En la margen del Río Bravo:
Catarino Garza’s war with the U.S. and Mexico

By Robert Mendoza

I noticed the young Mexican woman as soon as I entered Paris’ Montparnasse Cemetery. She was standing amid a group of Japanese tourists paying homage at Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s tomb. As the Japanese deposited their flowers and tiny bottles of Suntory whisky, I approached her and suggested (in Spanish), "You will, of course, also want to visit Don Porfirio. He’s at your orders, just at the end of the allee, right across from Baudelaire."
She shook her head emphatically. "But," I continued, "I understand there is a movement to return his remains to Mexico." At this, she stamped her foot. "¡Ay, no! We do not want him!"
"Pobrecito," I replied. "What could be left after nearly 90 years?"
"You Tejanos can never understand how we hate him. His evil dictatorship did not harm Texas and its people. For us Mexicans, the blood on his hands will never dry!"
"Yes, but Mexican historians have always occulted the most interesting details. Did you know that Tejanos conspired and fought against Diaz 20 years before the Revolution? Accompany me to Don Porfirio’s tomb and I will tell you the story of the South Texas folk hero, Catarino Garza."
"No, I am going in the opposite direction. This rose is for Jim Morrison."
Details had indeed been occulted from her. The grave of Don Mojo Rising was some 12 Metro stops to the east, but perhaps she had been more accurately advised to avoid the Tejanos of Paris, who can be even worse than the Apaches.

The first 30 years of Catarino Garza’s life gave no clue that he would become the bête noir of Mexican and U.S. authorities in the 1890s, or that he would attain the status of enduring folk hero in South Texas.
Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodriguez was born in his family’s hacienda on November 24, 1859. Since the ranch was several miles distant from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, he was tutored at home during his early years. In late adolescence, he was sent to Hualhuises, Nuevo Leon for formal schooling. Later, Garza returned to Matamoros to attend San Juan College and serve in the National Guard.
In 1880, Garza married Carolina Connor of Brownsville, Texas; the nine-year marriage produced two daughters. Garza’s earliest employment was in the wholesale textile business, working for firms in Brownsville, Laredo, and San Antonio. Later, he became an agent for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, traveling to St. Louis, Missouri and Mexico City.
In St. Louis, Garza also served for a time as Mexican Consul and was appointed a delegate to the National Convention of Wool Industries. He was an enthusiastic Freemason and rapidly ascended to the 23rd Degree. A skillful orator and physically prepossessing (over six feet tall with piercing blue eyes), he was active in the mutualista movement that established worker’s mutual aid societies in Texas and along the Mexican border. By birth, education, and ambition, Catarino Garza seemed anointed for bourgeois success as it was defined at the end of the 19th century. His trajectory was that of a Babbit, not a Bolivar.
However, fatefully (as this is the life of a folk hero), Catarino Garza spurned lucrative gain and opted to become a full-time journalist, inspired by his hatred for the Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz. This was the first step for the boy named Catherine to become international bad news for both Mexico and the United States. Garza had had some previous newspaper experience; his earlier newspaper efforts, such as in El Bien Publico in Brownsville, had been relatively benign -- bland bundles of advertising anchored by editorials that exhorted progressive principles and government reform.
In 1887, Garza moved upriver from Brownsville and ratcheted up the rhetoric in Eagle Pass, Texas. El Libre Pensador proved to be more destructive device than newspaper; locked, loaded, and aimed squarely at the Porfirio Diaz regime. As owner/publisher, Garza’s lacerating articles that exposed governmental abuses, coupled with his vicious personal jibes at the governor of Coahuila, soon had the Mexican Consul crying foul in telegrams to Washington, D.C. In Piedras Negras, hired goons were seen beating up subscribers and dumping Pensadors in the Río Grande. Additionally, the district attorney padlocked the premises of Libre Pensador, leaving its press high and dry, and Garza in jail for 30 days on a charge of criminal libel.
Fearing extradition to darkest Mexico, Garza fled on his release to Corpus Christi and immediately set up a press for El Comercio Mexicano. Despite the word "commerce" above the fold, Garza had not sold out; his editorials now were weighted with the moral authority granted only by time served.
