Mexican Settlers in the Big Bend Region of Texas, 1880-1945

 

An Oral Presentation for La Semana de Humanismo

La Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras

Presented by the author on November 6, 2001 at La Quinta Gameros

 

(Not for publication)

 

Glenn P. Willeford

 

            In the early 1830s Alférez Mauricio Ugarte led a column of twenty-three Chihuahuense regular soldiers up into the mountains about forty miles downriver from Presidio del Norte (today Ojinaga); his purpose was to re-open the old Spanish presidio along the San Carlos arroyo and make the area safe for the establishment of a military colony.  Ugarte was probably authorized by the government at Chihuahua to make an accord with the most dangerous Native Americans that raided into the area –the Comanches.  It is known that he sallied forth on September 7, 1832, to challenge an approaching Comanche band composed of about 300 warriors.  Whether or not Ugarte was foolish enough to combat 300 Comanches with his small force seems doubtful; it is more likely that he parleyed with them and should be given credit for establishing a peace agreement which, much like the Spanish-Comanche agreements of 1785-86, kept Comanche depredations in Chihuahua to a minimum for the remainder of the 19th century.

            This agreement greatly simplified the defense of Chihuahua, which had become a Mexican state in 1824.  It did not solve all of the problems of defense, however.  The Apaches were still present in great force and presented a continuing menace to the settlement of the rural portions of the state.  Again, following the Spanish example, Chihuahua authorized the establishment of military/agricultural colonies in la frontera. In return for Mexican families moving to such a colony and living and working there for several years, grants of land would be given.  The men were required to be armed, to raise horses and mules for war, and to respond against an aggressor if need be.  One of those colonies was San Carlos, in the mountains about fourteen (14) miles south of the Río Bravo.  Hurried by the Anglo-American-led revolt far to the east in the Mexican province of Tejas, colonists moved in at the mouth of the Cañon Punta de Agua in 1836.  Thus began the Europeanization of an area that, because of its remote ruggedness, had been avoided by the Spanish. 

            Survival in the desert was difficult and required adjustments by the people who took it up.  In addition to the formation of ranches and farms, the San Carlos colonos initiated trading with the Comanches and with certain of the Apache bands.  The remoteness from government control and conditions under which they lived and operated helped to create an independence-loving subculture in north-central Mexico – los fronterizos. 

            Rather than stray any farther from the theme of this paper, let us understand that these rancheros from San Carlos became the nucleus of early settlement in the Big Bend region.  That settlement, however, did not begin until after most of the Apache bands had been defeated by 1880.  This is not to say that these fronterizos had not been utilizing the vast grasslands that were available just across the Río Bravo for a long time; in fact developing evidence, in particular certain unusual rock corrals situated well north of the river, seems to indicate that San Carlos ranchers may have relied heavily on the chino and other native grasses on the Texas side.  Nevertheless, no evidence has surfaced that these Mexican rancheros moved their families and headquarters to the Texas side of the river prior to the end of the Apache trouble, which was logical because they could rely on protection from their government while they remained in Chihuahua.  This all began to change in the late-1880s and 1890s when a number of well-respected Mexican ranchers, primarily from the San Carlos area, moved into the Big Bend of Texas, established ranches and built homes for their families (101 Gomez).   Martín Solis and his sons were probably the most prominent of those ranchers.  Other large Mexican ranchers in the area included Félix Domíguez, Félix Gómez, and Ramon Molinar.

Smaller ranch owners included Santiago Baisa, Roman de la O, and Federico Villalba, a man who came from Aldama, Chihuahua.  These ranchers all needed vaqueros some of, if not all of, the time.  As a result they imported not only vaqueros, but corraleros, cabreros, albaníles, and the like as paid employees.  This trickle of newcomers represented the initial period of the first wave of Mexican immigration into the Big Bend, but it was only a fragment of what was to come.  For it was mining that brought most Mexican immigrants into the region, and that second period of the first wave brought hundreds of families, thousands of people,  across the Río Bravo.  The mining boom began right on the heels of the establishment of Mexican-owned ranching in the area and continued in cycles right up until World War Two.  Both industries, mining and ranching (and to a lesser degree farming), were interdependent as the Nueva Viscayan mines at Santa Bárbara, San Francisco del Oro, and San José del Parral had been dependent upon El Valle de San Bartolomé for sustenance.  In other words, the early-day Big Bend mining industry could not have existed without a local agriculture to feed it. 

