This research guide aims to help users navigate entry-level research into the Cortina Troubles (also known as the Cortina Wars). The guide links to resources held by UTRGV Special Collections and Archives in our physical and digital repositories. Additional materials may also be found among external resources.
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina (1824–1894) was born in Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico to an established cattle-ranching family. His mother Estéfana Goseacochea de Cavazos, or Doña Estéfana, inherited a portion of the Espiritu Santo land grant in present-day Cameron County and is remembered as a pioneer and philanthropist. Yet, her son, Juan Cortina's legacy is more complicated--viewed by some as a vigilante terrorist and by others as a noble hero. Cortina served under General Mariano Arista and fought in the Battles of Resaca de la Palma and Palo Alto in the U.S.-Mexico War. He would later fight for both Mexico and France--switching sides twice during the Second Franco-Mexican War and later declaring himself governor of Tamaulipas.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the war with the concession of 55% of Mexico's land to the United States in exchange for $16.2M+. New governance along the U.S.-Mexico border threatened existing Mexicano and Tejano landowners in the region, including Doña Estéfana, whom Cortina felt was cheated out of ancestral land. To avenge this social and economic injustice, Cortina raised an army and violently overtook and held the city of Brownsville, Texas in September 1859. There he issued a proclamation calling for equal treatment of Mexican residents in Texas. Two days later he was convinced to retreat to his mother's ranch Rancho del Carmen, where he was attacked by the Brownsville Tigers, a local militia. In November 1859, his ally Tomás Cabrera was captured and imprisoned by the Brownsville Tigers. In response, Cortina threatened to burn the city and issued a second proclamation appealing to the State of Texas for the legal recognition of the rights of Tejanos.
Cortina attacked again, but this time the Brownsville Tigers were bolstered by the Texas Rangers under the command of Rip Ford and later by the U.S. Army. The Cortinistas were driven up the Rio Grande River to present-day Starr County and defeated at the Battle of Rio Grande City on December 27, 1859. Cortina was forced to retreat to Mier, Mexico. Then, in February 1860, Rip Ford and the Texas Rangers now under the command of the U.S. Army crossed into Mexico to defeat Cortina at La Bolsa on February 4th. Following Cortina's defeat Robert E. Lee was sent to command the army on the border.
Texas Historical Commission Markers commemorating Doña Estéfana, The Cortina Battle, and The Battle of La Bolsa. Click on the marker image to learn more.
For a year, Cortina lay in wait in Mexico. Then, in February 1861, Texas seceded from the United States and in March joined the Confederate States. The U.S. Civil War broke out a month later and Tejano Captain Santos Benavides was put in charge of Confederate soldiers in South Texas. In May 1861, Juan Cortina seized the opportunity to invade Zapata County; in the Battle of Carrizo, the Cortinistas clashed with the Confederates and lost. Once again Juan N. Cortina was pushed back into Mexico, where he turned his attention to the French intervention. Santos Benavides went on to become Colonel and was the highest-ranking Tejano soldier in the Confederate military.
Cortina's action against the Confederacy and protection of Mexico earned him a place among Unionists, especially after the U.S. Civil War ended. Citizens and leaders of Brownsville embraced him and even endorsed his petition for an official pardon from the Texas legislature. He was also honored by the Mexican government, which appointed Cortina as Brigadier General and named the largest battalion of the state of Tamaulipas after him: "el Batallón Cortina".
However, his incursions against Texas landowners and ranchers continued, and Cortina was eventually arrested in 1875 and confined to Mexico City. Released in 1876, Cortina returned to Tamaulipas, but when his friend and one-time ally Porfirio Diaz seized the presidency, Cortina was again arrested. Some speculate that Diaz feared Cortina while others believe Diaz was pressured by the U.S. or paid off by wealthy Texans. Whatever the motivation Juan N. Cortina remained in Mexican custody until he died in 1894.
Cortina Troubles (1859-1861), Series 30. Reference Files, ELIBR-0062. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Special Collections and Archives, Edinburg Campus.
