Ricardo Flores Magon killed on Nov 20 (day of Mexican revolution)

Magon, Ricardo Flores, 1873-1922

Submitted by Ed on Sep 30 2006 19:34

tags: 

• North America
 
• Mexico
 
• Ricardo Flores Magon
 
• anarchists
 
• biographies
 
• Mexican Revolution

A short biography of Ricardo Flores Magon, the Mexican anarchist who took part in the Mexican revolution and was imprisoned several times throughout his life.

Ricardo Flores Magon
Born 1879 - Mexico, died November 22nd 1922 - Kansas, USA

Inside modern Mexico the name of Ricardo Flores Magon is well known. But outside Mexico few have heard of him. Born to a poor family in 1873, he became a journalist on the opposition paper 'El Demócrata' after finishing school. In 1900, along with his brother Jesús, he founded "Regeneración', a radical paper opposed to the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

After release from a second prison sentence arising from his campaigning journalism, he moved across the border to the USA. Despite continual persecution and imprisonment by the U.S. authorities, at the instigation of the Mexican dictatorship - who had put a price of $20,000 on his head after he wouldn't be bought off with the offer of a place in the government. He would not be silenced.

In 1905, Magon founded the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), a reformist organisation opposed to the excesses of the regime, which organised two unsuccessful uprisings against Diaz in 1906 and 1908. During his early years of exile he became acquainted with the legendary anarchist Emma Goldman, and it was partly through her that he moved from reformism to become an anarchist.

With the outbreak of the revolution of 1910, the revolution that he and the PLM more than any other group or person, had paved the way for, Magon devoted the rest of his life to the anarchist cause. Through the influence of his ideas, large areas of land were expropriated by the peasants and worked in common by them under the banner of 'Land and Liberty', the motto of the PLM. This motto was later adopted by Emiliano Zapata, whose legacy inspires the EZLN rebels of the 1994 Southern Mexican uprising whose struggle continues today.

As the revolution began on November 20th 1910, Magon summed up the aims of PLM:

"The Liberal Party works for the welfare of the poor classes of the Mexican people. It does not impose a candidate (in the presidential election), because it will be up to the will of the people to settle the question. Do the people want a master? Well let them elect one. All the Liberal Party desires is to effect a change in the mind of the toiling people so that every man and woman should know that no one has the right to exploit anybody."

A fortnight later he explained the difference between the PLM and other opposition movements:

"Governments have to protect the right of property above all other rights. Do not expect then, that Madero will attack the right of property in favour of the working class. Open your eyes. Remember a phrase, simple and true and as truth indestructible, the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves".

By January, PLM forces were fighting in six of Mexico's states. Major towns, as well as rural areas, were liberated by anarchists. In March a peasant army led by Zapata, and influenced by the Magonistas of the PLM, rose up in Morelos. By now the nationalist opposition of Madero had turned some of its guns away from the troops of Diaz and begun to attack the anarchists of the PLM.

In April, the PLM issued a manifesto to "the members of the party, to the anarchists of the world and the workers in general". Vast quantities were produced in Spanish and English to explain their attitude to the revolution:

"The Mexican Liberal Party is not fighting to destroy the dictator Porfirio Diaz in order to put in his place a new tyrant. The PLM is taking part in the actual insurrection with the deliberate and firm purpose of expropriating the land and the means of production and handing them over to the people, that is, each and every one of the inhabitants of Mexico without distinction of sex. This act we consider essential to open the gates for the effective emancipation of the Mexican people."

In massively illiterate Mexico, where many villages had only a handful of people able to read, the circulation of "Regeneración" had reached 27,000 a week. When Tijuana was liberated in May, most of Baja California came under PLM influence. They issued a manifesto "Take possession of the land...make a free and happy life without masters or tyrants".