In the summer of 1888, El Comercio Mexicano accused Río Grande City customs agent Victor Sebree of murder; he had shot Abraham Resendez, a Mexican national charged with robbery, "while attempting to escape." Garza charged that Sebree had been paid by Diaz agents to kill Resendez, who was a political refugee and an enemy of the regime. Sebree, a former Texas Ranger, sued Garza for criminal libel. A week later, Ranger Captain John H. Hughes apprehended Garza near Realitos; he was handcuffed, held overnight at the Rangers’ camp, and then forced to walk back to Río Grande City.
The Starr County ranchero community was outraged by what they viewed as racially motivated mistreatment. Anglos, even those accused of murdering Mexicanos, were routinely released on their own recognizance.
Some three months later in Río Grande City, Garza and Sebree engaged in an armed confrontation, in which the agent wounded Garza. This incident sparked what became known as the Río Grande City Riot. An angry mob quickly surrounded the county courthouse where Sebree had taken refuge. The surging crowd smashed windows, started fires, and demanded justice for Garza. Sebree was spirited away to nearby Fort Ringgold, which was in its turn surrounded and besieged. Enterprising members of the lynch mob cut the fort’s telegraph wire to prevent reinforcements being summoned. Sebree was lucky; a company of Texas Rangers arrived the next day and dispersed the rioters. Despite having lost the gunfight with Sebree, the crusading editor Garza was well on his way to recognition as a folk hero.
Garza continued to edit El Comercio Mexicano and he entered into partnerships with other politically active newspapermen on the border. In 1890, he divorced his wife and married Concepcion Gonzalez, the daughter of Don Alejandro Gonzalez, one of the wealthiest ranchers in what is now Jim Wells County. Doubtlessly believing the more newspapers the merrier (except for his hapless enemies), Garza set up a press for El Internacional and a revamped El Libre Pensador in his father-in-law’s Palito Blanco ranchhouse.
In July 1891, in the pages of El Libre Pensador, Garza published what can only be described as an unauthorized biography of the mother of Bernardo Reyes, the governor of Nuevo Leon. Apparently, Señora de Reyes (grandmother of Alfonso Reyes, one of the greatest 20th-century Mexican writers), liked her tequila and could outdrink most men. However, Garza claimed that her fiercest appetite was for sex. "She had more lovers than fingers and toes." He went on to name names, including her alleged favorite, a young man known in the red-light district as El Burro de Oro. As might be expected, this issue sold like hotcakes, but many of Garza’s closest political allies thought he had gone too far by compromising the honor of a woman.
In February 1891, Dr. Ignacio Martinez, editor and publisher of El Mundo, was murdered in broad daylight on a Laredo street. Dr. Martinez, a physician and former general in the Mexican army, had been living in exile in Laredo for several years. His activities had gone far beyond Garza’s diatribes, and he had begun purchasing arms and organizing an invasion of Mexico. Garza and Martinez collaborated in political activism, had been business partners, and had developed a close friendship. Garza had no doubts that the triggerman had been hired by the Diaz regime, and Martinez’ assassination was probably the catalyst for Garza’s transformation from pundit to armed revolutionary.
In Hispanic countries, coups d’etat, insurrections, and of course, revolutions, are ritually preceded by pronunciamientos. A pronunciado (usually a frustrated colonel) declares the aims or grievances that have driven him to take up arms against the status quo. Garza held no military commission, but he was armed with a ready wit and a printing press.
Garza’s Plan Revolucionario (proclaimed on the banks of the Río Bravo in September 1891) comprised two sections. The first was a denunciation of the most egregious aspects of Diaz’s misrule: 1) Diaz was corrupt and had diverted government funds to himself and his cronies; 2) Diaz violated democratic principles and ruled as an absolute despot; 3) Diaz had endangered the sovereignty of Mexico by incurring domestic and foreign debt; 4) Diaz controlled elections, ensuring that he would be President for life.