            Mexican expertise has been the foundation of two great estadunidense industries: ranching and mining.  It is true that Mexicans taught “Americans” both how to ranch and how to mine.  Miners, however, were far-less respected by the Anglo-American majority, especially in Brewster County, the largest Texas county and home to most of the mines that opened in the first decade of the 20th century.  This was probably attributable to the fact that the county was dominated by an almost aristocratic ranching elite who admired the well-operated Mexican-origin landholdings in the lower Big Bend.  That, coupled with the fact that the area was still viewed as an inaccessible wilderness by most of the elites, and that the Mexicans who had laid claim to property there were few in number, allowed for an affinity to develop between the Anglos and the Mexican ranchers.  Unfortunately, much of that mutual respect melted away as new roads were built into the area to serve the mining industry.  By the mid-1920s only a few of the original Mexican ranching families were still operating in the area.  One of them, Federico Villalba, maintained that he had been cheated out of his 4,000 hectarea ranch on the western side of the Chisos Mountains.  Villalba filed numerous lawsuits over the years but was never able to secure the return of his property.  His son Jacobo, who was embittered over the conflict, became an alleged outlaw in the region and was shot to death by a former Texas Ranger one day in the winter of 1931just as he crossed over the Rio Grande on horseback.  Justice does have a way of coming full circle however;  only two weeks after the murder of Jake Villalba, the killer was himself gunned down by the sheriff of a Texas oilfield town.

 

            The discovery of underground minerals, especially mercury and silver ore, in great quantities is what really opened the Big Bend to Mexican occupation. This emigration from the home country was not confined only to the Big Bend.  Indeed, historian Arthur Gómez says that “During the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), ten percent of Mexico`s national population emigrated to the American Southwest” (Go107).  The early 1890s had seen the discovery of silver at the La Mina de la Frontera in the Sierra del Carmen range of northwestern Coahuila.  This rich strike brought the first Mexican miners into the area, albeit on the Mexican side.  Men from Durango, Zacatecas, and Sierra Mojada came north looking for work, usually finding it.  Most newcomers who came into the Big Bend a decade and more later were from Chihuahua, particularly the mine-rich, not to mention nearby, Sierra Rica district; nevertheless, the Big Bend mines hired miners from other areas of northern Mexico, such as the Palau-Muzquiz-Rosita area of Coahuila.  Some came from the mines at Santa Eulalia and Chihuahua capital as well as other points within the state.  Why, one might ask, did these men, who were usually accompanied by their families, choose to leave Mexico and work in Texas?  The reason is basic: the pay, although low, was double what they could make doing the same work in Mexico (Rdale299).  This added to the fact that housing (such as it was, jacales mostly) was furnished, as was medical care, added to the inducement for settling in; furthermore, the mining companies offered free schooling to the children, at least through the fifth grade and later on through the eighth, in English of course.  If a miner was killed while at work the mine would pay for his burial, furnishing a nice pinewood coffin, and would pay a small indemnity to his survivors.  Although the work was extremely dangerous due to accidents as well as to illnesses the deal was not a bad one for the region and the times. (I would add here that tuberculosis and pneumonia killed hundreds of these miners and a great many of their family members -- far more than died of accidents.)  

