Revisiting Old Wounds, Tying Up Loose Ends...

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 another day, not really sure what it all meant or what I had just read.  As much as I tried, I couldn't keep an organized mental cabinet of the facts and narratives.  It was all blending incoherently in my mind: conveyances, census records, re-surveys, land grants, land scrips, etc.  What did it all mean?

Seeing Anew, Rediscovering the Past 

I was young back then and had a young family, I also didn't have the necessary tools to see what I needed to see. At that time, I didn't have the luxury of bouncing ideas with family members and felt isolated as I closed in on the final chapter. Rubio's constellation of facts resonated deep inside me, and I felt then that there was somehow something very wrong with the way Antonio de la Garza was treated.  Shortly after reading Stolen Heritage, I put the book down and decided to keep it in my library, as I knew my dad would not mind. I struggled with the myriad of facts and how the O'Connors played a role in all this.  Now 20+ years later I believe I have a better understanding of the facts and an arsenal of information called the "internet" to help me out.  I'd like to lay out what I discovered over the past several weeks and provide my interpretation of what the author Abel Rubio was alluding to in his book. 

Abel Rubio's Legacy 

As alluded to earlier in a Garza FB post, it was Abel Rubio who did all the heavy lifting. He put the hours, days, weeks, months, and years into this unending saga. What he did leave behind was a kaleidoscope of facts, opinions and conjectures, full of possibilities. All I'm doing is rearranging and organizing this information into a more coherent picture for the family to follow. On a different note, there's also the new generation of Garza's that may have never read the book and might more easily assimilate what I layout in this blog. Everything we need is not hidden in courthouse documents or secret files; it really isn't. It's not really about the actual land grant or who conveyed to whom. It's much deeper than that, it's a feeling or sentiment that many of us already know and feel, one I'd like to put into words, if that makes sense? Thanks to Abel Rubio, nothing is hidden, everything is pretty much open to view.

My Agenda 

My agenda is not to pursue another re-filing with the courts or to seek legal counsel over lands long since dispossessed. There are reasons, my reasons, which I believe do not warrant such actions.  The facts are the facts and that can't be argued.  However, as I learned in graduate school, there are those who interpret facts and then there is a whole different way of looking at the same set of facts.  What I don't want to do is to build on the facts and stack on top of them, that's where a hand is played, and others make a play and read it before you can even play it.  Instead, I suggest a new vista, a new way of looking at something, one that doesn't involve the legal system. To be quite honest, that's what they want. So will approach them from a different angle so to speak, from the blindside. Who are these people? Of course, the O'Connors.  By the way, that's Dennis O'Connor (inset).  They are the family that snapped up our ancestors' lands without the courtesy of even informing them.  Wait, they did inform them.  They informed them in the worst kind of way.  In closing, to go and attempt to raise legal counsel or retrace the steps taken in the 70's would be to play right into the O'Connors hands again. Not this time...