The second section of Garza’s Plan detailed the reforms that his revolution would provide: 1) restoration of the Constitution of 1857 with its guarantee of effective suffrage -- no re-election; 2) codification of states’ rights; 3) repayment of the national and foreign debt; 4) Forbidding military leaders to hold public office; 5) distribution of pub-lic lands to those willing to cultivate them. Garza’s Plan set out the ideals, principles, and guarantees that the Mexican people have pursued like a mirage since 1821.
In all probability, Garza was unappreciative of the ironic parallels that he shared with his adversary. Diaz had preceded Garza in his Brownsville exile. The 1872 Plan de Tuxtepec had been conceived in the lower Río Grande Valley where Diaz had raised funds, recruited men, and in 1876, launched his invasion of Mexico against Benito Juarez’ successor Lerdo De Tejada.
Catarino Garza’s first armed incursion into Mexico occurred on September 15, 1891 near Mier, Tamaulipas. Garza rode at the head of some 40 men, several of whom were mounted on his father-in-law’s horses. (A successful Garza recruiting ploy was to offer a good horse and a new Winchester carbine.) The raiders did not approach any town or city as they roamed the chaparral between Reynosa and Cuidad Camargo. A few days later, without having fired a shot, the revolutionists returned to Starr County.
On November 7, a force of 70 Garzistas entered Mexico. Approaching the hamlet of Agualeguas, they were warned that the citizens were armed and awaiting their arrival. The band chose discretion over valor and turned back; however, they were overtaken by a troop of Mexican soldiers at the aptly named Derramadero de las Ovejas (spilling out of the sheep). Fortunately, the Garzistas were in close proximity to the Río Grande, and they hastily re-entered the United States.
On December 20, 1891, the Garzistas, this time led by Carmen Ibañez, raided Las Tortillas Ranch near Guerrero, Tamaulipas. A detachment of 12 Mexican troops were surprised and routed. The next day, however, Captain Pedro Reyes, leading 40 men of the Mexican army’s 13th Division, avenged the loss by scattering the Garzistas who fled in confusion, leaving behind 40 horses, several rifles, and six dead men.
These insignificant, often Chaplinesque skirmishes of the "Garza War" were grossly exaggerated by reporters for regional newspapers -- most egregiously by the San Antonio Daily Express. Wire reports from the "field" of decisive battles involving thousands of troops were duly parroted by the New York World and the New York Times. Readers of dailies in Montana, Chicago, and San Francisco were kept abreast of Garza’s exploits and were led to expect the impending fall of Diaz’ regime. The Diaz government was not at all amused by the journalists’ premature reporting of its demise. Diplomatic pressure forced Washington to deploy the U.S. Cavalry in Garza’s pursuit. In turn, Harper’s Weekly (the premier illustrated news magazine of the day), dispatched to the border its managing editor and writer, Richard Harding Davis.
For Davis, the man who would become dean of war correspondents, the Garza War was a baptism by fire. He would later cover the Greco-Turkish War, the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the theatre of his greatest fame, the Spanish-American War. Upon debarking the train in Laredo, Davis hired a horse; for weeks he shared the discomforts of the South Texas Calvary troopers. His jocular, lively reports, illustrated by the great Western artist Frederick Remington, appeared serially in Harper’s and later in his book, The West Through a Car Window.
At this late date, it is probably impossible to determine why the San Antonio Daily Express boosted the Garza movement to such a national high profile. Possibly, it was the work of a well-placed Garza confederate within the paper, or it may be that the editors’ were ideologically well disposed toward any Diaz opponent. San Antonio was perennially teeming with disgruntled Mexican refugees. A jaundiced eye might view the pro-Garza hyperbole as a "yellow journalism" tactic design to stir controversy and increase circulation.
Whatever the motivation for exaggerating Garza’s threat to Diaz, it ultimately led to the former’s demise. Mexican officials formally protested to Washington about the U.S. press’ distortions of fact. Mexican Finance Minister Matias Romero published an articulate and convincing dismissal of the Garza threat in the North American Review. Romero accurately pointed out that the raiding parties were always miniscule and had never received any encouragement from the Mexican population. He lacerated the U.S. journalists for their lack of intellectual honesty and held them responsible for deleterious effects on international tourism, commerce, and capital investment.