Claims on the Part of Citizens of the United States and Mexico Under the Convention of July 4, 1868. Reference Files, ELIBR-0062. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Special Collections and Archives, Edinburg Campus.
Report of the United States commissioners to Texas, appointed under joint resolution of Congress approved May 7, 1872. Reference Files, ELIBR-0062. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Special Collections and Archives, Edinburg Campus.
Cortina War (1859-1860), 1994, Container: 42, Box: 1, Folder: 30. Dick Heller Jr. Collection, ELIBR-0042. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Special Collections and Archives, Edinburg Campus.
Series III: Research, 1834 - 1998, Container: 42. Dick Heller Jr. Collection, ELIBR-0042. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Special Collections and Archives, Edinburg Campus.
(Also referred to as Cameron County and Matamoros Advertiser, Bandera Americana)
(Also referred to as Ranchero Diario, Sunday Ranchero, Brownsville Ranchero, Tri-weekly Ranchero)
(Also referred to as Ranchero Diario, Sunday Ranchero, Brownsville Ranchero, Tri-weekly Ranchero)
(Also referred to as Ranchero Diario, Sunday Ranchero, Brownsville Ranchero, Tri-weekly Ranchero)
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Cortina defending the Mexican name in Texas by
At a time when the U.S.-Mexican border was still not clearly defined and when the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and land hunger impelled the Anglo presence ever deeper and more intrusively into South Texas, Juan Nepomucino Cortina cut a violent swath across the region in a conflict that came to be known as The Cortina War. Did this border caudillo fight to defend the rights, honor, and legal claims of the Mexicans of South Texas, as he claimed? Or was his a quest for personal vengeance against the newcomers who had married into his family, threatened his mother’s land holdings, and insulted his honor? Historian Jerry Thompson mines the archival record and considers it in light of recent revisionist history of the region. As a result, he produces not only a carefully nuanced work on Cortina—the most comprehensive to date for this pivotal borderlands figure—but also a balanced interpretation of the violence that racked South Texas from the 1840s through the 1860s. Cortina’s influence in the region made him a force to be reckoned with during the American Civil War. He influenced Mexican politics from the 1840s to the 1870s and fought in the Mexican Army for more than forty-five years. His daring cross-border cattle raids, carried out for more than two decades, made his exploits the stuff of sensational journalism in the newspapers of New York, Boston, and other American cities. By the time of his imprisonment in 1877, Cortina and his followers had so roiled South Texas that Anglo reprisals were being taken against Mexicans and Tejanos throughout the region, ironically worsening the racism that had infuriated Cortina in the beginning. The effects of this troubled period continue to resonate in Anglo-Mexican and Anglo-Tejano relations, down to this very day. Students of regional and borderlands history will find this premier biography to be a rich source of new perspectives. Its transnational focus and balanced approach will reward scholarly and general readers alike.
Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859-1877 by
Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, in Vaquero of the Brush Country, called Juan Nepomuceno Cortina "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 horses in the muddy water of the Rio Bravo."Juan Cortina and the Texas Mexico Frontier, 1859-1877 is the story of an illiterate Brownsville ranchero who rose to become a rugged and fearless frontier "caudillo" and governor of Tamaulipas. Jerry Thompson has compiled the first schorlarly work on Cortina in 40 years. Using nine of Cortina' pronunciamentos," Thompson sees his subject as more than a "social bandit," someone who simply reacted to the evils of a racist society that suppressed the Mexican-Texans socially, economically and politically.Thompson says, "He shot the Brownsville marshal, ambushed Texas Rangers, captured the U.S. mail, defeated the Matamoros militia, battled the U.S. army, harassed the Confederate Army, ambushed French Imperialists, attacked Mexican liberals, and fought anyone who dared get in his way." He shows Cortina to have been among the most important political and military figures on the border during much of the 19th century, a folk-hero to many Tejanos and Mexicanos, a man whose disputed legacy remains an integral part of the history of both Texas and Mexico.
