by Carlos M. Larralde, PhD From HaLapid Summer 2005 In the eighteenth century, dashing explorers launched colonies in the present Mexico-Texas border regions, then northeastern New Spain. Tomás Sanchez was one of these. With Sanchez as one of his officers, royal Viceroy José de Escandón promoted commerce and ideas beyond the Mississippi. Sanchez established twenty towns along the Lower Rio Grande (South Texas and the area of Tamaulipas, Mexico) with a Spanish population of 3,600, and 18 missions ministering supposedly to 3,000 converts.1 Water was needed to be diverted from the river to irrigate nearby crops. They had to overcome opposition from local Indian tribes. The Marquis de Altamira reported that Indians had caused “murders, thefts, fires, and all kinds of inhuman atrocities, they desolate entire jurisdictions….”2 The Karankawas, Lipan Apaches and the Comanche, raided the communities.3 Still, a cautious Sanchez made them part of the villages. “The impression is, he was a no-nonsense sort of man,” Historian J. B. Wilkinson wrote about Sanchez, “a down-to-earth gentleman principally interested in problems at hand but blessed with a shrewd foresight which was to benefit his descendants in the present generation.”4 His full name was Tomás Sanchez de la Barrera y Gallardo. Judging from his descendants, Sanchez was tall and of ruddy complexion. His eyes were gray-blue that sparkled with emotion, a massive pride and a quick temper. Local historians mentioned that Sanchez, a criollo from Nuevo Leon, Mexico, was born on June 4, 1709. His father, Tomás Sanchez, was baptized on April 26, 1680. His grandparents were Tomás Sanchez and Maria Barrera, married in Monterrey on January 21, 1673.5 I am a descendant of the explorer Tomás Sanchez. He married several times. One particular woman that he had several children with was the gregarious Catarina de Crive. Their daughter, Josefa, was born about 1730 and died about 1800. She was my ancestor. Sanchez had several grandchildren that he liked, such as Juan José Galan, born July 1, 1745. He died about 1812 and inherited Sanchez’s manic depression.6 During that era, many women perished during childbirth, and Josefa almost died during Juan José’s birth. Giving birth as early as fourteen years of age, women had a high childbirth death rate due to untold infectious diseases. Josefa’s babies grew up at the expense of their mother, extracting minerals such as calcium and other nutrients from her blood and bones. In the end, her skeleton became brittle, predisposing her to the trauma of spinal fractures.7 Feeling in need of a housewife to take care of him and his family, Sanchez felt the need to marry. Then the cycle would start all over again. He had children from these relationships and diseases took a toll on several of them. Sanchez had about nine children and testified to his vitality and his devotion to family life when his rancho was inspected in 1757. During Colonial Mexico, the Sanchez family used different surnames, a practice common among Hispanic Jews. Like other Jews, Sanchez had confidence in himself. As late as the 1700’s, some Mexican Jews read the scroll of the law, mostly in Spanish and chanted in Hebrew that only a few could interpret. Sanchez’s family roots sprang from Nuevo Leon since the 1600’s, as part of the community founded by New Christian Governor Luis Carvajal (Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva). There were probably 100 or more families. As before, Jewish women accompanied their husbands and upheld religious traditions with fortitude and fervor.8 When inspection revealed circumcision, and thus the presence of male Jews, the horrified Inquisition affirmed that Carvajal’s nephew had performed the painful operation on himself and other men.9 Carvajal’s relatives faced the Monterrey Holy Inquisition and some perished in the Church’s bonfire. “By the end of the sixteenth century, the Inquisitors were the objects of scorn and hatred.”10 Illustrations of these fanatical judges can be found in the work of Mexico City artist Sebastian Lopez de Arteaga, painting in the 1600’s.11 As late as the 1700’s, Sanchez and his contemporaries faced anti-Semitic literature, an example of which was written by Esteban de Ares Fonsec, published in Lisbon and shipped to Mexico.12 Viceroy Escandón won the admiration of the Spanish government because of the work of colonization in the lower Rio Grande of the industrious Sanchez and other able officers. An exceptional lieutenant, Sanchez was a man of few words, who never avoided responsibilities. The argumentative and stubborn Sanchez strived to be a dedicated servant to the crown and labored tirelessly on town planning and agriculture. Remarkable for his legal knowledge, Sanchez commanded respect and was fiercely jealous of his honor and that of his family. He engaged in brawls and duels, concerning unjustified slurs on his good name.13 The enthusiastic Escandón established hamlets along the Lower Rio Grande River, while Sanchez remained his right hand. A crafty politician and probably Jewish, Juan José Vásquez Borrego remained an influential friend of Sanchez. He had no use for Catholicism. The audacious Sanchez suggested to Borrego that he be permitted to establish a town at the lower Rio Grande with his well-disciplined newcomers. Like Borrego, he intended to pay all the costs of furnishing the pioneers and defending the location, so that there would be no expense to the royal