In ’39, the Texan Congress gathered in Austin, which was declared the capital of the Republic. Skirmishes continued.
In ’41, two thousand Texan soldiers were taken prisoner by the Mexicans and incarcerated in Mexico City.
In ’45, Texas was annexed by the United States. It went from being an independent republic to becoming one of many stars on a foreign flag. Although it seemed like a terrible idea, it wasn’t bad at all, because it completely changed the balance of power with Mexico. The struggle for the Texan frontier worsened. The Texans argued that everything from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande was theirs. The Mexicans denied the claim, saying that it wasn’t in their previous agreement.
And that’s how it came to pass that the American army invaded Mexican territory in 1846. Shortly thereafter they declared victory and took over the disputed territory, and the land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was no longer Mexican.
Throughout these war-torn years, Doña Estefanía was the one and only legitimate owner of the land called Espíritu Santo, which extended far into the territory that became American. It made no difference that she was a savvy landowner, with herds of livestock and good harvests (mostly beans, but she had different crops on her other ranches). Stealman arranged to carve off a healthy (and profitable) portion of her lands. And it was on this profitable stretch of land that he established Bruneville, selling plots at inflated prices, which was a great business.
Eleven years have passed since the town of Bruneville was founded on the banks of the Río Bravo, just a few miles upriver from the Gulf. It was named after Ciudad Bruneville, the legendary shining city to the northwest, which was razed by the Apaches. In appropriating the name, Stealman aimed to trade on the good reputation of the original.
At its founding, the following were present (without a shadow of a doubt):
A Stealman, the lawyer;
B Kenedy, who owned the cotton plantation;
C Judge Gold (back then he was just plain Gold, he hadn’t yet earned the nickname Judge);
D Minster Fear, his first wife, and their daughter Esther (may the latter two rest in peace);
E A pioneer named King.
King had a royal name, but when he’d arrived in Mexico he hadn’t a penny, he didn’t even own a snake. But he had the Midas touch. When some locals lent him low-grade land to use for seven years, it took him only a few months to emerge as the legitimate owner of immense tracts on which it seemed to rain cattle from the clouds, as if they were a gift from God. But there was nothing remotely miraculous about the way King made his fortune. He was as good a trickster as any magician with a false-bottomed top hat. If King had been Catholic (as he claimed to be in the contract he signed with the Mexicans), the archdiocese could have been able to build a cathedral with what he’d have paid for his sins.
In 1848 King wasn’t the only one who went looking for a fortune, convinced that “Americans” had the right to take what belonged to the northern Mexicans by whatever means necessary.
A year after it was founded, Bruneville suffered its first outbreak of cholera. The epidemic claimed the lives of one hundred citizens and almost choked the life out of the region’s economy. Around that time, the rumor was that Nepomuceno robbed a train west of Rancho del Carmen and sold its cargo in Mexico. If it’s true, he was only making up for the many robberies he had suffered.
That same year, to the northeast of Bruneville, Jim Smiley arrived at the camp of Boomerang Mine, which was played out, and discovered his addiction to gambling.
Just across the Rio Grande the city that Brunevillians called their twin, Matasánchez, prohibited several things:
1 Fandangos;
2 Firing weapons in the street;
3 Riding horseback on the sidewalks; and
4 Any animals at all on the sidewalks.
The arrogant Brunevillians applauded these measures, saying, “At last they’re leaving their uncivilized ways behind.” Which was a bit much, given that Brunevillians half-drowned in mud each time it rained and suffocated on dust every dry season, their city being so poorly constructed. When all was said and done they were just a handful of palefaces, struggling to cope with a sun that assaulted their senses, yet they acted like they were the center of the world. (Matasánchez, on the other hand, was something to see.)
Bruneville was two years old when an assembly took place at which the new land-grabbers, led by King, played the Great Trick on the Mexicans—a.k.a. the Great Theft—dispossessing them of their property titles by pretending that the new state was legitimizing them. The citizens of Bruneville thought this was a good move; they believed the law was going to protect them, but they were quickly disabused of this notion.
The truth is that the gringos took advantage of several things:
A The Mexicans didn’t speak English;
B The Mexicans were given citizenship and told they had rights; but
C The rights meant zilch unless they could be defended in a court; and
D The lawyers who were supposed to defend them were thieves, stealing land that had been owned, inherited, or worked by their clients for generations.
The gringos stole and proceeded to act like they were the legitimate owners of what they had stolen.
This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
This was also the year of the yellow fever.
Bruneville now had a population of 519 (in Matasánchez there were 7,000, half of what there had been before several wars and two hurricanes hit the region before Bruneville even came into being). It’s worth mentioning that most gringo Brunevillians knew nothing about the neighboring town, and could not have cared less.
Bruneville’s third year was just more of the same.
Bruneville was four years old when its population doubled. Pioneers from the north arrived by the boatload, prepared to do anything to make their fortunes. At the same time, penniless Mexicans fleeing the troubles in the south were crossing the river, looking for a way to make a living. More of these folks went north than runaway slaves went south to find their freedom. Bruneville’s reputation as a den of thieves (or a land of opportunity) grew. Where there are thieves there’s loot, the smell of easy money.
The Mexicans set up portable grills on street corners everywhere over which they cooked their own food and more to sell.
In the Rio Grande Valley, the theft of Mexican livestock was a daily practice, like picking herbs or berries in a forest. The branded cattle and shod horses might as well have been mustangs and mavericks, they were treated no differently; and there were plenty of animals for the taking—grabbing strays when possible, taking them at gun point if not. Armed bandits roamed the land, crossing the Rio Grande to drive livestock northward from the south.
Bruneville’s fifth birthday was celebrated with the construction of a lighthouse at Point Isabel, its seaport. A group of Brunevillians proposed naming the lighthouse Bettina, after Bettina Von Arnim, who had recently passed away: “beautiful and wise, the embodiment of the powers of nature.” The Germans, the Cubans, and a pair of Anglos
