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Armando-Alonzo.Pdf THE IMPACT OF MEXICAN DEVELOPMENTS ON THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF SOUTH TEXAS 1848-1930 Armando Alonzo Texas A & M University INTRODUCTION With the end of the U.S.-Mexican War, a new international border was created along the Rio Grande that led to the rise of a dynamic binational frontier in South Texas. Settled by the Spaniards in the eighteenth century, South Texas encompasses the territory along the river from Brownsville to Del Rio, northward to San Antonio and southeasterly to Victoria. The region can be divided into three districts: 1. the Lower Valley between the Nueces River and the Río Grande; 2. the Upper Rio Grande in the Eagle Pass and Del Rio areas; and 3. the San Antonio district including lands towards the Gulf Coast (See Map 1).1 This study examines the rise of this binational border during the period from 1848 to 1930 with emphasis on economic development in South Texas and Mexico’s impact on it. This long-view approach allows for comparison of two eras in which thousands of Mexican immigrants settled in South Texas. This history is divided into two natural periods: 1848 to 1900 and 1900 to 1930, a division that permits us to see continuity and change from one era to another. While this study benefits from a growing historiography on border and transnational studies, the literature relevant to Texas and its border with Mexico is limited and generalized. There are indeed older histories of the Mexican immigrants and their adaptation to life in the U.S., while the newer studies emphasize the twentieth century and are concerned with specific themes, communities, or regions.2 Rarely do any of these accounts present the story of the Tejano or native-born of Mexican descent and of the Mexican immigrant. Emilio Zamora’s 2 history of the Mexican worker in the early twentieth century history of Texas is the best corrective.3 This study seeks to broaden our understanding of the history of South Texas by focusing on the economic role of the Mexican-origin population. This analysis shows that, contrary to popular history and scholarly study, Mexicanos came from diverse backgrounds and that they had a significant role in shaping the emergence of a binational economy and society of South Texas. PART I, 1848-1900 In 1853 an anonymous writer in De Bow’s Journal, a highly respected authority out of New Orleans, engaged in wishful thinking more than analysis when he matter-of-factly wrote that “the Mexican and aborigines [of Texas] are reduced to a cypher, and will soon disappear.” Contrary to such uninformed Anglo views, the number of Mexicanos in the state rose sharply, especially in the Lower Valley. Its population grew fivefold from over 15,000 in 1860 to 79,925 inhabitants in 1900. An estimated 85 percent of the total population in the Lower Valley consisted of Tejanos who were native and foreign born.4 South Texas towns and cities grew at varying rates, for the economy lacked uniformity in such a large territory and geographical advantages favored one town over another. As commerce with Mexico increased and as ranching expanded through the grasslands, towns grew in population and economic activity expanded. Merchants, artisans, and laborers found new opportunities in urban communities, while ranchers, cowboys, shepherds, and other rural workers went to work on the farms and ranches of the region to supply foodstuffs and livestock to local consumers, including the military, and distant marketplaces. Military contracts were an important source of income to settlers. In one of the first reports on government spending in 3 Texas, Col. J. K. F. Mansfield remarked that contracts, salaries, wages, and other costs amounted to $990,957 in 1855 and $635,322 in 1856. Brownsville and the upriver towns of Santa María, Edinburg, Río Grande City, Roma, Zapata, and Laredo served the surrounding ranchers and became bases of operation for merchants. The latter bought livestock, skins, bones, wool and agricultural produce, usually corn, cotton, and vegetables, and they imported Mexican livestock, silver, and other metals. These merchants also supplied the local populace with imported foodstuffs and luxury items. Exact figures for the commerce are difficult to locate but state legislator and merchant John L. Haynes of Río Grande City claimed that by the 1850's it amounted to several million dollars.5 Brownsville’s occupational structure made it the leading urban and commercial center of the Lower Valley and reflected the differences between Mexicano and Anglo employment. According to census data, in 1880 478 Mexicano workers (49%) were employed as laborers, domestics, or other unskilled, as compared to only 8 percent of the Anglo males. Anglo males clearly dominated white-collar jobs (195 versus 165) with the exception of grocers and kindred businesses in which Mexicans were numerous. Artisans still played a key role in urban employment, with 287 Mexicano (30%) as compared to 86 Anglo (27%). Small numbers of Mexicans and Anglos were