'Border Bandits' details Texas Rangers' cruelty

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 9 January 2004 | Jan Jarboe Russell

[Racehorse]

For 90 years, most Mexican Americans in South Texas have known the truth behind the myth — that during a reign of terror in 1915, Texas Rangers randomly lynched, shot and killed Tejanos, whose farms, ranches and land were coveted by Anglo land speculators.

Kirby Warnock, an Anglo baby boomer and Dallas filmmaker who grew up in Texas watching "The Lone Ranger," also grew up on alternative stories about the Rangers from his grandfather, Roland Warnock, a cowboy who worked on Guadalupe Ranch near Edinburg in the mid-1900s.

On Sept. 30, 1915, Roland Warnok witnessed the murder of two unarmed Tejanos — 68-year-old Jesus Bazan and his son-in-law Antonio Longoria — by Rangers in a Model T Ford. Bazan and Longoria were shot in the back, off their horses, as the Rangers passed by. Warnock found their bodies two days later and buried them where they remain today, on a lonely stretch of road 18 miles north of Edinburg.

Kirby Warnock told his grandfather's story — and the larger untold story of South Texas — in a documentary called "Border Bandits," which returns Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Westlakes Shopping Center on Southwest Loop 410. The film was here in November, sold out two theaters at the Alamo Draft-house and is back for an encore. For more information, visit www.drafthouse.com .

[Racehorse]

If you love Texas Ranger history, warts and all, this will make your blood boil. Truth mixed with fiction and an old cowboy's memory.

[wardaddy]

I have told Texans here who join the South bashers in sanctimony that their own history is open to be defiled by the politically correct hyenas.

I am sorry.

[vetvetdoug]

It is just a matter of time before Pancho Villa is made a Saint to the Tejanos for coming across the border and killing defenseless American ranchers and stealing the possessions and livestock of the Texans.

[Cicero]

The more you study history, the more you realize that no group or organization is perfect.

I imagine you would find atrocities on both sides, if you looked hard enough. But it would be pity to stir up racial hatred over things that happened 90 years ago, which is what Jan Jarboe Russell appears intent on doing.

[cabbieguy]

"Roland Warnock witnessed the murders".
It seems odd to me that a man who witnessed the murder of two men would not discover their bodies for two days. That cowboy has some great eyesight.
Sounds like more looney-left BS. Somehow they must try and turn good to evil, and evil to good.

[FoxInSocks]

Show me the money . . . I see requests for reparations in the future . . .

[csmusaret]

Actually Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico.

[OSHA]

On Sept. 30, 1915, Roland Warnok witnessed the murder of two unarmed Tejanos — 68-year-old Jesus Bazan and his son-in-law Antonio Longoria — by Rangers in a Model T Ford. Bazan and Longoria were shot in the back, off their horses, as the Rangers passed by. Warnock found their bodies two days later

Sounds like he was making it up as he went along.

[JustAnotherSavage]

BTT

[SandRat]

and Bisbee Arizona. Citizens from Bisbee and Tombstone were kind enough to return the favor though.

[bayourod]

It can't be true. It's illegal to fire a gun from an automobile in Texas.

[vetvetdoug]

I had read in the Military History Quarterly that Pancho Villa came across all along the border from Texas to New Mexico several times. He attacked the town of Columbus, NM, but had been picking off individual ranchers for a significant amount of time before that incident.

[SuzyQue]

We Texans have a term for this kind of revisionist propaganda: bull****.

[SandRat]

We in Arizona have the same term for it.

[Ciexyz]

btt

[nathanbedford]

Lest anyone falls for the PC reflexive "white guys bad, people of color good" routine consider this contemporary account:

This was about the time of old Villa's career in Mexico. You might as well say there wasn't any law in that country. The Mexican bandits run as they pleased. If they took a notion to move a rancher or anybody, they just naturally killed him and took possession. A good many white settlers was killed and also many of the higher-type Mexicans with money. Them bandits didn't have any love for a white man They just killed them to watch them die. The Mexican rebellion started about nineteen eight. The bandits got pretty well organized by the time we struck Mexico in nineteen eleven. I was going on seventeen then.

Lee sage THE LAST RUSTLER Little, Brown &Co. 1930, pg, 111. (This autobiography is a gem of americana, much like HUCKLEBERRY FINN and, like Twain's timeless masterpiece, with many layers to the onion.)

[wardaddy]

Precisely Bump!

[drdemars]

How interesting about the book on Lee Sage "The last Rustler". My Mothers Father was in the military and his family were from a heavy military background - last name of Sage The family when coming to America shortened the name from Le Sage to Sage. Darn,we might have another black sheep in the past.

[marty60]

It seems this guy failed to mention that his relatives were part of the bandits and murderers that made ranching in South west TEXAS one dangerous livelihood. Plus the Mexicans that were trying to steal Texas back for the Mexican Gov. Leave it to the revisionists to forget a few minor details.

[nathanbedford]

I am pretty sure Sage is a nom de plume. It is a marvelous book, a contemporary account by one who was literally born in the Robbers Roost and lived the life of the wild bunch. Not a coming to age account but a coming to wisdom saga of the fading wild west.