            The earliest significant mine to open in the Big Bend was the Presidio Mine, a silver operation, at Shafter, Texas, in Presidio County about eighteen miles north of Ojinaga.  This mine was discovered in the late 1800s and became operational before the turn of the century.  Like most of the Big Bend mines the Presidio Mine involved men working underground.  The dust was more of a hazard than the frequent accidents.  The Guinness Book of World Records has reportedly listed the cemetery at Shafter as the worlds largest for the number of people who had resided there.   In 1900 and 1910 Shafter, with about 1,300 residents, was the largest town in the entire region, including the county capitols that were situated along the Southern Pacific railway track, Marfa and Alpine.  Although there were men working at Shafter from all over the world, literally – much as there were at Parral, Chihuahua, at the same time -- the large majority of the population were of Mexican origin.

            The second most important operation was the Chisos Mine at Terlingua, about fifty miles down the Rio Grande from Ojinaga.  This mine, which withdrew cinnabar from under the earth in order to make mercury, saw its initial flasks of the liquid metal come from the  furnaces in 1903.  By 1905 the Chisos had been recognized as one of the richest deposits of cinnabar on earth and mining was moving into full swing.  A shrewd yankee capitalist from Portland, Maine, named Howard Perry managed to buy the property and make himself a millionaire, mostly off the sweat of other men, about 90 per cent of who were Mexican.   He was able to do this for a variety of reasons not the least of which was the financial Panic of 1907 which brought on an economic recession in the United States and cost tens of thousands of Mexicans who were working there their jobs.  Many of those returned home to find that the Mexican economy, always so closely tied to the American economy, was also in a shambles.  A great many of those Mexican trabajadores were railroad workers (McW76), but Southwestern miners and cowboys  also lost their positions; after first returning home many of those flocked to the Big Bend. 

A job as a mine laborer paid $1.00 to $1.25 per day while a cowboy made even less.  Even so, it was better money than they could make at home even if they had been able to find work and most of them were grateful for the opportunity.  Nevertheless, the wage scale in the Big Bend mines was only about one-third of the national standard for similar work (RD40).  This, naturally, allowed the mine owners to amass even greater profits.  While there were fair wage and standards laws in the United States, the isolation of the Big Bend from major population centers allowed for much laxity in enforcement, and as most of the Mexican mine workers were undocumented they were hesitant to jeopardize their jobs by complaining to the authorities.

It is significant to note that during this initial phase of Mexican immigration to the US there was little bad-will exhibited toward the newly-arrived population by the Anglo-Americans, particularly the landowners.  Their existence was symbiotic, meaning they depended on each other for economic survival.  A cheap labor pool was certainly advantageous to the ranchers and miners, while jobs were a godsend to the Mexicans.  As the first decade of the twentieth century neared its end the Mexican-origin population in the Big Bend had begun the process of acculturation into the dominate culture.  According to Dr. Paul Wright, a professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, “literacy rates (the ability to read and write a language) literacy rates in English among Mexican adults in the Big Bend improved from 35 per cent in 1900 to 41 per cent in 1910.”    While this increase was an important signifier of acculturation, it was a slow increase.  Dr. Wright believes that this indicates a hesitancy on the part of these immigrants to sever their ties with Mexico. In other words he thinks most of them still intended to return to la patria whenever the economic circumstances permitted it.  Another indication of this probability is shown in the failure of most school-age children to become literate in English although schools were usually available to them, and most attended through the fifth grade.  It is thought that while these children were exposed to English at school they had no reinforcement at home and seldom if ever used the language other than in a  classroom setting.  As we have seen, far more adults, most of who were males, became literate in English than did their school-age children.