The U.S. Department of State’s response was to pressure the U.S. Army to enforce the extant neutrality laws and arrest Garza and his associates. Soon, Catarino Garza (and any mexicano unfortunate enough to be identified with his raiders) was being tracked by units of the U.S. Army. It became clear that the days of raiding isolated Mexican ranches and galloping back to Texas were numbered. The secretary of the Army had ordered Garza’s back door slammed shut.
It was during this tense period that mexicano raiders, identified as Garzistas, attacked a squad of Third Cavalrymen encamped near Retamal, Texas on December 21, 1891. The attackers rode away after killing Corporal C. H. Edstrom and wounding an officer. Edstrom’s death (the first U.S. fatality and an Anglo) galvanized public opinion nationally. There was outrage in Texas, and within days, Adjutant General W. H. Mabry had ordered Texas Ranger Company E (led by Captain J. S. McNeel) and Company F (captained by the legendary John A. Brooks) to South Texas. The state legislature increased the Ranger appropriation from $40,000 to $50,000, thus enabling the commission of special Rangers.
Although the Garzistas would continue to make incursions into Mexico for another year, the Edstrom killing ensured that they would more often play the role of quarry than hunter. They attracted few recruits, but continued to enjoy the support of the majority of the mexicano population in South Texas. The military authorities complained that not only were they hindered by the hostility of the locals, but that Garza also received aid from Anglo law enforcement officials, including deputies, sheriffs, and even U.S. marshals. (Anglo officials were an extreme minority in the overwhelmingly mexicano population of South Texas. They depended on mexicano votes and the backing of wealthy mexicano landowners and officeholders. Many of these Anglos were married to mexicanas or engaged in business relationships with Garza backers.)
An idea of the numerical insignificance of the Garza forces can be gauged by the numbers of U.S. troop fielded to confront them. Only two garrisons, Fort McIntosh in Laredo and Ringgold Barracks in Río Grande City, were active in the pursuit. Each post was comprised of a troop of cavalry and a company of infantry (each of which consisted of 40 men). The largest force ever sent out was 40 men and an officer. After rumors and misleading information became endemic, less than a dozen troopers would sally forth.
Two cavalry captains were saddled with the responsibility of getting Garza; they became the cynosure of reporters’ attention in the closing months of 1891. Captain Francis Hardie of Fort McIntosh G Troop submitted to extensive interviews by Richard Harding Davis along with many of the newspapermen who traveled to Laredo. Hardie endured long days in the saddle, crisscrossing the chaparral in search of the Garzistas. Frederick Remington immortalized his scruffy determination in the pages of Harper’s Weekly.
The other captain was John Gregory Bourke, commander of Fort Ringgold. By 1891, Bourke had completed 16 continuous years of frontier service; he had distinguished himself against the Lakota and Cheyenne at the Rosebud battles (a week before Custer’s Last Stand), and had participated in the capture of Geronimo in Apacheria. However, Bourke was not just a rough-riding cavalryman. In November 1891, his history/biography published by Scribners’, Along with Crook, was selling briskly throughout the United States.
Bourke, like other Victorian polymaths (Captain Richard Burton comes to mind) was a soldier/scientist. Taking advantage of his military assignments in the West, he had evolved into an ethnologist. Over the years, he accumulated masses of notes on the Sioux, Cheyenne, Navaho, Hopi, and Apache peoples. Often without access to libraries, he had written several books and published scores of articles. Sigmund Freud wrote a forward to the German edition of one of his monographs. For the modern reader, Bourke’s ethnology is flawed by his era’s notions of social developmentalism, excessive theorizing, and racist evolution schemes. Nonetheless, Along with Crook, a classic of Western American literature and history, remains in print today.
What was such a man doing commanding a fourth-rate garrison in dusty South Texas? Although Bourke was an acute observer of the minutiae of Native American mores, he was an absolute bungler when dealing with army politics. This exemplary soldier, who had won the Medal of Honor at 16 in the Civil War and later graduated from West Point, remained a captain for 12 years, and was never promoted again. His greatest mentors, historian Francis Parkman and the Director of the Board of Ethnology John Wesley Powell, were civilians. Bourke refused to restrain himself from criticizing the army’s mistreatment of Native Americans. His publications advocating justice for the Chiricahua Apaches (exiled to Alabama) and condemnations of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre ensured his transfer from scholarly duty in Washington, D.C., to Río Grande City just in time for the Garza revolution.
