Juan Cortina

Early life and political rising

Juan Cortina was born into a wealthy cattle-ranching family in Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. His parents were Trinidad Cortina and Estéfana Goseacochea, and at the time of his birth, the family’s Espiritu Santo land grant covered more than 260,000 acres. When he was three, the family moved to the Rio Grande Valley after his mother inherited large portions of that grant near Matamoros and Brownsville.

In 1846, at age 22, Cortina joined a Mexican Army unit under General Mariano Arista, who had arrived in Matamoros to oppose General Zachary Taylor’s advancing forces. Arista asked Cortina to raise a force from local vaqueros who worked for him and nearby ranches. This irregular cavalry unit, called the Tamaulipas, was placed under Cortina’s command and fought in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma during the Mexican-American War.

After the war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the new international border split the Cortina family estates, leaving much of their land inside the United States. Cortina became a political boss for the South Texas Democratic Party. Though local authorities rejected many of his land claims, he remained a large rancher. Many other Mexican-ancestry landowners faced similar problems, and Cortina eventually clashed with a powerful group of Brownsville lawyers and judges.

He accused them of stealing land from Tejanos who did not understand the American legal system, writing that “flocks of vampires, in the guise of men” robbed Mexicans of their property and hunted them “like wild beasts.” Cortina’s own legal troubles grew, and he was indicted twice for cattle theft. He was never arrested, however, because he was very popular among poorer Tejanos, who saw the charges as harassment by Anglos. Believing it was his mission to defend this group, Cortina gathered, trained, and armed a private army. He used this force many times to stop Tejanos from being evicted from their land, becoming a hero to the local poor.

The Cortina Troubles

The simmering conflict between Juan Cortina and Brownsville authorities erupted on July 13, 1859. Town marshal Robert Shears was beating a former ranch hand of Cortina's, a man in his sixties. Cortina came across the scene and requested that Shears allow him to take over the matter. According to accounts, Shears shouted back, "What is it to you, you damned Mexican?"

Cortina then fired a warning shot. When Shears continued his assault, Cortina shot the marshal in the shoulder, pulled the elderly man onto his horse, and fled. On September 28, Cortina returned with seventy men, raiding and occupying the town. His enemies had already escaped.

During the occupation, he issued a proclamation declaring that orderly and honest citizens had nothing to fear. He stated that the group’s aim was to punish the villainy of their enemies, who had formed a "perfidious inquisitorial lodge" to persecute people simply for being of Mexican origin. Cortina held Brownsville until September 30, when he left at the request of influential residents from Matamoros. The townspeople then formed a twenty-man militia called the Brownsville Tigers to oppose him.

In November, the Tigers learned Cortina was at his mother’s ranch in Santa Rita, five miles west of Brownsville. They attacked but were quickly routed and sent into disarray by Cortina’s forces.

Later political career

After his early military campaigns, Cortina turned to politics in Tamaulipas. President Benito Juárez put him in charge of troops guarding the southeastern border. When France invaded Mexico in 1862, Cortina initially backed Juárez and fought at the Battle of Puebla on May 5. But his loyalty did not last.

Seeing a chance to strengthen his own position in Tamaulipas after the French defeated General Ignacio Zaragoza and installed Maximilian I as emperor, Cortina switched sides and joined the invaders. That partnership quickly fell apart, and he turned against the French. Raising and equipping a large army on his own, he defeated interventionist forces that had landed near Tampico. His later campaigns in central Mexico aided the resistance, and he was present when Maximilian was executed in Querétaro in June 1867.

With no legitimate national government in place, Cortina twice named himself governor of Tamaulipas, in 1864 and 1865, before stepping down in 1866 to let Generals José María Jesús Carbajal and Santiago Tapia take over. After the Confederacy fell and Cortina’s role in defending the Mexican government became clear, Anglo American Texans changed their view of him. Returning to his Matamoros estates in 1870, he was repeatedly invited as a guest of honor in Brownsville.

Arrest and exile

Juan Cortina threw his support behind General Porfirio Díaz, a celebrated figure from the French intervention in Mexico who stood against Benito Juárez and his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. Cortina tried to gather a local fighting force and gave Díaz refuge after an unsuccessful uprising. Wealthy Texas landowners repeatedly accused Cortina of stealing their cattle and damaging their property in cross-border raids. The Lerdo administration eventually took these charges seriously, using them as a public reason to arrest him.

In 1875, Cortina was taken into custody and sent to Mexico City. On November 29, 1876, Díaz toppled President Lerdo through the Plan of Tuxtepec, arguing that Lerdo’s re-election broke the Constitution of 1857. Cortina was then permitted to go back to Tamaulipas, where he again attempted to build an armed force. Before he could deploy this new army, Díaz ordered his arrest and a second confinement in Mexico City.

Several reasons drove Díaz’s decision. Cortina’s main ambition was power in Tamaulipas, making his support unreliable and unstable, as he had shown many times before. Díaz also received a substantial payment, estimated between $50,000 and $200,000, from wealthy South Texas ranchers.

Did You Know?

• Cortina is the subject of Oscar Chávez's song 'Corrido de Juan Cortina'.
• He was portrayed by Joaquim de Almeida in the 1999 film One Man's Hero.
• In the Law & Order episode 'Boy Gone Astray', Connie Rubirosa mentioned that Cortina was one of her ancestors.