My dad always called the Texas Rangers “Los pinche Rinches.”
I have a link to some sites I consider worth visiting on my website. Today, I found that one of the articles concerns the MAGA party concept of taking our country back to the 40s and 50s. The Texas Observer‘s quote below is only part of the article. Visit the site and read all of it.
Here, Hanson’s story intersects with what Weber calls “one of the most ignominious periods in the history” of the Rangers. In 1918, years into a period of racial violence against ethnic Mexicans in the Texas borderlands sometimes known as La Matanza, Rangers and vigilantes lined up 15 residents of the tiny West Texas settlement of Porvenir and shot them. Hanson, as inspector for the Rangers, traveled to Porvenir after the massacre—not to uncover the truth but to check if an implicated Ranger captain was politically loyal to Hobby. In a 1919 legislative investigation, prompted by the Lege’s only Latino lawmaker, Hanson was accused of using his role to cover up Ranger misdeeds. But he was exonerated in the resulting white-washed committee report.
The following Corrido is of Juan Garcia. It would not surprise me if he were a relative, as the early history of the border indicates that almost everyone was related either by blood or marriage. My family has been on both sides of the border since the 1700s.
The ballad of Juan García is a little-known corrido of the twentieth century that explores the notion of smuggling and intercultural conflict. Juan García was a native of San Vicente, which is on the Mexican side of the border, approximately twenty miles from Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
In 1928, García was convicted of stealing sheep from El Indio Ranch, which was an Anglo-owned ranch at the time. For his alleged crime, García spent two months in the Blue Ridge prison farm, but escaped eventually to return to Piedras Negras. His escape earned him heroic status, because he escaped from an Anglo prison, which was seen as a source for intercultural conflict. Seeing his escape as rebellious against Anglo authority, the owners of the ranch continued to accuse García of stealing sheep, cattle, and horses and selling them as an occupation. In addition, Anglo authority accused García of smuggling liquor across the Río Grande, accusations which were never actually proven. By 1931, Anglo authority had grown tired of García maintaining freedom from prison and engaging in supposed illegal activity, so they decided to ambush him to get rid of him as a folkloric hero of intercultural conflict. A large group of Anglo “rinches” ambushed him at the edge of the Río Grande as he was traveling to the United States side of the border. The authorities killed García and strapped his body to the running board of a car, displaying the body to the public through the streets of Eagle Pass, and later placing the body on display at the local morgue.
The actions of the authorities were viewed as heroic by the American side of the border, especially to the Anglo population, but the population of Piedras Negras viewed the action as appaling and escalated intercultural conflict between each side of the border. Juan García has become a folkloric hero of the border, similar to individuals of the past that battled the “rinches”, even though he was accused of smuggling liquor and stealing livestock, further showing the lack of negative attitude toward smuggling in the border society at the time. Source