That month saw Madero sign a peace treaty with Diaz and take over as President of Mexico. Military attacks on the PLM increased, and towns were retaken by government troops. Prisoners were murdered by the new regime, sometimes after being made to dig their own graves. At a meeting in Los Angeles, Magon was asked to accept the treaty but replied "...until the land was distributed to the peasants and the instruments of production were in the hands of the workers, the liberals would never lay down their arms".

Along with many leading PLM organisers, Magon was arrested (again) by the US authorities. The rebels were slandered as "bandits" and repression in both Mexico and the US reached new heights. Despite the setbacks caused by their relatively small size in a gigantic country, the attacks they suffered from the armies of two countries, and the terrible revenge exacted by the rich and their agents, new uprisings broke out in Senora, Durango and Coahuila.

Such was the support for their ideas, that even the conservative British TUC felt obliged to invite Honore Jaxon, Treasurer and European representative of the PLM, to address their 1911 conference. One solidarity action especially worth mentioning was the 24-hour strike by two army units in Portugal protesting against the arrest of PLM militants by the US government.

A new manifesto, emphasising their anarchism, was issued in September:

"The same effort and the same sacrifices that are required to raise to power a governor - that is to say a tyrant - will achieve the expropriation of the fortunes the rich keep from you. It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor - that is to say a new yoke - or life redeeming expropriation and the abolition of all imposition, religious, political or any other kind".

PLM and Zapatista rebellions continued until 1919, but their numbers and inadequate arms were not sufficient to defeat the state forces. However all was not in vain. In 1922 the anarchist CGT trade union was founded in Mexico city, and today the rebellion in the state of Chiapas can be seen as, partly at least, a continuation of Magon's struggle.

During the years of struggle Magon opposed and fought successive so-called "revolutionary regimes," resisting both the old and new dictatorships with equal vigour. Imprisoned by the U.S. authorities in 1905, 1907, and 1912 he was finally sentenced to 20 years under the espionage laws in 1918. He died, apparently after suffering beatings, in Leavenworth Prison, Kansas, on November 22, 1922.

When his body was brought back across the border, every town where the cortege stopped was decked out in the red and black flags of anarchism. In Mexico City, 10,000 working people escorted his body to Panteon Frances where it is buried. A flame had been lit that will not burn out until liberty becomes a living reality.

Written by Alan MacSimóin
Edited by libcom

Jovita Idar Feminist and Revolutionary

IDAR, JOVITA

IDAR, JOVITA (1885–1946). Jovita Idar, teacher, journalist, and political activist, was born in Laredo in 1885, one of eight children of Jovita and Nicasio Idar. She attended the Holding Institute (a Methodist school) in Laredo, from which she earned a teaching certificate in 1903. She then taught at a small school in Ojuelos. Inadequate equipment and poor conditions, as well as her inability to improve them, frustrated her, so she resigned and joined two of her brothers as writers for her father's weekly newspaper, La Crónica.

In 1910 and 1911 La Crónica was vocal in criticizing certain aspects of Hispanic-Anglo relations. It featured stories on educational and social discrimination against Mexican-Americans^qv, deteriorating economic conditions, decreasing use of the Spanish language, the loss of Mexican culture, and lynchings of Hispanics. The newspaper also supported efforts of the revolutionary forces in Mexico. In 1911 La Crónica called a convention of the Orden Caballeros de Honor, a fraternal order, to discuss the troubling issues of the times. In September 1911 Jovita Idar joined lodge members and others at Laredo in the First Mexican Congress to discuss educational, social, labor, and economic matters. Women participated as speakers and participants; for some it was the first political meeting. This congress has been called the first attempt in Mexican-American history to organize a militant feminist social movement. One outcome of the congress was the formation in October 1911 of the League of Mexican Women. Jovita Idar became its first president and organized its principal effort, to provide education for poor children.

