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'Border Bandits' details Texas Rangers' cruelty
San Antonio Express-News ^ | 9 January 2004 | Jan Jarboe Russell

Posted on 01/09/2005 12:58:30 PM PST by Racehorse

For 90 years, most Mexican Americans in South Texas have known the truth behind the myth — that during a reign of terror in 1915, Texas Rangers randomly lynched, shot and killed Tejanos, whose farms, ranches and land were coveted by Anglo land speculators.

Kirby Warnock, an Anglo baby boomer and Dallas filmmaker who grew up in Texas watching "The Lone Ranger," also grew up on alternative stories about the Rangers from his grandfather, Roland Warnock, a cowboy who worked on Guadalupe Ranch near Edinburg in the mid-1900s.

On Sept. 30, 1915, Roland Warnok witnessed the murder of two unarmed Tejanos — 68-year-old Jesus Bazan and his son-in-law Antonio Longoria — by Rangers in a Model T Ford. Bazan and Longoria were shot in the back, off their horses, as the Rangers passed by. Warnock found their bodies two days later and buried them where they remain today, on a lonely stretch of road 18 miles north of Edinburg.

Kirby Warnock told his grandfather's story — and the larger untold story of South Texas — in a documentary called "Border Bandits," which returns Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Westlakes Shopping Center on Southwest Loop 410. The film was here in November, sold out two theaters at the Alamo Draft-house and is back for an encore. For more information, visit www.drafthouse.com .

(Excerpt) Read more at mysanantonio.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: mexico; tejano; texas; texasranger
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To: wildbill
There's also a good book out on a German_American citizen from Seguin (if you Know Texas, you know we have a large German immigrant pop.) who was caught in the toils of the loyalty Rangers during the war. Can't think of the name off-hand.

One thing that is forgotten that it was not a good time to be a German-American during WWI. You may have heard of sauerkraut being renamed "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "salisbury steak." German language publications, already plagued with declining circulation, were ordered to publish in both English and German so that the censors would know what they were writing about. Many folded as a result. Towns changed their names -- here in NJ, "German Valley" became "Middle Valley." In general, German-Americans were the object of suspicion, though I doubt that they whined about it, unlike modern-day Muslims in the US.

After WWI and the Bolshevik revolution, there was the "red scare" and the Palmer Raids, but that's the subject of another thread.

61 posted on 01/10/2005 3:47:54 AM PST by Siamese Princess
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To: wardaddy

Check your freepmail, please.


62 posted on 01/10/2005 3:54:01 AM PST by Siamese Princess
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To: xm177e2

Bu your reasoning does that mean that the whites that were lynched in Texas after the Civil War for trying to help former slaves start a real life, get reparations or even a little notice. Oh yes the reparations would be paid by the DUMOCRATS.


63 posted on 01/10/2005 4:19:25 AM PST by marty60
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To: Spirited
Isn't this essentially the Aztlan about which they're still crowing and making plans?

Actually, they've lifted their sights a bit. Now NALEO is making plans for the whole enchilada. They've got ideas about using bloc-voting Hispanic votes and unrestrained immigration to make America into their "ho".

64 posted on 01/10/2005 6:02:24 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: FITZ
I guess "minorities" do a lot better when they stay in Africa and Mexico?

If a girl is up for adoption because her father was raping her, would it be okay for the new adoptive parents to beat her? After all, that's an improvement over her former condition, right?

Some things are wrong, and can't be explained away with relativism. The standard of behavior for Americans should not be "treat people at least a little better than whereever they came from" but "don't mistreat people to a non-trivial degree" (glaring at them: OK... making loud remarks about how stupid their race is: OK... making them fear lynch mobs: Not OK)

And I'd point out that a lot of the Africans didn't exactly have a lot of choice in coming here, and neither did many Mexicans (because they used to live here when this was part of Mexico!)

65 posted on 01/10/2005 7:36:31 AM PST by xm177e2 (Stalinists, Maoists, Ba'athists, Pacifists: Why are they always on the same side?)
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To: R. Scott

By the way, the Scot-Irish frontiersmen were prominent in the Texas Rangers--and consequently in the constant 'bandit wars' along the Texas Mexico border. If you look at the rosters, you begin to realize that almost all of them are Scots-Irish names.

In one way, the border troubles took on the aspect of a feud between rival clans of Mexicans and Scots-Irish.

Read the new book on the ScotsIrish by James E. Webb:
Born Fighting or how the Scots-Irish shaped America.


66 posted on 01/10/2005 7:46:48 AM PST by wildbill
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To: wildbill

Our family history is full of wars and feuds. It seems that both sides (Ewing on the maternal, McIntire & Scott on the paternal) continually took on the English – which seems to be why they ended up here. Once here they took on Indians, French, English, Spanish, Southerners, Northerners – right up through Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese and probably Iraqis.


67 posted on 01/10/2005 8:09:14 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: wardaddy
TRUE!

fyi, i'm originally from Camp County,TX.

free dixie,sw

68 posted on 01/10/2005 8:23:17 AM PST by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. it is a LEARNED prejudice against dixie.)
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To: vetvetdoug
YEP!

free dixie,sw

69 posted on 01/10/2005 8:23:44 AM PST by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. it is a LEARNED prejudice against dixie.)
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To: Racehorse

A pile of hot, steaming intestinal by-products.


70 posted on 01/10/2005 8:24:23 AM PST by FormerACLUmember (Free Republic is 21st Century Samizdat)
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To: xm177e2
If slavery and lynchings can be soft-pedaled, why not the Holocaust, or the Ukranian famine, or any other historical atrocities?

