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Introduction
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Then came the climax of all border troubles in the person of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina . . . the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit . . . that ever wet his horse in the muddy waters of the Rio Bravo. J. Frank Dobie M ore than a century after his death in 1894, the legacy of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina remains one of considerable confusion and debate. Through the years, scholars have attempted to place his life into historical context and thereby to understand what motivated him to lead a rebellion . Whether taken as hero or villain, Cortina seems one of those historical figures whose biography elicits little compromise. In such cases, distortion and misunderstanding seem the inevitable result. A survey of how Cortina has been studied reflects his elusiveness and suggests, more generally, some of the issues underlying all historical narrative. A useful starting point in studying Cortina is J. Frank Dobie’s A Vaquero of the Brush Country (1929). Dobie, a renowned Texas folklorist and son of the South Texas Brush Country, refers to Cortina as “the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit, not even excepting Pancho Villa, that ever wet his horse in the muddy waters of the Río Bravo.” “Striking,”though, is far from righteous. Basing his knowledge of Cortina on a long list of civil and military depositions taken in Texas, Dobie maintained that Cortina was responsible for a “reign of terror” on the border. To Dobie, Cortina was a “great bandido” who “plundered and murdered.” In his final analysis, Dobie’s real heroes were not “great bandidos” but the high-stepping, straight-shooting Texas Rangers. One of Dobie’s distinguished colleagues at the University of Texas, WalIntroduction 2 i n t r od uc t ion ter Prescott Webb, passed a slightly less severe judgment on Cortina in his The Texas Rangers (1935). Webb’s characterization of Cortina is not radically different from Dobie’s, but Webb does provide a far more objective backdrop of the deep-seated racism in Cameron County and Brownsville in the decade after the Mexican War, a time when blatant inequality and intolerance made possible the bloody Cortina War. “Here, indeed,” Webb writes, “was rich soil in which to plant the seed of revolution and race war.” Still, even to Webb, Cortina was a “black sheep,” someone who was “impervious to all good influences” and an individual who “inherited personal charm . . . [a] flair for leadership [and the] disposition of a gambler.” Webb admits that the Rangers, especially those under Capt. William G. Tobin (who arrived on the border in late 1859), were “a sorry lot.”The Rangers, Webb continued, were responsible for the lynching of Tomás Cabrera, a sixty-year-old Cortina lieutenant. This event instigated much of the violence that followed. In a line or two without comment, however, Webb excuses the indiscriminate execution of Mexican Texans by the legendary Rangers. In another glossing, Webb is less than critical about the senseless burning of numerous ranches and farms by the Rangers. It is no surprise then, that Webb’s heroes were the same as Dobie’s heroes—the larger-than-life Texas Rangers. Fifteen years after the appearance of Webb’s Texas Rangers, Lyman L. Woodman,a retired Air Force major,wrote a short biography of Cortina.Titled Cortina: Rogue of the Rio Grande, Woodman’s 111-page study, though well written, draws on the same limited sources as the Dobie and Webb studies . For Woodman, like his predecessors, Cortina remains the “number one Mexican border bandit of all time . . . [an] extraordinary character . . . [and a] virile man [with a] sinister countenance . . . unhampered by conscience.” Woodman’s Cortina was “a ruthless belligerent . . . sensuous and cruel . . . [and a] selfish and merciless Robin Hood.” As for scruples, Cortina “had none.”However,Woodman does allow that,“for all his rascally and evil ways, Cortina did retain one commendable trait, he had a deep love for his cutthroats .” In the end, Woodman’s work, although of some interest, remains a strange combination of history and poorly executed romantic fiction. Indeed, in a number of highly idealized scenes,one can hardly tell where the fictional Cortina leaves off and the real Cortina emerges. Fortunately for scholars, a radically different interpretation of Cortina’s life appeared in 1949—a work Woodman had evidently not seen. Charles...