of government. They had initially settled the territories north of the Rio Grande under the flag of Spain. Later, following independence from Spain, they came to the region as Mexican citizens. Throughout the Spanish and Mexican eras, Tejanos acquired land not so much for financial gain, but rather as a way of providing their families a title to legitimacy. In other words, land was a symbol of wealth and power—the more land one owned, the more power and wealth they possessed. During the latter nineteenth century, transfer of Tejano titles to Anglos occurred with such frequency that Tejanos soon lost possession of the bulk of their original land grants. Not surprisingly, the loss of their ancestral lands meant the loss of their political, social, and economic influence in Texas. Historians have debated the manner in which Tejanos were dispossessed of their lands. Some early historians like Walter Prescott Webb, Paul S. Taylor, and Hobart Huson comment that Tejano lands and cattle were stolen.1 They cited the racism of incoming Anglo-Americans after the Texas Revolution as a major factor contributing to the ill treatment of Hispanic Texans. Indeed, the history of that period caused the political Foreigners in Their Native Land 307 decline of Tejanos. Even those Tejanos...