Bourke, ever the serving soldier, confined his resentments to his diary and proceeded to pursue Garza with a zeal that matched Captain Hardie’s. Bourke often went above and beyond his duties as post commandant. Frustrated at the false information routinely supplied by Garza sympathizers ("Never have I served in a place where it is so hard to get at the truth; everyone lies."), Bourke used his fluent Spanish to gather his own intelligence. Disguised as a "greaser," he frequented bars and village socials where he "drank the fiercest of mescal and the vilest of whisky." Bourke also established a network of undercover Mexican American and Mexican informants.
These forays in mufti were not wasted on the ethnologist. Bourke managed to botanize with the aid of curanderas, and he assiduously interviewed all informants about the folklore of the region. He used these notes to write articles such as "The Folk Foods of the Lower Río Grande Valley," "Folklore of the Plants and Animals near Fort Ringgold," and "Popular Medicine, Customs, and Superstitions of the Río Grande." He also produced the pioneer study of pastorelas (shepherds’ plays) in "The Miracle Play of the Río Grande" in the 1893 Journal of American Folklore.
Scholarship notwithstanding, Bourke was determined to avenge Corporal Edstrom’s death at the hands of the Garzistas. He had concluded that they were no Robin Hoods and now constituted a hostile military force. He ordered the Third Cavalry troopers to shoot any armed Garzista on sight. (In violation of army regulations, many of the troopers carried 10-gauge double-barreled shotguns.)
On December 28, Captain J. A. Brooks and 15 Texas Rangers reported to Bourke’s headquarters. The following day, the Rangers confronted and dispersed a group of pronunciados bivouacked at La Granjeta Ranch in Starr County. On the last day of 1891, Bourke’s men routed some 200 Garzistas, wounding and capturing Sixto Longoria, one of Garza’s key lieutenants.
Meanwhile, on the Mexican side of the river, Diaz’ General Lorenzo García was conducting a military operation that was characterized as "a reign of terror," in which hundreds of suspected Garzistas were summarily shot. General García raided the Mexican army camp at Guerrero and arrested Colonel Nieves Hernandez for aiding Garza. The general’s firing squads were also kept busy with Garzistas "extradited" from Texas by U.S. marshals and other law enforcement officials, who were paid bounties by the Mexican government. However, popular support for Garza increased in direct proportion to the severity of the Mexican Army’s repression.
The undermanned U.S. Army units were increasingly frustrated in searching 500 square miles of mesquite and chaparral populated with hostile mexicanos and Anglos who sympathized with Garza. Many of the troops quoted General Philip Sheridan’s "If I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell." As they sweltered on their horses, Bourke vented his disgust with the South Texas landscape and its denizens in his diary notes (later the source of "An American Congo," his acerbic valedictory to the Valley).
Informed by spies that Catarino Garza was present there, Bourke raided Palito Blanco Ranch in February 1892. The troops searched the ranch house and arrested Garza’s father-in-law, Alejandro Gonzalez. Garza’s saddle and his unfinished autobiography were seized in a camp nearby. (Bourke carefully labeled the "Vaquero saddle" and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution. Garza’s autobiography, La Logica de los Hechos, was seized as evidence for the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas, which was sitting in Brownsville and hearing cases of violations of U.S. neutrality laws. The document was later returned to Garza’s family, who donated it to the University of Texas.)
With the arrest of Don Alejandro, Bourke was treading dangerous ground. Many wealthy and politically important South Texans helped fund Garza’s efforts and shielded him from prosecution. Brownsville was home to Garza’s earliest personal contacts and ardent backers. Don Manuel Guerra, the wealthiest landowner in Starr County (the site of Fort Ringgold), actively supported the pronunciados with supplies and ammunition. Starr County’s Judge James Nix and Sheriff W. W. Shelley openly sided with Garza. Rancher Bernardo de la Garza provided safe haven on his 80,000 acres. Upriver in Laredo, Garza sympathizers and financiers included city officials Raymond Martin, Honore Ligarde, and J. Armengol. Webb County treasurer and landowner Antonio M. Bruni presented Garza with an engraved ivory-handled pistol. Bruni’s generous donations of horses, arms, and ammunition would later earn him a federal indictment.