In 1913 during the Mexican Revolution battle of Nuevo Laredo, Idar and a friend, Leonor Villegas de Magnon, crossed the border to care for the injured. Idar later joined La Cruz Blanca, a medical group similar to the Red Cross, and traveled in northern Mexico with revolutionary forces as a nurse. When she returned to Laredo later that year she joined the staff of the newspaper El Progreso and soon offended the United States Army and Texas Rangers^qv with an editorial protesting President Woodrow Wilson's dispatch of United States troops to the border. When rangers arrived to close down El Progreso, Idar stood in the doorway to keep them from entering. The rangers closed the newspaper later, however, and Idar returned to La Crónica. After her father died in 1914, she ran the paper.

In 1917 Idar married Bartolo Juárez. The couple moved to San Antonio, where Jovita Juárez became an active member of the Democratic party, established a free kindergarten, worked as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients in a county hospital, and was an editor of El Heraldo Christiano, a publication of the Rio Grande Conference of the Methodist Church. She and her husband had no children. She died in San Antonio in 1946.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Martha P. Cotera, Diosa y Hembra: The History and Heritage of Chicanas in the U.S. (Austin: Information Systems Development, 1976). José E. Limón, "El Primer Congreso Mexicanista de 1911," Aztlán 5 (Spring, Fall 1974). Mary Beth Rogers et al., We Can Fly: Stories of Katherine Stinson and Other Gutsy Texas Women (Austin: Texas Foundation for Women's Resources, 1983).

Nancy Baker Jones

Invasion of Mexico 1855 hunting APACHES and SLAVES

CALLAHAN EXPEDITION

CALLAHAN EXPEDITION. The Callahan Expedition occurred in October 1855, when James Hughes Callahan led a force of 111 men into Mexico near Piedras Negras, Coahuila. The announced purpose of the unauthorized invasion was to punish Lipan Apache Indians who reportedly had raided along the Texas frontier during the summer and fall of 1855, then returned to Mexico, where they were protected by the authorities. In fact, the expedition likely was an attempt by Texas slaveholders to regain fugitive slaves who had fled to northern Mexico and to prevent Mexican authorities from permitting runaway slaves to settle in their midst. On July 5, 1855, Governor Elisha M. Pease authorized Callahan to organize a force to punish marauding Indians, who reportedly had increased their raids that summer when 3,000 United States troops were moved from the Texas frontier to Kansas. Callahan mustered his force into service on July 20. As Texas citizens continued to appeal to Pease for defense against the Indian raids, Callahan and his men left Bandera Pass on September 18 headed for the Rio Grande.

Texas slaveowners, meanwhile, had developed plans to capture fugitive slaves who had taken up refuge in northern Mexico, especially near San Fernando, Coahuila. Newspaper editor John S. (Rip) Ford^qv estimated that more than 4,000 slaves had run away from Texas by 1855. That summer the slaveowners sent an emissary to talk with Governor Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León y Coahuila, but Vidaurri rebuffed the offer and warned his military commanders on the frontier to be ready for an invasion. The slaveowners apparently contacted Callahan and persuaded him to use his force to chastise the Mexicans as well as Indians, and perhaps to capture fugitive slaves. Callahan, at least, attempted to keep the real goal of his expedition secret, even from his own men. On August 31 he wrote his quartermaster, Edward Burleson, Jr., "I am bound to go to the Rio Grand if nothing hapens....I believe some of the boys have found out about the arrangement so I wrote to you as though my intention was to go to the uper country... to keep the matter as much of a secret as possible." Callahan crossed the swollen Rio Grande on October 1–3. Marching westward on October 3, the Texans encountered a Mexican detachment at the Río Escondido, about twenty-two miles from Piedras Negras. In the skirmish that followed, the Mexicans under Col. Emilio (Edvard Emil) Langberg reported a loss of four dead and three wounded, and Callahan reported four killed and seven wounded. The next morning, Callahan retreated to Piedras Negras and took possession of the town. As the Mexican force approached the town on October 5, Callahan ordered his men to set fire to houses to cover their retreat, and on the evening of October 6 Maj. Sidney Burbank, commander of the American forces across the river at Fort Duncan, turned four cannons to cover the Texans as they recrossed the river.

