Will the real Jacinto Treviño please stand up?

Who was Jacinto Treviño?

By all accounts, Jacinto Treviño was a man from Los Indios, a community south of San Benito on the Rio Grande, who shot and killed two men in 1910. But who was killed and why?

Family Version

Rosa Fleming, the great-granddaughter of the man touted as a folk hero by some and branded as a bandit by others, said that the incident started when Jacinto's half-brother was beaten so badly that he was made deaf in one ear. Jacinto's half-brother worked at the San Benito Water Pump on the Rio Grande and it was Texas Ranger George Carnes, the owner or foremen there, who beat him "for looking at an Anglo woman," she said.

"After seeing the condition of his brother, my great-grandfather snuck into the camp where Mr. Carnes was and killed him," Fleming said.

Afterwards, Treviño fled to Mexico and raised eight children, including Fleming's grandmother, Estefana. He lived in a modest home and died in 1931 or 1932, Fleming said.

"I am the great-granddaughter of Jacinto Treviño," Fleming said. "His daughter, Estefana Treviño, was my grandmother and I have been told the entire family history directly by my mother, Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Treviño Foster Clipper, and by my aunt Irene Caballero Aguilar."

The Legend

A Jacinto Treviño corrido, or narrative ballad praising or denouncing heroes and foes in the tradition of the bards of the Old World, has been circulating in the Rio Grande Valley since the time of the incident.

Scholars like Americo Paredes have written about the genre.

At the State University of New York at Fredonia, Dr. Bruce Simon teaches "El Corrido de Jacinto Treviño" "to expose my largely northeastern students to different perspectives on the U.S.-Mexico War of the 1840s and its aftermath — how a villain on one side of the border may be seen as a hero on the other side and vice versa."

In the corrido, it is said that Treviño indeed killed Lt. George Carnes, a Texas Ranger, and then fled to La Palangana in Mexico. But according to a version of the events posted online by Clara Zepeda, a member of the San Benito Historical Society, it was James Darwin — an engineer at the Ohio Station irrigation ditch — who was fatally shot by Treviño in May 1910, albeit for the same reason given by the family: he was beaten.

In Zepeda's version, Treviño's half-brother is called his cousin and "Darwin's wife had complained that the cousin was making eyes at her." Treviño was branded a "bandit" and the townspeople of Los Indios were rounded up for questioning.

According to the legend, Treviño's cousin, Pablo Treviño, sought him out in July 1910 attempting to lead him to an ambush him by Texas Rangers. Zepeda writes that it was then that Jacinto shot and killed his cousin, Pablo, as well as George Carnes, and deputy sheriff Bernie Lawrence, Texas Ranger Pat Careghead and Constable Earl West.

The Archives

According to the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame, Quirl Bailey Carnes was a private in Company D who was "shot from ambush by Mexican bandits near San Benito, Cameron County, Texas, July 31, 1910." Is it possible that Quirl's name was either listed incorrectly or somehow translated to Spanish into George?

Only three other Rangers with the surname Carnes are listed in the Texas Adjutant General Service Records of Rangers from 1836 to 1935, however, there is no mention of Pat Careghead. The AG's office is the official state site for the Rangers. Since the state continues to adjust its records, it is difficult to say whether Careghead or George Carnes existed or whether they were indeed Rangers at all. Part of the problem, the state concedes, is that not all Rangers were considered "real" or "regular" Texas Rangers by most historians.

"They were issued Special Ranger commissions as a convenience to give them state authority and wide geographic jurisdiction," the AG's Web site states. "The majority were privately paid by cattlemen's associations, oil companies or railroads. They had no company assignments or place in the regular Texas Ranger chain-of-command."

The state further admits — as recent books have asserted — that many so-called Rangers, known as "Rinches" in South Texas and Mexico, abused their positions of authority, especially during the Mexican Revolution that started in 1910.

"During this time, the Ranger force was as large as it ever was in its history, and historians who have studied the period agree there was some dilution of quality," a statement at the AG site reads. "After one Ranger raid into Mexico, an entire company was dismissed."

Family Version II

The problem with the corrido, as with legends in general, is that they are related in the oral tradition. Another problem is that they tend to be exaggerated to romanticize the hero. Fleming said that Jacinto did not kill his cousin for betraying him.

"It was a family dispute that went wrong," she said. "I believe it was over a girl."

Another part of the corrido that sounds off-key for Fleming is the part where Jacinto kills several people, she said.

"That's not true. My great-grandfather killed two people, George Carnes and Pablo Treviño," Fleming said. "The Valley was different during the period these incidents occurred. You need to explain that racism was rampant and that times were different — that being a Mexican meant to be hunted, to be viewed as expendable — not unlike what would happen in the Deep South years later."

The history of the Valley was one of conflict, she said.

"Jacinto Treviño was not the only one driven to vigilante justice at that time, and although I am in no way defending the shootings, I know the racism that existed then and still does in the Valley preempted the entire incident," Fleming said. "If you write about him, then the history of who he was, how he came to be glorified as a hero by Mexicans and a monster by Anglos needs to be told."

Post Script

I have heard stories of German Jews being ever-vigilant of neo-Nazi groups not simply because they are Jewish, but because they are German. In South Africa, Roman Catholic Bishop Desmond Tutu led a truth movement that brought a semblance of peace and forgiveness to his post-Apartheid country. Like Ms. Fleming, I do not condone Treviño's actions. I seek truth and I submit this record "with malice towards none" as Mr. Lincoln aptly put it, not only because I am a Mexican American, but because I, too am an American. And like poet Langston Hughes, I, too speak of rivers.

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