Why were these prominent men willing to contribute so generously to Garza’s cause? Why would Bruni, who owned 400,000 acres and many businesses, risk prosecution? The key is not in Garza’s personal charisma; many of these men had also backed Francisco Ruiz Sandoval’s aborted 1890 invasion and the schemes of the murdered Ignacio Martinez. It has been argued that border rancheros, businessmen, and officials were actively anti-Diaz for the following reasons: his government was too reactionary to stimulate capitalism; many of Diaz’ political exiles and refugees lived along the border; and the officials and patrones pretended to be pro-Garza to get votes and ensure their workers’ loyalty.
The months of April through June 1892 witnessed more raids attributed to Garza. On May 10, the New York Times reported that 175 men, led by Julian Flores, crossed into Mexico near Ramireño, but were forced to return after 10 men were killed in action. During June, Garzistas were sighted near the hamlets of El Ebano and El Talisman near Río Grande City. It was becoming clear even to the military that opportunistic horse and cattle thieves were shouting "¡Que viva Catarino!" as they rounded up stock in isolated ranches on both sides of the border.
On June10, 1892, Texas Ranger J. S. McNeel telegraphed Adjutant General Mabry in Austin to confirm earlier reports that Catarino Garza had fled the state. Informants in the Alejandro Gonzalez household stated that Garza, fearing that Special Rangers were closing in on him, had taken refuge at the home of Sheriff Buckley in Duval County. (Sheriff Buckley was later tried in federal court for harboring Garza. His son, William F. Buckley, Sr., became enormously wealthy by practicing corporate law in Mexico on behalf of the Texas Oil Company, later Texaco.) The Special Rangers, more numerous and stealthy than the cumbersomely maneuvering army units, carried federal warrants charging Garza with high treason for killing Corporal Edstrom.
Garza made his way to Houston where he boarded a ship bound for New Orleans, Miami, Nassau, and Jamaica. He eventually came to ground at Matina, Costa Rica, where he got his hands on a printing press long enough to publish his final salvo aimed at Diaz, "La Era de Tuxtepec en Mexico o Sea Rusia en America, 1891," a pamphlet that compares Mexico’s political climate to that of Czarist Russia.
Notwithstanding that its eponym had fled to Central America, the Garza War raged on (mostly in the newspapers). Garzistas were reported absconding with livestock in the Lower Río Grande Valley during the summer and fall of 1892. In Mexico, a court martial found Colonel Nieves Hernandez guilty of colluding with Garza at Guerrero, Tamaulipas. Hernandez was locked up in Mexico City’s notorious Tlatelolco military prison, where he eventually died.
On December 10, Garza lieutenant Maximo Martinez led 100 raiders across the river into San Ignacio, Tamaulipas. The 40-man border post was easily routed and the bodies of the Mexican officers were burned. Several soldiers deserted and returned to Texas with the Garzistas.
Also in December, Bourke was ordered to report to Secretary of War Redfield Proctor in Washington about the situation in the Lower Río Grande Valley. Bourke suggested that Apache scouts be brought in as trackers. He also recommended that the federal government hire Mexican Americans as customs collectors, marshals, and inspectors. The Garza affair had demonstrated how the government had failed to attract Mexican Americans to its own interests and away from those of local politicians in Texas. It is ironic that Bourke, the agent of gringo imperialism, was advocating equal opportunity, nay, the preferential hiring of Mexican Americans more than half a century before the advent of La Raza Unida.
In February 1893, Bourke led a 40-man cavalry troop and a detachment of Seminole-Negro scouts to the La Grulla Ranch community near Río Grande City. All the resident males were rounded up and their names taken. No Garzistas were arrested, but several in the community were enraged by the deployment of Black troops against them.
