Benavides: The Town And Its Founder, 1880 (Part 1)

by Arnoldo De Leon

Arnoldo De Leon

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus,

Angelo State University

Benavides, Texas, is located in eastern Duval County on Las Animas Creek and the Texas Mexican Railroad. It lies in a region rich in history and cultural tradition. The area's place in the Texas chronicle goes back to 1767 when the Marquis de Rubi crossed the area on his return trip to Mexico after inspecting the Spanish frontier of Texas.1

Though uninhabited except by roaming Indians for the rest of the eighteenth century, in the 1820s it began to attract settlers from the ranching frontier Jose de Escandon had established along the Rio Grande, leading thereby, to the formation of little ranches like San Diego.2

The area grew gradually in subsequent decades, though less than 1,000 people inhabited present-day Duval County at the time of the Civil War (1861-1865). In the years that followed the war, this section and the chaparral country extending to the Rio Grande became the scene of numerous battles between Anglo ranchers, rustlers, cowboys, and Mexican cattle thieves fighting over "unbranded" beeves in the open range.

Also, from this region, the revolutionary Catarino Garza waged part of his war against the Mexican dictator Porfirio Dfaz in the 1890s. Additionally, it was in this part of South Texas that in 1915 a combined force of Tejanos and Mexican nationals issued El Plan de San Diego, calling upon Mexican Americans to take up arms against American injustice.

Benavides, then, is located in an area that traces its roots in the Spanish colonial past, which holds a place in Texas history for being the setting of the bloody range wars of the 1870s, and that claims to be the scene of sustained Mexican American activism over the years.

Even the town's origin had a trace of the historic. Unlike other South Texas cities, it did not emerge from old Hispanic settlements from the Rio Grande, it was not established by some ambitious Anglo inviting civilization nearer to his ranch, nor was it a town growing up alongside the several military forts that dotted south and west Texas after the Civil War. Its birth, actually, was the result of the efforts of a man from the Victoria, Texas area whose family had already secured a place in Texas history.

The man generally acknowledged as being the town's founder was Placido Benavides (1837-1919). His ancestors had been among the original settlers that had come from Cruillas, Tamaulipas, in 1824 with the empresario Martin de Leon to colonize modern-day Victoria.3 They had participated in the Texas Revolution of 1836 and thus helped Texas win its independence from Mexico. Before great numbers of people began moving into the South Texas chaparral, then, the Benavideses had already gained some distinction for their daring in the founding of new settlements and for their courage in standing up for ideals.4

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¹ Walter Prescott Webb, et al,, The Handbook of Texas (2 vols; Austin: The Texas State Historical Association, 1952), I, p. 146; Dudley Lynch, The Duke of Duval: The Life and Times of George B. Parr (Waco: Texian Press, 1976), pp. 7-8.

² Andrew Anthony Tijerina, "Tejanos and Texas: The Native  Mexicans of Texas, 1820-1850" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,  University of Texas, Austin, 1977), pp. 42-43. 

³ Ibid., p. 24; Victor M. Rose, "Some Historical Facts in Regard to the Settlement of Victoria, Texas; Its Progress and Present Status,"  (Laredo: Daily Times Print, 1883) pp 104-107; Roy Grimes (ed.),  300 Years In Victoria County (Victoria, Texas: The Victoria Advocate  Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 63; 100-101; 106-108. 
⁴ Grimes (ed.), 300 Years in Victoria County, pp. 74, 77, 84, 106-108, 130; Rose, Some Historical Facts in Regard to the Settlement of Victoria, Texas, pp 104-107; Ruben Rendbn Lozano, Viva Tejas: The Story of the Mexican-Born Patriots of the Republic of Texas, (San Antonio and Houston: Southern Literary Institute, 1936), p. 47.

Books by Arnoldo de Leon