Duval County Historical Commission pays tribute to Ranger victims

A standing-room-only crowd attended a presentation sponsored by the Duval County Historical Commission at the District Courtroom in San Diego.

Graciela Treviño Gonzáles, Guest Blogger

An overflow crowd gathered at the 229th District Courtroom in San Diego on October 15 to observe the Centennial and honor the memory of three men, Vicente Aguilar, Dionisio Maldonado, and Crescencio Oliveira Jr., slain by Texas Rangers in 1920 in Bruni. They were on their way to a wedding in Parás, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, where Oliveira was to marry María de Jesús “Chuchita” Gutiérrez.

Keynote speaker Dr. Carmona.

“It was important to correct the narrative,” Lydia Oliveira Canales of Benavides said. Canales is a longtime Duval County Historical Commission member that sponsored the gathering. “The evil was in those that abused their power with vigilante justice.”

The incident involved the killing of three Mexicanos by Texas Rangers in 1920 when Texas Rangers, local sheriff’s departments, and vigilante groups throughout South Texas inflicted brutal injustice on ethnic Mexicans during a time of violence spurred by the Plan of San Diego. This time in Texas history, 1910-1920,  has become known as La Matanza.

“These events to commemorate injustices are vital to the importance of the healing of a community.” guest speaker Dr. Christopher Carmona said as he shared information about that dark period and its effect on families across generations. “If we never face the truth about our history, we can never heal from it.”

A memorial table featured photos of the three men’s graves buried in the Benavides Cemetery. A representative of each family lit a candle as the crowd observed a moment of remembrance.

Duval County Judge E. B. García read a Proclamation adopted by the Commissioners Court on October 11 to commemorate the Centennial of the incident. Judge García presented a framed copy of the proclamation to the descendants’ families and Mayor Ana Isa Oliveira Treviño of Parás, Nuevo León, México.

Members of the descendants’ families described how they shared memories of the event at family gatherings and by singing a corrido that tells the story. Albert Martinez sang “El Corrido de Oliveira.” The audience also listened to a recording of Mayor Treviño’s uncle Raul Oliveira singing the corrido. The mayor said she was taught the corrido as a child and pointed to an unforgettable line from the corrido which says:

“Si les preguntan sus nombres, no lo vayan a negar: 

fue Dionisio Maldonado, Oliveira y Aguilar.”

“On behalf of the Maldonado family, I would like to share how deeply humbled and honored we are to have been given the opportunity to participate and collectively, with our friends from the Oliveira and Aguilar families, share the truth about our dear ancestors,” Marianella Quiroga Franklin, a great-granddaughter of Maldonado said.

“As family and friends, we all embraced, we laughed, we sang, and cried both tears of sorrow and joy. We have corrected an untruth that lingered for over 100 years, for current and future descendants to share so our loved ones can always be remembered for the loving, brave, and honorable hard-working men that they were,” Franklin added.

Lydia Canales, an Oliveira descendant,
shared her stories of the incident.  

Canales said, “as probably the oldest great-niece of Crescencio Oliveira, Jr., I was very pleased to attend this presentation in remembrance of the three men brutally murdered by ambush in a corral in Bruni, Texas…In addition, I was able to meet the descendants of the other two families and listen to their stories.

Vicenta Aguilar Reyna, the granddaughter of Vicente Aguilar, expressed her deep appreciation for this event. She, too, felt that this reckoning of the truth of the incident was very healing for all the families. On the way home to La Rosita community near Rio Grande City, the Aguilar descendants stopped in Benavides to take photos by the gravesite of their forefather, Vicente Aguilar.

The three men’s bodies are interred in the Benavides Cemetery, where the community buried their bodies after
the families recovered them at night. Families’ stories tell of the people of Benavides lining the streets holding lanterns as family members brought the men’s bodies on a wagon from Bruni.

Crescencio Oliveira Sr. and another son Doroteo were also on the trip, and both survived the incident to tell the story. Over the years, relatives alive during the incident assert that the Rangers ambushed men without cause.

Descendants of the three men killed by the Texas Rangers, from left, Elda Maldonado Canales, granddaughter of Dionicio Maldonado, Lydia Oliveira Canales, great-niece of Cresencio Oliveira Jr, and Vicenta Aguilar Reyna, granddaughter of Vicente Aguilar participated in the lighting of memorial candles. 

(Blogger’s Note: The corrido “Los Tequileros,” made famous by Los Alegres de Terán, Los Huracanes del Norte, and other groups, is not to be confused with this event. There are three distinct factual differences: first, the individuals involved had different names; second, the men in the more popular corrido were indeed tequileros on their way to San Diego with a load of tequila; and third, the men honored at this event were five in number of which the rinches killed three, and they were traveling to México to attend a wedding. They were not involved with tequila bootlegging.)