The Black-Seminoles soon returned to Fort Clark in West Texas, and on February 24, Bourke was indicted in Starr County on charges of false imprisonment and assault during the La Grulla raid. The Mexicano resentment that had seethed since the arrest of Don Alejandro Gonzalez was given full rein. Political pressure from South Texans forced Governor James Stephen Hogg to ask the army to investigate Bourke’s tactical use of unlawful arrest. Many of the complainants were officials that Bourke had accused of helping Garza. Rumors circulated that Bourke, a devout Irish Catholic, had desecrated churches. Garza surrogates at El Bien Publico labeled Bourke "The New Attila, the Scourge of God." Captain Bourke began spending more time in court in Brownsville, Río Grande City, and San Antonio than in the saddle. The shooting phase of the Garza War ended in the spring of 1893; now the shouting partisans would take center stage.
Now that more than a century has elapsed, the most intriguing question remains: What was Catarino Garza thinking? Porfirio Diaz had launched his successful revolt in the same region (with fewer men and resources), but Diaz was a brilliant and seasoned general. Garza was no military man and made no effort to become one; he raided only the most isolated of Mexican ranch communities and then hightailed back across the border at the least sign of resistance. His harsher critics assert that he was merely a neurotic l ivestock rustler. (Bourke referred to him as a "wife-beating sewing machine salesman;" Texas Ranger William S. Sterling called him "that damn pseudo-editor.") Garza’s surviving editorials and autobiography contradict such an assessment.
However, admirers of Garza’s motivations, such as Americo Paredes in A Texas Mexican Cancionero, go too far in the other direction by glossing over his ineptitudes. The Garza War was a minor, very distant annoyance that never threatened the Diaz regime. The crusading editor Garza’s greatest achievement was to stimulate other newspapermen to publish grossly exaggerated accounts of his insignificant raids into Mexico.
It must be noted that Garza did not impress all his journalistic brethren. The editor of Río Grande City’s El Cromo continually lampooned Garza and his rag-tag pronunciados. A favorite ploy was to compare Garza’s commissioning of officers to a food pantry. A man showing up with a large sack of beans became a lieutenant. A donation of a turkey with mole garnered an appointment as full colonel.
On March 7, 1892, an editorial writer for the Laredo Daily News expressed outrage at "this Garza bug-a-boo" that discouraged tourism and international trade, and depressed real estate values. "He is no true friend of this section of Texas who will not do all in his power to secure the arrest of this visionary who thinks he can conquer Mexico by hiding in a hole in Texas."
Garza was indeed a visionary, but one adept at self-promotion. A sober assessment of the facts leads to the conclusion that his legions only existed on paper. Garza claimed to have 1,300 troops in the states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Guerrero. Documents seized by the Cavalry contained details of hierarchy, supplies, and expenses. Garza refers to himself as Commander of the Constitutionalist Army of the North. He printed and issued officers’ commissions "under the authority of the Provisional Interim Supreme Government of the Nation." Garza boasted of the support of 181 officers and 63 generals within Mexico.
Not one of the Mexican interior forces fired a shot in the three years of the Garza War. Did these phantom fifth columns (or nuclei, as Americo Paredes referred to them) ever exist? Why did these tiradores of Chihuahua, the guerilleros of Coahuila, and the carabineros of Guerrero never make themselves known? Were the "tactically vital" documents seized by the Cavalry merely the wish list of a martial poseur? One has to conclude that Garza was either delusional or was cynically attempting to stimulate recruiting and funding.
Ultimately, Catarino Garza earned his spurs as a folk hero by inspiring loyalty that enabled him to escape capture. He nicely fills a corrido niche between Juan Nepucemo Cortina in the 1870s and Gregorio Cortez in 1901. Regrettably, Catarino lacked the fearsome firepower of the former and the true grit of the latter.
Catarino Garza’s greatest military assets (defensive) were the people and landscape of the lower Río Grande Valley. He was able to use them to great effect, considering that neither he nor most of his chief lieutenants were captured by the forces that tracked them for nearly three years. The inhabitants of the lower valley constituted a unique and isolate culture that was not quite Texan or Mexican. Outsiders who visited the region and committed their impressions to print were often critical, if not offensive.
