Stolen Heritage Revisited

Well, it may come as no surprise to some, but I needed to validate this map search for myself and perhaps others in the group. Remarkably, what was said by Rubio speaks out in the maps.  I was fortunate to access the Texas General Land Office database in Austin . More specifically, I was able to locate all the maps that were relevant to the story timeline. These Refugio Co maps date from 1850 - 1875. They are relevant only because they date the span of time the de la Garza's were on the land. Looking at them I was disappointed to see that all 5 original maps did not contain a Becerra or de la Garza name. Now, this is where it gets interesting. It's simple, 1. Becerra and de la Garza families lived in a parallel universe and the rest of Refugio lived in another, as in the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, 2. They knew who was on the land but didn't care to investigate. Instead allowing Anglo colonizers to take it outright and not bother as to w

  We all know Becerra owned a large tract of land in Refugio County. In 1849, he had the  land resurveyed by Refugio County surveyor David Snively and the results showed that it contained 8,856 acres!   We know that much is a fact, it can’t be disputed. The land had been granted to Becerra by Coahuila y Tejas in 1832, but the gringo establishment refused to legitimize his ownership. For all purposes, they shuffled paper and made-up excuses to delay his legitimate transfer to the Texas General Land Office, never really giving Becerra the rightful title to his land. There were several reasons why the gringo establishment refused to legitimize Becerra's land ownership. First, they were racist. They didn't believe that a Mexican should legitimately own land. Second, they were greedy. They wanted the land for themselves. Third, they had to have known that Becerra had clout within the local colonies and townships.   He was well known, and they knew that he would fight for his rights.

Becerra Land Grant  As most of us know now, in 1832, the Mexican government  bestowed a first-class land grant of two leagues (8,856 acres) to Manuel Becerra. The land grant was approved by the ayuntamiento (town council) of Goliad and by the then-Tejas-Mexican governor, Francisco Vidaurri. However, when James Power and James Hewetson's Colony was established in 1834, Becerra's land was not surveyed or included in the colony. This suggests that racial injustice occurred between the white colonists and the existing Mexican landowners as evidenced by Abel Rubio’s book, Stolen Heritage.  Yet the following facts are the facts and help shed light on their importance in what was to become known as the great theft:  Irish Colonists, Omission of Becerra  One, the Power and Hewetson's Colony was a group of white Irish immigrants who came to Texas in 1833. The colony was founded under the provisions of the Colonization Law of 1825, which allowed empresarios to recruit immigrants to T

Legal and Political Machinery Behind the Theft In the 1800s, Mexican landowners in South Texas were cheated out of their land by American settlers and government officials. This was due to a number of factors: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, did not explicitly protect Mexican land grants. This left the door open for American settlers to claim Mexican land as their own. American settlers often had more political power than Mexican landowners. This allowed them to influence government officials to dispossess Mexican landowners of their land. American courts often ruled in favor of American settlers in disputes over land ownership. This further marginalized Mexican landowners.   As a result of these factors, many Mexican landowners like Antonio de la Garza were forced off their land. This had a devastating impact, not just on future Becerra generations, but also on many other Texas-Mexican landowners as well. Many Mexican families lost their

The quest to understand what happened to Antonio de la Garza's land was not one that was born out of curiosity, instead, it was born out of necessity. A necessity I felt was needed to help expunge the vicissitudes and injustices our people had to endure at the turn of the 20th century, an injustice that left its imprint on the soul of Becerra generations to come. My journey with this story started over 20 years ago. Abel Rubio's book, Stolen Heritage, had laid dormant in my father's living room for more than 10 years, and so one day I saw it sitting amongst other books and asked my father if I could take it home and read it. I had always been curious about the book and thought I'd give it a spin and read it from cover to cover in hopes of understanding what had happened. Over the course of a few weeks, I made time to read it, not really knowing what it would lead to or how it would end.  Yet, in the end, I chose to close the book and put it back on the shelf for ano