Community Forum: Brownsville rancher led Cortina’s spies

Editor:

Texas history remembers Juan Cortina as a border cattle thief, but he actually led a Mexican army that captured Brownsville in 1859 for a brief period of time. His army fought and defeated the Texas Rangers in several battles, but eventually was forced back into Mexico by the U.S. cavalry.

Cortina was the heart and soul of this army, but Carlos Esparza of Brownsville and his Las Aguilas Negras (the Black Eagles) were its eyes and ears. Esparza was a quiet philosophical rancher-farmer during the day and leader of this intelligence organization at nighttime.

Las Aguilas Negras provided spies along the border who shared information about the location and movements of the Texas Rangers and the U.S. cavalry. Women were instructed to wear the big, hoop-sized dresses to hide important messages, maps and vital information from the spies and meet at the Esparza Ranch. There, in a hidden room filled with maps and schedules, Esparza would gather all the information and send it to Cortina and the other ranches, hidden in the women’s hoop dresses.

Esparza believed that the Texas Rangers served as enforcers for Charles Stillman of Brownsville and ranchers Capt. Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, so the Aguilas Negras served as enforcers for Cortina. At nighttime, they would wear black hoods and black capes and cross at a low point on the Rio Grande to warn anyone who was supporting these men with threats of violence and death. Texas Rangers would be killed at every chance that the Aguilas Negras had.

Las Aguilas Negras also supported Cortina with money collected as tariffs at the Matamoros port of Bagdad, across the river from Boca Chica.

After Cortina was captured by Mexican President Porfirio Diaz in 1876, Esparza retired to his Brownsville ranch to read philosophy and poetry, and to record his dichos (sayings), such as “Mexico’s greatest enemy is her government,” and “Mexico is so far away from God, and so close to America.” Fearful of reprisals from the Texas Rangers, he rarely left his ranch.

Cortina was the leader of his military movement, but it was Esparza and his Aguilas Negras that supported Cortina’s army as an intelligence organization, as local enforcers, and with money and supplies.

Jack Ayoub

Harlingen

Is Hillary Clinton what we need?

Editor:

Following the presidential race, what amazes me is how many people seem willing to take a step backward with Hillary Clinton. Many Americans want a change from the neo-con Republicans a la Bush. That much is clear. Sen. Clinton, however, will not offer that change, at least not from any indication I’ve seen from her campaign.

It’s extremely hard to tell what it is that she truly offers. She said that Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license plan for illegal immigrants “made sense” at the Oct. 29 debate. Then, her answer on the issue at the Nov. 15 debate was simply, “No.” This, after Spitzer dropped the plan, undoubtedly under pressure from his state’s junior senator.

She also seems now to be cool toward NAFTA, when she had praised the agreement a year ago, and her husband’s administration was instrumental in passing it. Surely she was smart enough in 1993 to understand what free trade would do to some American jobs, but she wants to be on the “right” side of every issue.

The old Clintonian methods of poll-driven politics and triangulation are not what this country needs now.

Murray Godfrey

Harlingen