Callahan immediately defended his invasion of Mexico, claiming that he had received permission from the Mexican authorities to cross the river in pursuit of the Lipans. Pease defended Callahan's burning of Piedras Negras, saying that it was justified because the Mexicans had deceived Callahan by leading him into an ambush. Quartermaster Burleson alluded to a different purpose, however, when he wrote on November 11 to editor Ford about a slave who had escaped to Piedras Negras: The "Mexicans took him up and sent him back to this side immediately. We can guess why they did it." Historians have argued for years over the purpose of the expedition, but there was little misunderstanding at the time by those who were there. Even Bvt. Maj. Gen. Persifor F. Smith, who had encouraged Pease to appoint a company of rangers to help defend the frontier, reported to the adjutant general's office that the Texans were organizing a party to retrieve runaway slaves; "I presume," Smith wrote, "that the party of Captain Callahan was the one alluded to." The claims originating with this invasion of Mexico were not officially settled until 1876, when the Claims Commission of 1868 finished its work. The commission awarded approximately 150 Mexican citizens a total of $50,000 in damages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Edward Burleson, Jr., Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Ernest C. Shearer, "The Callahan Expedition, 1855," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 54 (October 1951). Ronnie C. Tyler, "The Callahan Expedition of 1855: Indians or Negroes?"Southwestern Historical Quarterly 70 (April 1967).

Ron Tyler

Republic of Rio Grande: Republic of Sierra Madre

CARBAJAL, JOSE MARIA JESUS

CARBAJAL, JOSÉ MARÍA JESÚS (?–1874). José Carbajal, son of José Antonio Carbajal Peña and María Gertrudis Sánchez Soto, was born in San Fernando de Béxar (San Antonio). In 1823 he went to Lexington, Kentucky, and worked two years as a tanner and saddle maker. Later he studied at Bethany, Virginia, under Alexander Campbell, renounced Catholicism, and became an ardent Protestant. Aided by Stephen F. Austin, he returned to Texas as the official surveyor for Martín De León, laid out the town of Victoria, and married De León's daughter, María del Refugio De León Garza, around 1830. They had two children. In January 1831 Carbajal accompanied José Francisco Maderoto survey and issue land titles in East Texas, was arrested by John Davis Bradburn, but was soon released. He acted as ad interim secretary for the ayuntamiento of Bexar and in February 1835 was elected deputy from Bexar to the legislature of Coahuila and Texas, where he acted as secretary. In the spring of 1835 the legislature authorized him to publish the laws and decrees of the state in English and Spanish. The laws were published in Texas in 1839. Domingo de Ugartechea ordered Carbajal arrested for attempting to stir up rebellion, and Carbajal left for New Orleans, where in November 1835 he joined Peter Kerr and Fernando De León^qqv in chartering the Hannah Elizabeth to supply the Texas forces. The vessel was captured by Mexicans, and Carbajal was imprisoned at Brazos Santiago and then at Matamoros. While preparations were underway to transfer him to San Juan de Ulloa, he escaped and returned to Texas, where he or possibly his brother Mariano, who was with James W. Fannin in 1835, signed the Goliad Declaration of Independence on December 2, 1835. Carbajal was elected to the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos but did not attend.

In 1839 Carbajal, in command of a group of American volunteers, defeated a Mexican Centralist army near Mier but was wounded in the engagement and lost the use of his left arm. As an advocate of an independent republic in northern Mexico, he commanded a division of the Mexican army against the United States in 1846. From 1850 to 1853 he led American merchants and filibusters in the border engagements known as the Merchants War. Although he was arrested twice by United States authorities, he was released both times. He was living in Piedras Negras in 1855, when his house was destroyed by the Callahan expedition. In 1861 Carbajal was commander in chief of state troops of Tamaulipas and was defeated at Matamoros while supporting the de jure government of Jesús de la Serva. In 1862 Carbajal joined the Mexican liberal army to serve against the French. He was governor of the state of Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí in 1865, when he was commissioned financial agent to negotiate a loan from the United States. Some time later he moved to Hidalgo County, Texas, and from there, in 1872, moved to Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, where he died in 1874.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Mexico (6 vols., San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and the History Company, 1883–89). Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the North Mexican States and Texas(2 vols., San Francisco: History Company, 1886, 1889). J. Fred Rippy, "Border Troubles along the Rio Grande, 1848–1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 23 (October 1919). Ernest C. Shearer, Border Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1848–1860 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1940). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Enrique Flores Magon murio hoy Oct 28, 1954