If these people intended to return to Mexico they were hindered by a great catastrophe that began on or about November 20, 1910 – the Mexican Revolution.  By the time that conflict ended a decade later many of those Mexicans who had immigrated to Texas in the first wave had grown children who were native-born US citizens.  Additionally, a great many, in fact one-fourth of those who had been born in the US and one-third of the Mexican-born, left the Big Bend between 1910 and 1920.  They did not go back to Mexico, but farther north and settled in towns like Alpine, Marfa, Odessa, Midland, New Mexico state and other places across the US.  In all probability this inmigration meant that they intended never to return to the mother country.  According to U.S. Manuscript Census data collected by Dr. Wright the Mexican-born population in the Big Bend increased from 7, 582 in 1910 to 11,863 in 1920, a huge increase especially considering the out-migration of Mexican-born people that had already taken place.  These revolutionary-era immigrants represent the second wave of Mexican people who flooded into the Big Bend.  They came in such great numbers and in such desperate poverty that the already low wage scales were driven even lower.  Perhaps this was the reason that so many members of the first wave determined to leave; additionally and significantly the working class of Anglo-Americans who had been residing in the region were also forced out as wages declined due to an increase in the supply of labor.  By 1920, 73 per cent of the civilian population of the Big Bend, including the northern towns on the railroad, were people of Mexican–origin or surname.  In the lower Big Bend the percentage of Mexican to Anglo was much higher, although the Anglos dominated the area economically just as they did in the northern corridor. 

This population growth was really an over-population as the resources available in the lower Big Bend were insufficient to accommodate these people who were in actuality, refugees.  There were not enough jobs available and many of the newcomers offended the ranchers and river farmers by simply choosing a spot of land and setting up their homes on it.  As hunger increased among these penniless folk livestock, especially goats, sheep, and cattle began to disappear.  An era of ill-will toward the Mexican immigrants that had been absent in the previous years began to stir among the Anglo landowners.  In response the landowners petitioned the state governor for assistance in the form of the Texas Rangers, a state militia that was then still organized along nineteenth-century Indian-fighting lines.  As the decade wore on, but especially after the Columbus, New Mexico, raid by Pancho Villa in March of 1916, and then several other raids in the Big Bend region that resulted in the loss of Anglo lives, violence against Mexicans, especially newcomers, increased dramatically and tragically.  On one instance during January, 1918, following a deadly raid on a Presidio County ranch by bandits from somewhere across the Rio Grande – possibly Coyame – fifteen men, some of who were US citizens and all of who had Hispanic surnames, were rounded up at Porvenir, Texas, a tiny village on the north bank of the Rio Grande.  Under the cover of darkness these men were taken a short distance out of the village, lined up in front of a bluff, and shot down in cold blood.  According to historian Glenn Justice, “The fifteen murdered Mexicans were mostly poor tenant farmers with large families.”  The Rangers, who became known among the Mexican populace as los rinches, left forty-two children without fathers that cold winter night (GJ39).

We have no way of knowing how many newly-arrived Mexican immigrants returned to their native country in the following days.  No doubt, many left the Big Bend fearing the Rangers more than the revolutionaries in Chihuahua.  The village of Porvenir, where the massacre took place, became a ghost town overnight; it has never been re-populated.

Life for this second wave of Mexican immigrants was dangerous indeed.  The main occupation open to them was mine work with all of the hazards that that entailed.  Mining camps, especially the ones dedicated to the production of mercury (and there were several of them in the Big Bend) are especially hazardous because of the clouds of dust and fumes that emanate from the shafts and the refining process.  My research has brought me into contact with the death records at the county courthouses.  To my surprise, tuberculosis was listed as a frequent killer of Mexican women and children in the mining camps, as was pneumonia.  In addition to these hazards the so-called Spanish-influenza epidemic that took place during October, November, and December, 1918, killed untold hundreds of Mexicans in the mining section.  Moreover, the so-called “border-trouble days” of 1916-1919 made life dangerous for Mexicans who lived in isolated areas or on ranches as wandering bands of Texas Rangers and agitated Anglo-Americans were all well armed and in a defiant frame of mind.   A Brewster County newspaper, The Marathon Hustler, ran this editorial on May 13, 1916, about a week after a bandit raid on Glenn Springs, Texas, in the Big Bend had resulted in the death of three American soldiers and a small child:

“Men laugh and joke in the presence of death, and there is no such thing as murder.  Every man would think he was honored to be detailed to fire the fatal shot that would send some raider to his death.  There is an element of justice running through it all that takes away all sense of barbarism; but there are only two words in every man`s mind, “Kill and Revenge.”  And heaven help the Mexican that can`t show a clean record.”