"It is a well-known fact that the least desirable elements of two bordering countries collect on the frontier: smugglers, cattle thieves, fugitives from justice, people compelled to leave their country for their country’s good . . . they are ever ready to undertake any enterprise, no matter how illegal . . . these people are generally ignorant, few being able to read or write, and easily influenced by unscrupulous members of their own race."
This description is not from "An American Congo," Captain Bourke’s "racist" diatribe. Its source is Mexican Finance Minister Matias Romero’s attempt to explain Garza’s early success in Texas. Captain Bourke spared no words on "the degraded, turbulent, ignorant, and superstitious" South Texans he encountered, but was understandably frustrated that most refused to inform on Garza. The 500 square miles patrolled by the Cavalry and Rangers had few towns, and most of the predominantly mexicano inhabitants lived on widely scattered and isolated ranches. They were a suspicious, close-mouthed lot; especially when confronted by heavily armed gringos in uniform.
The landscape into which Garza vanished was (and is) some of the most rugged in Texas: vast impenetrable expanses of mesquite, cactus, and chaparral. Intense heat (often 110 degrees in the shade) is coupled with the oppressive Gulf humidity that prostrates men and exhausts horses. The Texas-Mexican railroad did not service the areas where Garza operated. All maneuvers in Garza’s pursuit were by horse, mule, or (roads permitting) in sturdy wagons. The troops or Rangers would arrive at a ranch after hours of hard riding, only to be met with empty stares or elusive gestures. "All these damn Mexicans are damned liars" or some variant thereof appears constantly in the 3rd Cavalry reports of Captains Bourke and Hardie. Ranger Captains Brooks, Rogers, and McNeel’s remarks on the subject are unprintable in a family publication.
Catarino Garza never returned to Texas. During his exile in Costa Rica, he became involved with a group of Colombians plotting to overthrow their oppressive dictator. On March 28, 1895, Garza was killed at Bocas del Toro, Colombia (now Panama), while leading an attack on a police barracks. Apparently Garza believed that once Colombia was liberated, his friends would help him organize and land a filibustering army on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Garza’s most obdurate and colorful nemesis, Captain John Gregory Bourke, escaped prosecution and almost certain conviction in Starr County by being appointed to a curator position with the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The charges were dropped on the condition that he never return to Río Grande City.
In July 1894, Captains Bourke and Hardie (still accompanied by Frederic Remington) were ordered to report to Chicago and break the Pullman railroad strike organized by socialist Eugene V. Debs. Bourke, who had been appointed president of the American Folklore Society in the year that Catarino Garza was killed, only survived Garza by several months. Called the Paper Medicine Man (because he was constantly writing) by the Chircahua Apaches, Bourke died on June 8, 1896 of an aortal aneurysm at the age of 49.
I could tell you that the last time I visited with Don Americo Paredes, he sang "Versos de despedida" for me, but I would be a Mexican liar. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith accompanied me to the maestro’s office, but we only shared border witticisms. Don Americo was too ill to sing or to supervise my graduate work on Mayan folktales.
The Catarino Garza corrido that follows was collected by Celso G. Guajardo in En Busca de Catarino Garza, Monterrey, 1989.

Palito Blanco,
Porque no quieres contar
A donde fue Catarino
Despues que se rebelo?

Ya nadie quiere saber
En el condado de Duval
Si por aqui pas Catarino
De vuelta de revolucionar.

Solo cenizas quedaron
En los montes y barrancos
Monturas, cartucheras, y cartuchos
Guardados para otras piscas.

A donde fue Catarino?
Con sus planes pronunciados
Con sus lucha insurgente
Por el Mexico Americano.

Palito Blanco,
Why won’t you tell
Where Catarino went
After he rebelled?

Nobody wants to know anymore
In Duval County
If Catarino came through here
After he rebelled.

Only ashes remain
On the hills and cliffs
Saddles, cartridge belts, bullets,
Saved for other harvests.

Where did Catarino go?
With his revolutionary declaration
With his indominable struggle
For the Mexican American.