« Las obras de Ricardo Flores Magón

Abel Quezada »

Enrique Flores Magón

7 octubre, 08 por verena

Esta entrada la hare sobre otro personaje muy importante,el hermano de Ricardo Flores Magon,Enrique

Enrique Flores Magón

1877 – 1954
Periodo: Revolución de 1910
Área: Periodista

Nació en Teotitlán del Camino, actualmente Flores Magón, Oaxaca en 1877. Vivió los primeros años de su infancia en Oaxaca y su familia migró a la Ciudad de México. Estudiaba en la capital del paísen 1892 cuando participó en las manifestaciones contra la tercera reelección del general Porfirio Díaz. Junto con Ricardo y Jesús se inició en el periodismo; en 1904 fue expulsado del país, vivió en distintas ciudades de los Estados Unidos.
Fue uno de los redactores del Programa del Partido Liberal Mexicano, editor del periódico Regeneración y organizó la red clandestina para la distribución de este diario en México. En varias ocasiones fue perseguido y encarcelado en Estados Unidos; en 1923 tras la muerte de su hermano Ricardo regresó al país, tuvo desavenencias con otros magonistas y finalmente se retiró a la vida privada.
Falleció en la Ciudad de México en 1954.

         

«¿Por qué temer a la guerra? Si se tiene que morir aplastado por la tiranía capitalista y gubernamental en tiempo de paz, ¿por qué no morir mejor combatiendo lo que nos aplasta? Es menos espantoso que se derrame sangre que conquista la libertad y el bienestar, que continúe derramándose bajo el actual sistema político y social en provecho de nuestros explotadores y tiranos.»
Regeneración, 17 de diciembre de 1910

http://www.patriagrande.net/mexico/ricardo.flores.magon/escritos.htm 

www.oaxaca-mio.com/celebres/flores_magon

El Porvenir Maasacre by Texas Rangers and US Army

El Porvenir Massacre 1918

FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2009

Did you know the Texas Rangers massacred 15 mexican people in Texas in 1918? Here is an article from Wikipedia. This excerpt is from the "Texas Ranger" page.

The Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 against President Porfirio Díaz changed the relatively peaceful state of affairs along the border drastically. Soon after, violence on both sides of the frontier escalated as bands of Mexicans took over Mexican border towns and began crossing the Rio Grande on a near-daily basis. Taking over trade routes in Mexico by establishing themselves as road agents, Mexican banditos turned towards attacking the American communities for kidnapping, extortion, and supplies. As Mexican law enforcement disintegrated with the collapse of the Diaz regime, these gangs grouped themselves under the various caudillos on both sides of the border and took sides in the civil war most simply to take advantage of the turmoil to loot.[13] Then, as the lack of American military forces for defending the border was made more abundantly clear, the scope of the activities soon turned to outright genocide with the intention of driving Americans out of the Southwest entirely and became known as the Plan de San Diego in 1915. In several well rehearsed attacks, Mexicans rose up and in conjunction with raiding Mexican guerrillas among the Villistas within weeks killed over 500 Texan women, children, and men.[14]

The political decision of the Texans was clear: restore control and order by any necessary means. As Governor Oscar Branch Colquitt instructed Ranger Capt. John R. Hughes: ...you and your men are to keep Mexican raiders off of Texas territory if possible, and if they invade the State let them understand they do so at the risk of their lives.[15] Hundreds of new special Rangers were appointed by order of the state, which neglected to carefully screen aspiring members. Rather than conduct themselves as law enforcement officers, many of these groups acted more like vigilante squads. Reports of Rangers abusing their authority and breaking the law themselves became numerous.[16] The situation grew even more dramatic when on March 9, 1916, Pancho Villa led 1,500 Mexican raiders in a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico, increasing the high tension that had already existed between the communities.

