In rewriting and publishing his dissertation (a study that was completed 15 years ago for the University of Texas), Andrés Tijerina joins that recent generation of scholars who have established the Mexican and Tejano phase of Southwestern American history. Because of works by David Weber, Gilberto Hinojosa, David Montejano, Samuel Lowrie, and now Andrés Tijerina, the history of the Anglo-American frontier can no longer exclude Hispanic and Mexican elements.
Using primary materials from Spanish, Mexican, and Texan archives, Tijerina reconstructs the story of the legacy of Hispanic influences on Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo Texas. Tejano (Texan of Hispanic descent) settlement consisted of three distinct regions: Nacogdoches in northeastern Texas, the Béxar (San Antonio)-Goliad region, and the Río Grande ranching frontier between the Nueces River and the Río Grande. These were the centers of Tejano culture in which frontier concerns dictated presidio or military colonies populated with mestizos, Canary Islanders, and Tlascalan Indians. Spanish institutions, such as the municipio and the ayuntamiento, were retained during the Mexican period, while a Tejano justice system evolved that dealt with land ownership, water use, community rights, local autonomy, education, law, and other aspects of a ranching society.
The transition from a Tejano to an Anglo society was characterized by the transformation of Tejano laws, customs, and institutions into Anglo forms. For example, the Texas Rangers are a direct descendant of the juez de campo (a kind of rural policeman and judge) and the compañía volante (flying squadron) of the Tejano era. The flying squadron was a mounted group of up to 70 armed men who enforced the Tejano system of frontier justice. Sam Houston came to espouse the idea of flying squadrons in the form of Texas Rangers. The Rangers, from a Mexican point of view, were midway on the evolutionary scale between the compañía volante of colonial times and the rurales of late nineteenth-century Mexico.
A major theme of Tijerina’s book is that liberalism and the cause of local autonomy dominated the Tejano period’s community-minded, municipio-oriented politics. This liberalism went further than the federalism of the Mexican Constitution of 1824, and after 1830 it was constantly under attack from conservatives in Coahuila as well as Mexico City. One peculiar quality of Tejano liberalism was its proslavery stance, a position popular with the Anglo colonizers. Yet when the Texas revolt began in 1836, Tejanos soon found themselves hated, distrusted, and misused by both Mexicans and Anglos. The Anglos, however, retained and incorporated the thrust of Tejano values; they institutionalized Tejano notions of justice in their laws and legal systems, giving Texas its peculiar flavor as the most sovereign of these United States (for example, in control over its public domain, mineral rights, and community property laws). Tijerina’s study is highly recommended to students of greater Southwestern history.
