Ever since September 1859, when he led a daring raid into the young border city of Browns-ville, Texas, Juan Cortina has been enshrined in the folklore of the lower U.S.-Mexico border as a valiant opponent of Anglo hegemony and racial chauvinism. Jerry Thompson’s biography is not only the most thorough and exhaustively researched treatment of Cortina to date, but it also breaks new ground in placing Cortina’s political and military exploits in the context of the wider ferment of nineteenth-century Mexican politics.
Born in 1824 in the river town of Camargo, Tamaulipas, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina grew into adulthood as his home region, the old Spanish colony of Nuevo Santander, was remade by the U.S.-Mexico border. A member of a prosperous ranching family, Cortina fought with the Mexican forces in the early battles of the U.S.-Mexican War but at the war’s end returned to his ranches in what had become south...
