Juan Cortina - Early Life and Political Rising

Early Life and Political Rising

Juan Cortina was born in Camargo, Tamaulipas, the son of Estéfana Goseacochea and Trinidad Cortina, a wealthy cattle-ranching family. When he was 3, his family moved to the Rio Grande Valley, as his mother had inherited vast extensions of land in the area surrounding Matamoros and Brownsville. In 1846, at age 22, he joined the Mexican Army under the orders of Gen. Mariano Arista, who had arrived at Matamoros in an attempt to stop the advancing forces of Gen. Zachary Taylor. Arista asked Cortina to form a force from the local Vaqueros (Mexican antecedent of Cowboys) that worked for him and the nearby ranches. This irregular cavalry regiment (called the "Tamaulipas") was placed under his command, and as the Mexican-American War began, it took part in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.

With the end of the War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, the Cortina family estates were divided by the new frontier, leaving a vast portion of their lands inside the United States territory. Cortina became an important political boss for the South Texas Democratic Party, and although the new local authorities invalidated many of his land claims, he remained a large rancher. Many landowners of Mexican descent suffered from this situation as well, and eventually Cortina came in conflict with an influential group of lawyers and judges of Brownsville, whom he accused of expropriating land from Mexican Texans or "Tejanos", who were unfamiliar with the American legal system. "Flocks of vampires, in the guise of men," he wrote, robbed Mexicans "of their property, incarcerated, chased, murdered, and hunted them like wild beasts". Cortina's own skirmishes with the law steadily escalated, and he was indicted twice on charges of cattle theft. However, he was not arrested due to his already considerable popularity among the poorer Tejanos, who considered this attempt to be nothing but another demonstration of legal harassment by the "Anglos" (the Texans of American origin) to their class. With the self-appointed purpose of defending the rights of this social group, Cortina gathered, trained and armed a private army, and on many occasions he used this force to resist the eviction of Tejanos from their lands. As a result, he became a popular leader among the poorer local population, who viewed him as a hero against the abuse of power by the Anglos.

in 1858 a rumor was circulated that the last of the Karankawa were killed by Cortina. This was propaganda maneuvering by the Texas Rangers to anger the local Indians to they would reveal Cortina's whereabouts. The Karankawa consistently hid out Cortina and his men. The Karankawa were the native tribe who saved him and his mother after being left for dead when the newly arrived anglos attacked Cortina, and his family's villa (his first wife Maria Delores Tijerina,and their children were killed in this raid). Cortina had refused to sell their land to these anglos. No mention is ever made of this assassination, yet explains WHY Juan N. Cortinas was such a tenacious adversary. These corrections will be admitted to the Texas Register in the future.