Tejano Origins in Mexican Texas — 10

Undoubtedly the flying squadron had extraordinary effectiveness on the despoblado in the nineteenth century. It effectively combined the principles of mobility, incessant pursuit, and the advantages of an offensive frontier guard. Considering the characteristics-good and bad-of the Rangers in mid-nineteenth-century South Texas, it appears that the Texas Rangers could well have represented something of a connecting link between the Tejano flying squadrons of the 1830s and the Rurales of the 1890s. As Tejanos adjusted to their status as a department of Coahuila y Texas, they participated in writing the colonization laws that invited Anglo-Americans into Texas, and they committed themselves to an unfavorable status in Mexico. As Coahuiltejanos, they saw their prosperity in the success of Anglo-American colonization. In support of this colonization, they formed a legislative policy which was at the vanguard of liberal thought in Mexico of the 1830s. Indeed, they established in this effort some of the most beneficial legal institutions of their cultural legacy for Texas and the United States, such as their law which became the model for the American Homestead Law. But, their protective attitude toward Anglo-Americans led Tejanos into direct conflict with the more conservative centralists of Mexico and eventually alienated them from the growing centralist government in Mexico City. But even as Tejanos began to conflict with the Centralist government in Mexico, they began to conflict with their new Anglo neighbors as well. For years Tejanos alone had resisted the intrusions of Anglo-American adventurers. Their supportive attitude toward colonization struggled against a strong cultural bias which made them perceive many Anglos as crude and asocial. Tejanos thus increasingly defined themselves as an entity different from Mexico and separate from the Anglo. Although Santa Anna and the Anglo-Americans in the Texas Revolution have held center stage in the story of Texas, Tejano politics was as much a factor as Mexican centralism or Anglo rebellion in determining the course of Tejanos and Texas.

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