The Ghosts of Mier: Violence in a Mexican Frontier Community during the Nineteenth Century

On April 23, 1852, Ramona de la Peña became a widow for the second time when she buried Eusebio García at the Inmaculada Concepción Parish of Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas. The priest who conducted the burial, Father José Luis Gonzaga García, had ministered to her family over the previous thirteen years and baptized five of the couple's children. He christened their youngest, Gregorio, about a year earlier. On the day of the burial, the priest wrote a sacramental record that described Eusebio García's death "in the hands of the Americans" (en manos de los americanos). He was one of eight Mexicans who died in a conflict that swept across adjacent areas of Texas in the early months of 1852 and among the over two hundred killings recorded in Mier between the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and the French Intervention (1862–1867).

Mier and its neighboring towns date to the foundation of the Nuevo Santander colony under José de Escandón from 1749 to 1767. Over the following century, other frontiers overlapped with that of Spanish-Mexican colonists in the region. Plains Indians such as the Comanche, Lipan Apache, and Kiowa raided Mier's surrounding ranches, especially after Mexican independence in 1821. At the same time, Anglo settlers and African American slaves reached Texas, and by the 1840s, American expansionists set their sights on Mier and its surroundings. The lower Rio Grande became a multifaceted contact zone that simultaneously witnessed lucrative trade, cultural exchange, intermarriage, and harrowing acts of brutality. The records of the Immaculate Conception Parish of Mier contain many accounts that attest to the contact and conflict that marked this frontier.

This study examines parish records as a "vernacular history" of violence in a Mexican frontier community during the nineteenth century. Priests in Mier ministered to grieving families, served as chaplains and peace negotiators, and made their parish a hospital for the sick and wounded of all sides. They also chronicled the grim toll of Native American raids, civil wars between Mexican factions, and conflicts with Anglo-American armies and vigilante bands. Mier's church archives reveal reactions to policies from distant capitals, and how the community implemented or resisted change through everyday acts. These church records often place large historical processes in intimate terms and vividly illustrate how ordinary people such as Ramona de la Peña and her family members and neighbors faced momentous transformations.

Ramona de la Peña's birth and death coincide with major transition points in Mexican history; her birth marked the last days of the colonial order in Mier. Fray Antonio del Álamo, a Franciscan friar, baptized Peña as an española (of direct Spanish descent) on August 30, 1812. In the previous two decades, the parish recorded no violent deaths of vecinos (Spanish-Mexican "citizens" of the town), with Indian raiding largely taking place to the west. For instance, a daring Lipan Apache raid in 1790 ransacked Laredo and killed a party of twenty soldiers. The villas farther down the Rio Grande remained calmer during this period. However, the long Mexican War of Independence ended this era of peace for mierenses (residents of Mier).

Miguel Hidalgo's revolt against Spanish officials in Guanajuato on September 16, 1810, spread north a year later with Juan Bautista de las Casas's uprising in Texas. After the failure of these rebellions, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara of Revilla, immediately west of Mier, continued the struggle against royal authority in exile in the United States. His recruitment of hundreds of Mexican exiles and American volunteers on the Louisiana frontier marked an auspicious beginning to U.S.-Mexican relations. The Spanish crushed his force at the Battle of Medina, near San Antonio, in 1813. General Joaquín de Arredondo restored royal authority over New Spain's borderlands until the collapse of Spanish control of Mexico in 1821.

In a pattern that repeated in later conflicts, the Mexican War of Independence arrived at Mier in the form of Native American raids, as frontier defenses spread thin and relationships...