treasury. But Sanchez was told by officials to find a site instead by the Nueces River. One last time, Sanchez obediently took off for the Nueces and made an honest effort to find a suitable place near the river, but could not, possibly because of hostile Indians. A frustrated Sanchez declared to Borrego that if he failed to establish his habitation along the lower Rio Grande, he would drop the whole idea. Borrego refused to see any negative reports and communicated with Escandón. On May 15, 1755, Escandón approved giving Sanchez acreage by the Rio Grande to develop, and named it Laredo. This is the site of the present Laredo, Texas. The principal livelihood of the inhabitants was raising livestock, although the numbers of animals were far short of the thousands in the pueblos downstream. Sanchez, who had been promoted to captain, owned numerous horses and cattle. He believed Laredo could be a prosperous village since livestock provided excellent breeding opportunities and income.14 Pigs remained unpopular as a commodity. By classifying a single man as a “family,” one could say there were a few families living in Laredo. Wilkinson affirmed that the dwellings consisted of 85 inhabitants, about half of whom were of the immediate family of Sanchez or close relatives. But this small number still represented growth, for just two years before, Sanchez had begun his community with only three families. All the original newcomers and those who came next had been brought to Laredo without expense to the royal treasury. The living quarters had not progressed beyond jacales, or huts, built of brush. It gave the place the appearance of a camp. The chronicler, A. Lopez de la Camara Alta, dismissed the dwellings as the frivolous Rancho de Laredo.15 In time, the resulting town had homes with walls of hard-packed earth, coated with thick lime plaster. The equality of citizens prevailed. For a long period, Laredo did not have a priest. A government inspector, José Tienda de Cuervo, falsified a report during the 1700’s that “the residents living here” had a “desire for an ecclesiastical minister to attend to them.” Historian Carlos Castañeda noted, “There was no mission nor much hope of one being established in the near future, not for lack of Indians but for the want of a missionary.” The scholar J. B. Wilkinson wrote that This “… is no indictment of his zeal but evidence of the parsimony of the Spanish crown, for the costs of missionaries were paid from the royal treasury.”16 Casteńda pointed out, “… nothing was done to remedy the deplorable situation for several years.”17 Sanchez and other colonists in Laredo were not upset. To them the authority of priests, bishop and popes meant nothing. Jews poured into New Spain as soldiers and as merchants, writes Liebman. The scholar, Gustavo Baez Camargo, stated that when Jews arrived in Mexico, they resented priests with a passion. The Church had categorized the Jewish Messiah as an evil anti-Christ.18 Like most immigrants, the keen and intuitive Sanchez retained a Catholic façade. Bitter memories of the Inquisition in Monterrey remained alive. The Inquisition never flourished beyond the Rio Grande. “The incompetence of the Inquisition officials in the areas distant from Mexico further impeded the effectiveness of the Holy Office,” writes Liebman. This concept that the frontiersmen “lived free of molestation,” was contradicted by the confrontation of the clergy’s political meddling by Sanchez, the independent spirit.19 When the Archbishop of Guadalajara returned from eastern Texas by way of Laredo in 1759, he saw what he believed was the need for a priest. A shocked prelate reported that the inhabitants of Dolores and Laredo lived like heretics. Children were rarely baptized. The archbishop questioned Sanchez, suspecting heresy. By now, the eighteenth century inquisitors were more lenient in order to retain their authority.20 Then the archbishop did what a desperate Sanchez feared the most. The passionate clergyman in Laredo criticized local politics, demanded absolute obedience and rushed a priest to Laredo. The ecclesiastic raised a storm of protest to the viceroy, while the royal treasury and the people of Laredo paid for a priest. A furious Escandón protested that religious conflicts disrupted the stability of the settlements. He believed that the missionary of Revilla was sufficient to attend to Laredo’s spiritual needs, which could barely survive to support a priest. Castañeda commented that Escandón’s policy should be “taken with a grain of salt.” 21 As for Sanchez, he died about 1785, probably from tuberculosis or another disease that exterminated a majority of the indigenous people.22 If Sanchez’s skeleton was available, examining his teeth and cranial sutures could reveal his age and health at death. As a sickly child, rings of thin enamel on his teeth would suggest high fevers while his teeth were forming. Never flaunting their success, Escandón and Sanchez established and invigorated several cities and the cattle industry in South Texas and parts of Mexico. Images of a haunted Sanchez and other Spanish gentlemen on horseback during a full moon were created by folklore. While greeting others, they politely lifted their hats off with their head. Refusing to acknowledge crucifixes, they chanted their own special prayers during Friday evenings.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 22:26:22 +0000
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