The final straw that broke the camel's back was the killing of innocent villagers wrongly accused of raiding the Brite Ranch Store on Christmas Day in 1917. On January 1918 a heavily armed group of Texas Rangers, ranchmen and members a troop of U.S. Cavalry descended upon the tiny community of Porvenir, Texas on the Mexican border in western Presidio County. The Texas Rangers and company rounded up the inhabitants of the village and searched their homes. The vigilantes then proceeded to gather all the men in Provenir ( fifteen Mexican men and boys ranging in age from 72 to 16 years) were marched off into the cold and bitter darkness. A short distance from Porvenir, the innocent men were lined up against a rock bluff and shot to death. The innocent men were Manuel Morales, 47, who possessed a deed to 1,600 acres (6.5 km²), Roman Nieves, 48, who possessed a deed to 320 acres (1.3 km²), Longino Flores, 44, Alberto Garcia, 35, Eutimio Gonzales, 37, Macedonio Huertas, 30, Tiburcio Jaques, 50, Ambrosio Hernandez, 21, Antonio Castanedo, 72, Pedro Herrera, 25, Viviano Herrera, 23, Severiano Herrera, 18, Pedro Jimenez, 27, Serapio Jimenez, 25, and Juan Jimenez – the youngest victim at age 16. In January 1919, the Porvenir massacre came under the scrutiny of the Texas House and Senate Investigation of the State Ranger Force.

Before the decade was over, thousands of lives were lost, counting Texans and Mexicans alike; although by far, the wanton rape, murder, and execution of innocent civilians fell greater upon the former. In January 1919, at the initiative of Representative José T. Canales of Brownsville, the Texas Legislature launched a full investigation of Rangers' actions throughout these years. The investigation found that from 300 up to 5,000 people, mostly of Hispanic descent, had been killed by Rangers from 1910 to 1919 and that members of the Rangers had been involved in many sordid misdeeds of brutality and injustice.

Juan N Cortina: Anti imperialist, Anti expansionist, anti racist y liberal republican patriot

Juan N. “Cheno” Cortina: Republican Patriot, Hero and Revolutionary General and Anti imperialist! 1824-1884.

RubenSolisGarcia Oct. 2011

Tribute to 127 years since his death 

'the lion of the border'

Why was Cheno (Juan N) Cortina an anti-imperialist Hero and national patriot?

To answer this question we must 'resurrect' Cheno Cortina and the Cortina Revolution in South Texas and northern Mexico, and to correct the way historians have portrayed him and his revolution. Cortina and his army have been labelled as border bandits by most historians while a more progressive group labels him as a social bandit. But none dare call him by his real identity, a revolutionary liberal republican. Cortina believed and defended with his life and at risk for all of his extended familia and ranchos, livestock, everything for the patria; the Republic of Mexico liberal and secular constitution of 1857 and the revolutionary principals of nation building and sovereignty. To Cortina the sovereignty of the (republic) nation was sacred and had to be defended with honor, valor and sacrifice, something he proved over and over again in his whole life trajectory and actions.

Cortina fought the Republic of Texas in 1836 to protect his lands, he did not recognize the Slave Texas Republic because he was against slavery, and he experienced how the gringos in the Austin colony wanted to take over Tejano-Mexicano lands. Cortina recognized the Texas-Mexico border at the Nueces River and not the Rio Grande River as falsely claimed by the Slave Republic of Texas. The Nueces strip as it has become known in history became the contested lands and in 1845 when the US annexed Texas, the US military immediately invaded the Nueces Strip in hopes of sparking a conflict and possible war with Mexico. The War against Mexico by the United States started in the battle of Palo Alto near present day Brownsville, homelands of Cheno Cortina. He enlisted and fought in the Mexican Army as Calvary and he defended the nation from the imperialist expansion of the northern neighbor.

