Presentation Notes Good afternoon! Thank you for the opportunity to present some of my family’s history to Slide 1 you. Some of this history consists of stories passed down from one generation to the next, and some of it is research on the genealogy of my family. My sources for this presentation are Dr. Clotilde Garcia’s book Captain Blas Maria de la Garza Falcon: Colonizer of South Texas; The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, by Américo Paredes; The Texas State Historical Association Online, Dr. Gloria Duarte’s report to the Historical Association (Angelo State); and a book by Estela Pérez Santos, A Snapshot of Melvin, Texas: 1906-1955: The Struggle for an Equal Education for Latin- Americans. Mrs. Santos knew my mom well. There will also be anecdotes and stories passed down to me by my maternal grandfather Rafael Riojas and maternal uncle, Dr. Ricardo Riojas. I originally presented some of these stories in Dr. Ken Baake’s class on environmental issues in the state of Texas. In this class, I learned that the concept of land, oil, and water rights in Texas intersects greatly with Mexican history, and more specifically with my family and its history. Slide 2 I can’t begin talking about family trees without talking about names in the Hispanic culture. You can find out an entire family tree just with one person’s last name because it has at two parts: the father’s last name and the mother’s last name. My maiden name, for example, was Cordell. When I got married in Odessa, Texas in 1984, the county clerk required me to take my husband’s last name, López. But when we moved to Puerto Rico, my legal last name became Cordell (my father’s last name) Riojas (my mother’s last name). That is the name I carried on my driver’s license, my health insurance card, voter’s registration card, our checks, I used it on loan applications – essentially everything that had to do with business or legal transactions. In the Hispanic tradition, this applies to everyone – male and female. What is interesting about this tradition is it preserves the genealogy. You don’t have to stop at the first two last names. You can keep going. So, my name is as far as I know the names of my father, my mother, each of my grandmothers, and each of my great- grandmothers. That makes my name: Dina Cordell Riojas Tiner Peñalver Vance Cárdenas. Cordell was my father’s last name, Riojas my mother’s; Tiner was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Peñalver was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Vance was my paternal great-grandmother’s maiden name, and Cárdenas my maternal great-
grandmother’s maiden name. The tradition keeps alive the mother’s family line and makes it easier to follow family trees. The Anglo-Spanish mix just doesn’t quite have the flow as it would in Spanish, does it? Take my husband’s name, for example: José Ramón López Méndez Torres González Rosa Colón Vega Moreno. Handy for him as a kid; when his mother was mad at him she would use his whole name! By the time she was on “González” he was out the door and down the street. Some research done by a member of our family has revealed our ancestors as far back as Slide 3 a man by the name of Captain Marcos Alonzo Garza y Arcón from Lepe, Huelva, Spain. There is a story behind the name of the Captain and why he changed his family name. There was a well-to-do Jew by the name of Hernando Alonzo in Lepe, who helped finance Hernán Cortez in his explorations. Alonzo was found to be too influential in Spanish matters and was thus burned at the stake during the Inquisition. So, the name Alonzo was either dropped to avoid association or because of a familial relation, since both men were from Lepe, Huelva, Spain. At any rate, Marcos Alonzo Garza married Juana Treviño, and they took their family to Monterrey, Mexico, where other families with Jewish roots had settled. The name Treviño is also known as a Sephardic Jewish name. 1 My mother’s father, my maternal grandfather, was named Rafael Riojas de la Garza. His mother’s name was Candelaria de la Garza, and his father Onésimo Riojas de la Garza. They were probably distant cousins. The Riojas family and the de la Garza family have a beautiful oral history regarding how the two families first met : [Storycorps recording 0:00 – 3:12]. I hope you can read here the names of my uncle’s great grandparents, Jose Antonio Riojas and Roumalda de la Garza Falcón on this family tree. What irony! So many years later, a descendant of the very king and queen who were responsible for the Inquisition marries someone of Jewish descent. In Dr. Baake’s class, we studied Américo Paredes’ book, With a Pistol in His Hand . This is a book about the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez : the setting and political climate at the time of the events that happened in this man’s life. Water rights and discrimination were a part of the setting. 2 It is a true story – In 1901, Gregorio Cortez Lira, a Mexican ranch hand, is at Slide 4 his home when he is visited by a Sheriff Morris and his deputy, who have come to the Cortez home to accuse him of stealing a horse. Due the deputy’s botched Spanish, a gunfight ensues, and Sheriff Morris shoots Gregorio’s brother. Gregorio shoots Sheriff Morris and the deputy runs away. The Ballad is mainly about how Cortez was able to elude the Texas Rangers for two weeks, but my focus on this story is not so much what happened to Cortez, but the setting and the theme of how Mexicans were treated: by this time, the Treaty of Guadalupe had divided Texas along the Río Grande, and the people who had
settled this region were not only physically divided, but also looked down upon by some as second-class citizens to be taken advantage of, and certainly not to be trusted. That took place in the early 1900s. What was the back history of the people who had Slide 5 originally colonized this area, and more specifically, my ancestors? In my research of the settlers along the Río Grande I read Dr. Clotilde Garcia’s book, Captain Blas Maria de la Garza Falcon: Colonizer of South Texas. I found that one of my ancestors and a descendant of Marcos Alonzo de la Garza, was Captain Blas Maria de la Garza Falcón. He was successful in arranging for forty families to settle in the Camargo area south of what is now known as the Rio Grande. This is the area here along the border and south of the border into present day Mexico. He was so successful in settling this area that the Slide 6 Count of Sierra Gorda, Mexico, Don José de Escandón, gave Captain Blas de la Garza the assignment of settling and colonizing the land north of the Rio Grande, near the Nueces River in 1747. This is the area known today as Corpus Christi. There is a statue in his honor, recognizing him as the founder of South Texas. 3,4 It was his father, Blas de la Garza III, who was the governor of Coahuila and Texas many years prior to the Texas Revolution. This is the same governor who met my ancestor, Juan Ygnacio de Riojas y Castilla when he arrived from Spain in the early 1700s to marry Antonio Cortina. In the Nueces area, Blas de la Garza Falcon established a ranch named La Petronila, site of present day Petronila, Texas. The Santa Petronila Ranch served as a presidio ̶ Slide 7 waystation – for the Spanish soldiers patrolling the area and “provide protection against the cannibalistic Karankawa Indians “ (Garcia 11). By 1836, sixteen land grants had been issued to the heirs of the Garza Falcón clan in Nueces County, one of those the Chipiltin Grant to Blas Maria de la Garza Falcon V in 1834. However, when the Treaty of Guadalupe was signed in 1848, families were divided between Texas and Mexico. Dr. Garcia notes that “the Texas revolution resulted in a No Man’s Land for the people of the coast” (62). Dr. Garcia has documentation of land granted to Blas de la Garza Falcon’s heirs in the South Texas triangle. However, numerous attempts were made to take away land from his heirs after Texas became a state. The families that had settled this region were highly regarded and well-to-do families with Spanish ancestry and histories of military service to Mexico. Even before the state was divided along the Rio Grande River, there were attempts and suspicion of attempts to steal family land. In 1858, a Colonel Henry Kinney attempted to dispossess Don Blas V from his land (49). Of those settlers who returned to their ranches after the Texas revolution, many were killed for their land (57).
Recommend
More recommend