ranchers and cowboys, but relatively speaking, they constituted a very small percentage of the male workforce in Brownsville.6 Annexation brought a measure of stability to Laredo, and by the mid-1850s Laredo and Eagle Pass, together, handled a half-million dollars in trade mostly with Mexico. Still, Laredo remained a small town for more than thirty years after the war with Mexico. The town’s best growth accelerated with the arrival of intercontinental railroads in the 1880s, and it displaced 4 Brownsville as the most important town in the Lower Valley. Laredo’s population soared to 11,319 in 1890 and consisted of a sizable enclave of American and European settlers and hundreds of Mexican immigrants attracted to work activities in the ranching industry, railroad shops, coal mining, and urban jobs. The 1890s brought slower growth.7 Corpus Christi’s fortune prior to the early 1880s fluctuated wildly. This was due mainly to its lack of an adequate deepwater port and the position of San Antonio as the main interior port for the Mexican and western Texas trade. Founded in 1838, Corpus Christi had enjoyed some trading with the Mexican frontier, but it never rivaled Brownsville. With a population of about 1,000 in 1853, Corpus Christi was a hamlet of Anglo ranchers, farmers, merchants, seamen, and artisans, sprinkled with a few rancheros and herders. In 1854 steamships began regular runs to New Orleans. This encouraged local business and ranching interests, as Morgan Line steamers transported beef cattle to distant markets. By 1880 its population had increased to 4,000, and its trade had a value of two million dollars. With the building of the Texas Mexican Railway from Corpus Christi to Laredo in 1881 and subsequent channel and port improvements, Corpus Christi entered a period of expansion, replacing Brownsville in the 1880s as the most important seaport in the region. In the year ending August 31, 1883 the total value of all imports and exports at Corpus Christi was $2,711,196, compared to $2,190,512 at Brownsville.8 The ranching boom also gave impetus to the growth of new towns in the interior of the Lower Valley with the founding of San Diego and Benavides in the western Nueces County. In the 1870s this district was organized as Duval County. Tejanos, Anglos, and a few Europeans were attracted to these towns. Of the two, San Diego, which catered to the local trade in livestock and wool, was the most active.9 5 In the Upper Valley district, Eagle Pass and Del Río grew slowly and served as trade centers to Mexico. Their growth was limited due to sporadic Indian raids and insolation from the more settled sections of Texas. Most of the lands in the surrounding countryside were devoted to stock raising, with only some Mexicans engaged in farming. The merchants were European and Anglo, while the artisans, cowboys, and herders were nearly all Mexicano. A few Mexicans owned livestock, but nearly all of the ranchers were Anglo or European. Consequently, this district was not so visibly Mexicano as the Lower Valley.10 Away from the Río Grande, San Antonio and Victoria were the most important cities, and Mexicans persisted in rural enclaves at Goliad, Refugio, and San Patricio. These settlers traced their roots primarily to Spanish settlements and to Mexican Texas, when it was a joint state with Coahuila (1824-1835).11 Unfortunately, the events of the Texas Revolt in 1835 and 1836 had triggered antagonisms between the Mexican natives and the Anglo and European settlers whom the Mexican Government had allowed to populate Texas. Consequently, Mexican rancheros experienced considerable land loss and a temporary depopulation took place. By the 1860s social stability was restored and the Mexicans returned to Victoria and Goliad, where the greatest conflict had occurred.12 Their number was not very large during this period, and there was some migration from Mexico in the late nineteenth century.13 In effect, this historically Mexicano district was not as dynamic as the Lower Valley. Social Consequences An 1878 memorial to the U.S. Congress urging the construction of a railroad from Galveston to South Texas for the defense of the coast claimed that the region was 90 percent Mexican. In 1895, Colonel Anson Mills, U.S. Commissioner to the International Water and 6 Boundary Commission, described the population of the Lower Valley in a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State as “almost exclusively Mexican, perhaps not one in a hundred of any other race, Spanish being almost exclusively spoken, the habits, sympathies, and general character being entirely Mexican.” The Merchant’s Association of New York acknowledged, in 1901, the continuity of the region’s Mexicano character, saying that “nearly everyone speaks both English and Spanish, preferring the latter, as a large element of the old settlers and their descendants are of Mexican origin.”14 Emilia Schunior Ramírez, an educator of Hispanic and Anglo ancestry in the Lower Valley, wrote that “the majority of the pioneers .
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