Juan N. Cortina by
Reprint of Juan N. Cortina 1824-1892: a re-appraisal, by C. W. Goldfinch, originally presented as the author's thesis (M.A.), University of Chicago, 1950; of Juan N. Cortina presents his motion for a new trial, by J. T. Canales, first published 1951 in San Antonio.
Juan N Cortina and the struggle for justice in Texas by
With a degree in law from the University of Michigan, class of '99, Canales practice law in Cameron County's seat at Brownsville. People elected him their representative to the state legislature for several terms, 1905 to 1912 and then 1917 to 1920. It was in the last term that Canales made his most memorable mark, thundering against the atrocities committed by the formerly untouchable Texas Rangers, who had rampaged the Valley during the so-called "bandit raids" of 1915 and 1916, depriving the citizenry – almost all Hispanics – of their dignity and human rights in the name of Ranger justice. Canales described the wanton depredations, one of the sorriest chapters in the region's history, a history that has never been fully told for fear of retribution. But J. T. Canales raised enough of a ruckus at the time to get the legislature to disband the old-style Rangers and then have them reconstituted along other lines, which, in many ways, became only slightly less controversial than the former ones. Throughout his long life, Canales remained an ardent crusader for Hispanic rights in the Valley. He sponsored state legislation to halt real estate frauds by land companies that were largely supported by big money from outside the Valley as they tried to monopolize the region's agricultural potential. He sponsored other laws aimed at corrupt country and district judges throughout South Texas. Folks appreciated his endeavors so much that they called Canales "judge," a huge symbol of respect for the man an indication of who they wanted to be their judge. --- excerpt from book's Introduction
Informe de la Comisión Pesquisidora de la Frontera del Norte, al ejecutivo de la unión, en cumplimiento del Artículo 3a de la ley de 30 de setiembre de 1872 by 
Fifty Miles and a Fight by
Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman's Journal of Texas and the Cortina War, a rare and dramatic firsthand account of one of the most volatile and traumatic events in the long history of Texas--the Cortina War, chronicles the day-to-day activities of one of the most cultured, dedicated, and well-respected (although often vain) officers of the antebellum frontier army. It was while Heintzelman was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, that a daring thirty-five-year-old illiterate ranchero named Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shockwaves throughout Texas by brazenly leading some seventy-five angry raiders into the dung-splattered streets of Brownsville. Tired of a clique of Brownsville attorneys, resentful of men he accused of killing tejanos with impunity, and determined to settle a blood feud with bitter enemy Adolphus Glavecke, Cortina initiated a war that would reverberate north to Austin and beyond to the halls of Washington and Mexico City. Fifty Miles and a Fight magnifies the brutal nature of the Texas Rangers, a portrayal not readily evident in other sources. Not only does Heintzelman, who was placed in command of the Brownsville Expedition with orders to crush Cortina, record his disdain and distrust of the Rangers, but also their indiscriminate killing of both mexicanos and tejanos. Heintzelman's journal, which reads like a Zane Grey thriller, provides a detailed and vivid account of the battles at El Ebonal and Rio Grande City as well as glimpses into the filibustering activities of the shadowy Knights of the Golden Circle, who were hoping to expand the Cortina War into a larger conflict that would lead to the eventual annexation of Mexico and the creation of a slave empire south of the Rio Grande. Heintzelman's impressions of his senior commander, Col. Robert E. Lee, are also noteworthy. A real jewel of soldiering on the Southwestern frontier, Heintzelman's journal begins on a sunny and optimistic New Orleans day, April 17, 1859, with his family on its way to Texas, and ends on a depressingly cool and overcast December 31, 1861, also in the Crescent City, with secession fever sweeping the South and the nation on the verge of war.
Written by Milo Kearney. This musical play is a historical account of episodes in the settlement of Brownsville, Texas, back in the early 19th century. Today, we think of Brownsville as a peaceful and uneventful town, but this was not always the case. Life was risky then. There could be a beautiful society wedding on one day, and the next day gun-toting insurgents could shoot up the town. Juan Cortina, “Red Beard,” played a pivotal role in the history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
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