to the Rodriguez ranch on that unfortunate day in July of 1945.
Since the earliest days of cattle ranching, the difference in Anglo and Spanish styles—mien, manners, religion, foods—had invited misunderstanding. But World War II had produced a hero who felt he could harmonize the peculiar culture. He was Hector P. Garcia, recently a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In June of 1948, he came to Beeville to give a talk at the county courthouse. All seats in the main courtroom gallery were taken. Camp Ezell counted the attendance at 130 (about two-thirds Latino, one-third Anglo).
Everybody in the main courtroom was aware of the celebrity of the speaker.
Among war heroes, Hector Garcia was singular. He was both warrior and healer. Early in the war, he had commanded an infantry company and won battle stars for courage and resourcefulness. He then transferred to the medical corps, where he won battle stars as a combat surgeon. During forty-four months in the African and European theaters, Dr. Garcia was known to work twenty-hour days to save the lives of wounded soldiers. He was a son of Texas, and Texas was proud of him, as it was proud of Audie Murphy, the war’s most decorated hero. Audie was a North Texas boy, Hector Garcia a South Texas boy. Well over a hundred of the town’s leaders had responded to the invitation of the Alta Vista Lions Club. Dr. Garcia was thirty-two, a serious, fine-looking man. He spoke in English. His subject was school integration: “We are against segregation at any time or place in Texas. We not only are against it; we are fed up on it, for, as a minority group, we do not enjoy the privileges that are accorded the majority group, yet we pay taxes . . .” At points, his voice was more intense: “We do not want equal facilities; we want the same facilities. We served on the battlefields fighting the socialist systems. I would ask you now, what did we fight for?”
What Hector Garcia said about Latinos serving on the battlefields was true. It just hadn’t been true before World War II. Among the several periods of cultural uncertainty in Texas, the years leading up to World War I were the worst. Americans were unsure whether Mexico and Mexicans stood with the United States or with Germany. In January of 1915, American intelligence exposed the infamous “Plan of San Diego,” drafted in the seat of Duval County, a political manifesto calling for Mexicans in the United States to revolt and take over Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado. In 1917, British intelligence revealed the Zimmermann Telegram—a direct appeal by Germany for an alliance with Mexico against the United States. This validated the most extreme of the anti-Mexican publics. Texas newspapers in 1917 and 1918 carried daily and weekly stories of Latinos going south across the Rio Grande to avoid service in the U.S. military. The World War II generation—Hector Garcia’s generation—had resolved the questions of nationality. Virtually half the GIs reporting from South Texas were Mexican American. In Beeville, more than three dozen Mexican American boys left A. C. Jones High School early in 1942 to join up, among them the Longoria brothers, the Chapa brothers, and all five brothers in the Rojas family. Four of them—Benjamin, Daniel Jr., Mito, and Gute—saw action at Normandy. Chico Rojas served in the navy in the Pacific, as did Elias and Frank Chapa and Balde Longoria. During World War I, one of thirteen Bee County boys killed in action was Mexican American; during World War II, it was thirteen of forty-six.
Hector Garcia was part Bolívar, part Sam Houston, on this day in June of 1948. Speaking in English, he argued that the solution to the area’s cultural fragmentation was obvious: language. “Corpus Christi is an example of the elimination of segregation—an English test is given to first grade students; those who cannot pass are placed with teachers who instruct them how to speak English. But they remain in the same building, the same playground . . .”
Camp Ezell’s reporting of the diversity of the attendees showed the greater significance of the event for Beeville. School integration was no longer in debate in Texas. Anglo and Latino high school students had been in class together since before the war, and even as Hector Garcia spoke, a federal judge ruled to complete integration at all levels. But the integration of this audience was big news. For the first time, the civic leaders of Beeville, those from the east side and the west, had sat down together in common purpose. When Major Garcia concluded, he shook hands with Carlos Reyes, the dean of the Latino community, and with Judge Joe Wade, and with Sheriff Vail Ennis.
Such was the social weather that summer when Hector Garcia made his speech in Beeville and began his long career of social activism. But in 1948, the problems of this peculiar culture were remote from America’s primary concern, and he acknowledged this in closing:
“We Latin Americans fought for the four freedoms, but we do not enjoy them. We have returned home, and are getting ready to fight Communism. We served faithfully. When are we going to get our rights? I’ve lived in many parts of the world, but the U.S. is the greatest country of them all. However, I warn you against the encroachment of Communism. The Communist system of government is the greatest menace the world has ever known.”
Major Garcia’s concerns were shared by the three candidates for the state’s vacant seat in the U.S. Senate. George Peddy had come to Beeville in May and proclaimed, “If Russia wants to fight us, we might as well have the fight now. We must issue an ultimatum for our planes in Berlin.” Peddy’s anticommunist view was the strongest, and it got him the endorsement of the Houston Post. Coke Stevenson also came later in May and made a short speech on the courthouse steps. Peddy’s views on communism were respected, and he had been met with strong applause. Coke Stevenson, the former governor, was Mr. Texas, a cattleman among cattlemen, and he was greeted by the people of Beeville as one of their own.
The third candidate came in July, a month to the day after Hector Garcia’s visit. The peace of the early afternoon was interrupted by the whir and clatter of the Johnson City Windmill, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign helicopter, which circled the courthouse and hovered over downtown Beeville before veering off to the Fair Grounds, where a crowd of Democrats awaited. There, the thirty-nine-year-old politician threw his hat out of the helicopter into the crowd below, landed, and gave an energetic eighteen-minute speech. Camp Ezell timed the speech and counted the crowd (180). In his story, Camp made note that this was Lyndon’s seventh speech of the day in South Texas, with seven more to go. From Beeville he was going on to Duval County, sixty miles south, below the Nueces River, the old border with Mexico.
Lyndon Johnson had a special purpose in going to Duval County.
But Hector Garcia had no purpose there. For one thing, Duval schools were fully integrated. There was no language problem. In a county that was 90 percent Latino, everybody spoke Spanish.
For another, he wouldn’t have found 130 civic leaders. Duval had only one civic leader, a patrón, and he was the cultural, political, and spiritual leader as well. In South Texas, everyone knew about George B. Parr, the Duke of Duval.
The Parrs were not the first political bosses in South Texas, but they were the masters. Early in the century, when men still traveled on horses, Archer Parr had gone against the interests of fellow Anglo ranch owners and embraced the Mexican side of a Tex-Mex political argument in the county seat and forever aligned his family with the majority. With the artful use of personal favors, patronage, and stern discipline, Archer parlayed that move into a deep relationship with the political majority. He taught George that the key to the Spanish psyche was fatalism. For Spaniards, life was being. For the gringos, it was doing. The gringo, with his arid soul, felt he controlled his own fate. The Latino did not so presume: The English phrase was “I’ll see you tomorrow,” the Spanish was “Hasta mañana—si Dios quiere.” (See you tomorrow—if God wills.) George learned to speak Spanish before he learned English. He knew most of the men of San Diego, the county seat, by name, and each of them knew he could go to George for help—a medical bill, a county job, a small loan. The Parrs solved personal problems.
By 1948, George had total political control in Duval, effective control in Starr and Brooks counties, and strong influence in the district’s biggest, Jim Wells, a geographical area of 4,835 square miles, four times the size of the King Ranch. The