I don't think there is much danger in Shoah being diminished.

The evils of the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers here in this country has historically been downplayed...or ignored. Most folks would not have any idea what you mean by the Ulrainian Famine.

Mao is somewhat ignored. Pol Pot is not. The movie Killing Fields may have altered that. Franco, Pinochet, and The Serba all get heavy coverage. The Croat Nazis and Bosnian and Albanian Muslims in WWII get a pass for some reason.

I fear selectivity about historical atrocities is a common pastime.

I admit wholeheartedly that many lynchings targeted blacks in particular ...mostly in the South and Midwest. I do not know how many whites or mexicans were lynched throughout our history but it would appear that it happened. The old adage about lynching horse thieves.

71 posted on 01/10/2005 8:44:19 AM PST by wardaddy (Quisiera ser un pez para tocar mi nariz en tu pecera)
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To: lentulusgracchus

BTTT...for clarity and perspective!


72 posted on 01/10/2005 8:52:59 AM PST by wardaddy (Quisiera ser un pez para tocar mi nariz en tu pecera)
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To: stand watie
I went to High School in Val Verde County and learned that Villa raided that county while he was raiding the border. Go Wildcats!!!
73 posted on 01/10/2005 9:17:34 AM PST by vetvetdoug (In memory of T/Sgt. Secundino "Dean" Baldonado, Jarales, NM-KIA Bien Hoa AFB, RVN 1965)
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To: wardaddy

"they will get around to Texan treatment of the Commanches and other indigs soon enough."

I am currently reading "The Captured" by Scott Zesch about mostly German Immigrants in Central Texas whose children were captured and raised by the Comanches. An amazing book about the indianization of young whites who come to respect and then join their captors in raids in Texas and Mexico. This all took place in the 1860's and 70's in the area i now reside. Very interesting history!


74 posted on 01/10/2005 10:09:45 AM PST by Liberty Valance (Grateful Heart Tour 2005)
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To: wildbill
Read the new book on . . .

With respect to much earlier border history, have you come across anything substantial concerning Adrian Vidal? Now, that was a brigand worthy of a biography, a novel, a movie!

He raised a partisan ranger company for the Confederacy, and shortly thereafter deserted with all his men. On his way out, they plundered a few of the ranches around Brownsville and murdered some of the local folks.

He then enlisted in the Union army with some of the troops he led in the mutiny. Not happy there, even after being given command of another band of rangers, he and his men again deserted, this time crossing over into Mexico to partner up with that old cattle thief, insurrectionist, and all around bandito, Juan Cortina, who was fighting the French. There, in 1864, his luck finally ran out. He was captured and promptly executed.

Cortina continued plaguing the north bank of the Rio Grande for quite awhile afterwards.

75 posted on 01/10/2005 12:08:32 PM PST by Racehorse
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To: B4Ranch

You are exactly right. The maggots that are trying to rewrite our history are trying to destroy our great country. I am SICK of all this AMERICA bashing. The Texas Rangers helped write our country's history--AND--THEY DID A GREAT JOB!!!!!


76 posted on 01/10/2005 5:27:01 PM PST by taillightchaser
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To: vetvetdoug
understood.

FYI, i MET & ate tamales & enchiladas with Villa's youngest widow (he had at least 18 wives! BUSY fellow!), during the 1986 Texas Wagon Train.

at that time she owned a TEX-MEX restaurant in Lubbock. she passed away in 1993.

the walls in the restaurant were "papered" with pictures of Villa, her (dressed in beret,crossed ammo belts & cigar w/a "cut-down"model 97 shotgun! Senora Villa told me, "i was VERY good with the DYNAMITE & i threw MANY sticks of it into the houses of muchas army officers!") and Villa & her together (including one of them at their wedding in 1918).

warriors come in all sizes & BOTH genders. she told me that she weighed 84 pounds on her wedding day!

free dixie,sw

77 posted on 01/12/2005 9:30:04 AM PST by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. it is a LEARNED prejudice against dixie.)
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To: xm177e2
random gang violence can't hold a candle to lynchings

No, random gang violence kills a LOT more people than lynch mobs ever did. And probably with a much higher percentage of innocent victims, too.

Oh, and though a lot of that violence is same-race, interracial violence today is nearly all anti-white. Black on white rape, in particular, is HUNDREDS of times more common than the reverse.

Some years ago I was talking with a church friend who had done evangelism among hardcore racist white skinheads. I asked him, what caused these kids to go over the edge and become violent skinheads in the first place. His answer was enlightening: Every single one of them, he told me, had a mother, a sister, a girlfriend, or some other close woman in his life, who had raped by blacks.

Today's injustices are the seed of tomorrow's atrocites. Don't ignore them.

78 posted on 01/12/2005 9:39:59 AM PST by Rytwyng (We're here, we're Huguenots, get used to us)
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To: R. Scott

For a very good historian's book on Scots-Irish history and immigration to the US, see Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher.

Scots borderers were exiled to Ireland--but they were so rowdy the Irish didn't want them--and many were expelled to America. Our ancestors were fighting, roistering, folk--and those that slid down the Applachian chain and then went west retained much of that heritage.


79 posted on 01/12/2005 3:59:35 PM PST by wildbill
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To: wildbill
…those that slid down the Applachian chain and then went west retained much of that heritage.

As did the ones who remained in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Some of the best moments I remember from the reunions occurred in the parking lot.
My mother swore to her dying day that everyone was peaceful and law abiding. The women never adjourned to the parking lot with most of the men.
80 posted on 01/13/2005 2:54:39 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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