Have you seen a mojonera lately

 

POSTED BY: CARDENAS.AE@GMAIL.COM MARCH 30, 2020

Jose Guerra with the Hispanic Genealogical Society of Houston points to the mojonera found at the cemetery in Roma.

Earlier this week, while doing some background research on the villa of Mier, from where many of Duval County’s original settlers came, I ran across a blog from the Houston Hispanic Genealogical Society of a trip they took to that historic community. Before crossing the Rio Grande, they made several stops on the American side, including the cemetery at Roma in Starr County. There they found something called a mojonera, in English a landmark or monument. Surveyors typically used a mojonera to designate the corner of a grant.

Later in the blog, it mentions that:

“In a discussion with a knowledgeable person another mojonera was found in Duval County, Texas and it was believed to be pointing to a buried treasure because it had an arrow pointing in a certain direction, but this was only a boundary marker. In Duval County, the mojonera also had a carving of the rancher’s cattle brand, it was determined.”

Today was the first time I hear of the word mojonera, although I knew that surveyors often used rocks and other landmarks as corner markers. I always wondered whether any of these markers remained since they seemed somewhat changeable to me. Mojoneras could include small mesquite marked as the landmark or a large mesquite tree, or if they came to open prairie, the surveyor could order the chain carriers to plant a large tree as a marker. Sometimes the corner marker could be a mound of stones.

These markers all seemed rather flimsy to me because, of course, the small tree would grow to be huge, the giant tree could die, or someone could cut it down, and the mound of rocks could be taken by a flood or by kids playing around in a pasture. But a mojonera, seems more permanent, although not foolproof.

In any case, my question to my readers is whether anyone knows of any mojoneras in Duval County? If you do, would you be willing to share a photo with this blogger and his readers? If you can comply, do so by emailing the photo and any accompanying information to cardenas.ae@gmail.com.

I hope we have better luck finding a mojonera then what we had with looking for the lost cave. We had some leads, but I could never find a guide to take me to where they believed it was.

The adventure continues.

2 COMMENTSON "HAVE YOU SEEN A MOJONERA LATELY"

1. Rodolfo Saucedo Jr. | March 30, 2020 at 1:38 pm | Reply
   According to my Larousse Dictionary, mojonera refers to a series of boundary markers or to a place which has been marked by boundary markers. An actual boundary marker is a mojon. I was introduced to the term mojon by my friend Harold Brent, a fellow engineer who grew up in Guatemala.

cardenas.ae@gmail.com | March 30, 2020 at 8:24 pm | Reply
Thank you, Rodolfo. I’m not familiar with the Larousse Dictionary, but I suppose that the use of the word would have different variations. Certainly, the Spanish spoken in South Texas and Guatemala would likely have different iterations of some words.