Cortina's anger with the new system of the Texas Republic and later the United States, grew as he witnessed the land grab, violence and numerous injustices against the Tejano-Mexicano population with the gringo Justice system doing nothing; crimes with impunity. He grew tired of the gross injustice and fought back 'Defending the Mexican name in Texas' (Jerry Thompson's book).

Cortina organized an army 'Los Aguilas Negras', and fought a protracted guerrilla armed struggle and revolution against the Slave Republic of Texas; against the United States federal troops, the Texas Rangers, the Civil Militias, and the Mexican Army beginning in 1859. It was then he took over Brownsville, Texas and issued his first revolutionary proclamation. He fought until his imprisonment by Dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1877, (in exchange for US recognition of his Presidency). Cortina died on October 30, 1884 in Mexico City still under house arrest and unable to return to the lands he loved a defended on the border.

With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed in 1848, the Rio Grande River became the new border dividing Mexico and Texas. Many families on the river ended divided by the border with family relatives and lands holding on either side of the rio grande river. Cortina while in Mexico defended President Benito Juarez against the Bonaparte French invasion of Mexico and the forceful installation of Maximiliano and Carlotta as new emperors of Mexico. Juarez was driven into exile in El Paso and CD Juarez. Cortino fought against the French in the famous battle of Pueblo on the Cinco de Mayo, defeating the French invaders momentarily. Cortina was an avowed Republican and hated the monarchy. By the end of the war of reform and then against the French imperialists, Cortina rose to military general and later governor of Tamaulipas. Juan Cheno Cortina fought the Confederate States of the South, during the Civil war and from Mexico's border attacked confederate forces occupying Texas. His attacks on the port of Matamoros were strategic in making it more difficult for the Confederacy to export its cotton through that port, since most ports in the south were blockaded by the federal navy. King cotton was financing the war against the north by the confederate south.

After the Civil war ended Cortina again was attacking the Texas Rangers and the local militias and ranchers who constituted the 'establishment, stealing cattle and horses and extracting revolutionary justice against his enemies and the enemies of Tejano-Mexicanos. Cortina explained to a Mexican Border Commission that he was merely getting back what was originally stolen from the Tejano-Mexicano ranchers by the corrupt and thieving Gringos and Tejano-Mexicano reactionaries. When porforio Diaz violated the no-re-election clause of the constitution of 1857, Cortina rose up against Diaz and allied with Juarez. Diaz held power from 1876 until 1910 when the Madero and Partido Liberal Mexicano (Magonistas) overthrew his rule and forced him to flee Mexico.

Cortina before his death met with Catarino E Garza who came from Brownsville to visit him in Mexico DF and to consult with him in the plans to over throw Diaz by force. It is believed that this meeting took place and Cortina gave Garza all of his support network in South Texas and Northern Mexico in order to enable the republican revolution to continue now under Garza's revolution and reinstitute the 1857 constitution and make the nation whole again. The Garza revolution went from 1888 until 1898 and with some isolated revolts until 1901.

• Cortina fought the Texas Slave Republic
• Cortina fought the racism, terror and savagery of the Texas Rangers
• Cortina fought the US military invasion of Mexico and defended Mexico in the War of 1846-48
• Cortina fought for the Liberal republican Mexican constitution of 1857
• Cortina fought the French imperialist invasion and occupation of Mexico and monarchy
• Cortina fought slavery and the Confederacy during the US Civil War
• Cortina's army included African Americans, Japanese, and Indians, and the poor
• Cortina fought for justice his whole life
• Cortina never surrendered nor was ever defeated even when he lost battles

YES !

Juan N Cheno Cortina was a general, and a anti slavery, anti racist, anti imperialist, republican liberal and avenger of the injustices against Tejano-Mexicanos by gringo expansionists, racists, and capitalist adventurers in Texas and northern Mexico.