Not everyone felt that way.  Many prominent individuals, particularly Anglo ranchers such as Roy Stillwell, who knew that most of the Mexicans were good people, went out their way to protect and defend them.  Even so, the Big Bend of the revolutionary period must have seemed a totally different world to those who had arrived prior to 1910.  Nevertheless, as the statistics have shown, Mexican people continued to cross the border and attempt a new life in the region. 

With the end of the revolution life again settled down to normal.  World War One had brought an economic boom to the region as mercury was an essential ingredient in munitions.  When the war ended the price of the metal came down and mining became less profitable.  Many Mexicans returned to Mexico, but about as many went farther into the United States looking for work.  A great many of those found lifetime occupations working on the burgeoning railroads that continued to spread across the North American continent.  Others found other employments and settled in to life in the United States.  As the years went by and parents in Mexico died they became more and more secure in their environment; many sought US citizenship.  Others were content with their lives in the Big Bend region.  Having in many cases become skilled workers and literate in the English language they found both promotions and new occupations opening to them.  Nonetheless, ranch work and mining remained major vocations for these people.  Many others, however, particularly members of the second wave, were far behind and lived in poverty sometimes shifting their residence back and forth across the border as survival necessitated.  These were the underprivileged desperate few who were so susceptible to a new, if potentially perilous, way of life.  They were soon presented with such an opportunity.

In 1919 Congress passed the Volstead Act which prohibited the manufacture, distribution, sale, or use of alcoholic beverages in the US.  In both Canada and Mexico individuals began finding ways to circumvent the law.  Along the Big Bend border the manufacture of sotol as well as the smuggling of Mexican beer and liquor to the US became a big business.   This was not the beginning of contrabandismo in the region.  That was as old as the Chihuahua Trail.  But it did mark a new and extremely profitable phase of smuggling on the border.  And the Big Bend became a major point for illegal Mexican liquor.  Many of those poor Mexicans on both sides of the river improved their lifestyles immensely during Prohibition, which lasted until 1933.  It should also be said that some of the Americans who lived in the region, often prominent businessmen, also participated in the smuggling of alcohol into the United States.  The more cunning of those original Mexican sotoleros probably became the prototypes of the present-day contrabandistas who may be crossing anything from parrots and cigarettes to narcotics and human beings (let’s hope no Middle Eastern terrorists). 

The Great Depression was a difficult period for almost everyone.  Because the Mexican workers in the US after 1930 competed for the few available jobs the US government embarked upon a repatriation policy that resulted in thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans being forced to leave the country.  The Mexican government found it difficult to protest this action as it was expelling Chinese from Mexico at the same time.  The Big Bend mines remained open during the Depression and as the workers were some of the lowest paid people in the country it seems that, in general, they were unaffected by the repatriation policy. 

About once in a century an event occurs that changes the course of world history.  We saw what will probably be the most recent of those moments on September 11th of this year.  The last time it happened was sixty years earlier on December 7th, 1941, when the Japanese Empire attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  World War Two was a watershed event; it changed the way the world thought.  The war came along just as the mining district in the Big Bend of Texas was closing operations.  Had it not been for the war the American economy would have remained in a sad condition and most of the Mexican miners and vaqueros who had emigrated from Mexico would have returned home.  The war, however, provided those men a great opportunity for upward mobility in the US.  Most young men of Mexican heritage joined the American military services.  Many of them died heroically in the war; most, however, returned home in 1945 having passed the greatest test of citizenship, that is, putting their lives on the line in time of war.  Upon their return they became eligible for government subsidies that would pay for job training or for high school or university educations as well as government guaranteed loans that enabled them to become home owners.  They took up the books (education).   Very few of them ever again lived south of Marfa, or Alpine in the lower Big Bend Region.  A significant percentage of those veterans spread out all across the US; the process of acculturation for these men and their families was complete.  They had become members of the mainstream American society.