Part V

Changing Political Ideas Through Eras in Texas

Alfredo E. Cárdenas

Part 5 of a Series

At the height of the Depression, Archie Parr began his downslide in politics, with his heir apparent being his son George. However, George seemed to have always been getting into trouble and was finally convicted of Federal income tax evasion, sent to Federal prison. Archie managed to get George out on parole within a year. But, as a convicted felon, the son had to give up his post as county judge and forfeited his right to hold office or vote. A decade later, President Harry Truman granted George a presidential pardon, and he reentered elective office for a few turbulent years.

While the present scholarship maintains that the Parrs ruled as despots without restraint, the Parr hold on the politics of Duval County was intrinsically wedded to the Tejano community through friendship and mutual loyalty. After his father’s death, George took complete control of the county’s political apparatus and ambitiously sought to extend his influence over Jim Wells County. However, that plan led to unwelcomed notoriety for George (accused of being involved in a couple of murders), problems with state and Federal agents, and insurgencies from Duval County, including his partido (political party). Ironically, his most notable (and notorious) achievement — the 1948 US senatorial election — resulted in several books written about the Parr machine (1971-2017), which he could have done without.

In 1948, Parr’s chichinques (errand boys or brown nosers) followed his instructions and rigged the election results in Box 13, which resulted in Parr’s candidate winning the US Senate seat by 87 votes. In an almost unbelievable move, Parr’s cronies altered the results by reporting 202 additional votes, which were — incredibly — voted alphabetically.

After that point, Democratic leaders in Austin spent years looking for every opportunity to clip Parr’s political wings. It did not help that Republicans, under President Dwight Eisenhower, controlled the Washington bureaucracy and joined the Texas investigators in bringing down Parr. While the 1948 antic ultimately led Lyndon B. Johnson to the White House, it put Parr on the road to a self-inflicted fatal wound. But Parr was to live much more history before then; unfortunately, it was not a joyous story for Parr.

In 1952, Sheriff Daniel U. García announced that he would challenge Parr for county judge in the next election. After Parr received the news, he threw all his political muscle at his ungrateful sheriff, who changed his mind and did not follow his plans. But García was not the last of Parr’s lieutenants to aim with a political knife at the boss’s back. In 1956, after being elected, County Judge Dan Tobin Jr. announced that he would also be running on his own. After courting the new anti-Parr Freedom Party, Tobin gave up and returned to the Parr tent.

Finally, following George’s death in 1975, the Carrillo family announced that they would be taking over the Parr organization, having contemplated the idea for two years. The Carrillos’ plans crumbled after the Texas Legislature impeached and the Senate convicted and removed District Judge O. P. Carrillo for conspiring “with others to use for his benefit materials and supplies owned by Duval County and other governmental entities.” His father and one of his brothers also faced jail time for other infractions involving the misuse of public funds.

There remained little doubt during these years (1952-1975) that Parr’s dominance was being severely attacked by his Tejano loyalists. Moreover, his Tejanos constituents, led by WWII veterans, provided ample evidence of the duke’s crumbling reign.  A group of veterans met with Sheriff García when he announced his intention to split from Parr and shortly afterward founded the Freedom Party. The sheriff may have backed out of their deal, but the Freedom Party was a thorn in Parr’s side for the remainder of the 1950s. It had mixed success, but the Party’s challenge to Parr showed that Tejanos in Duval County had had enough of Parr’s antics and were ready to see him go by the wayside.

Finally, in the 1960s, the Republican Party organized a challenge to Parr’s Democratic machine. Republicans had not won a local race in Duval County since the early 1900s. And they would not win in the 1960s or since then. They made failed runs at Parr in 1962 and 1964.

Since Parr’s death, Duval County politics have rested on honest Tejano politicians and civic servants instead of lackeys. Tejanos have governed free of Parr’s hand, who brazenly reached over or around them to grab from the county treasury during his reign. In the 1980s, with Duval County safely beyond the politics of the past, the National Association of Counties acknowledged Duval County for its achievements, naming it the top county in the country.

To recap my findings in Duval County Tejanos regarding the Parrs and Tejanos:

Duval County does not mirror the political principles of the Parrs; the Parrs, however, embraced and corrupted Duval County’s electoral past and the Tejanos’ political aspirations. The politics that the Parrs learned from Duval County were not those of dishonesty, but rather the actuality—in plain sight—that Tejanos had a clear majority and wanted to control their own destiny. Corruption was a Parr expediency that Tejanos tolerated as a necessary evil to achieve their aspirations for fair political representation. But make no mistake, while Tejanos may appear to have made a deal with the devil, they enjoyed political and cultural independence much before most of their brothers and sisters in other parts of Texas or the United States.