A Law for the Lion : A Tale of Crime and Injustice in the Borderlands

It was still early August, and the maximum temperature readings at the Fort McIntosh weather station on the banks of the Rio Grande hovered between 104 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, but the people of Laredo, Texas, and the surrounding border area had begun to anticipate the end of the dog days of summer. The trains arriving in Laredo were brimming with passengers who, perhaps optimistically, had already concluded their summer vacations. On Saturday, August 10, for example, the Laredo Daily Times reported that Mrs. Justo S. Penn, wife of the publisher of the Times, and her children had returned from a three-week visit to friends in Bustamante, Nuevo León, in northern Mexico. Bustamante is located at the edge of the Sierra de Bustamante, at a higher altitude than Laredo-no doubt the reason why the Penn family chose the spot to escape the worst of the border summer (Municipios 78). Bustamante was also on the railway line between Laredo and Monterrey, Mexico's most important northern city. And whereas Mrs. Penn (née Alicia Herrera) traveled north on the tenth of August, a few days later, on Wednesday, August 14, the Laredo Daily Times reported the presence, en route to Mexico City, of Gustavo Madero, Mexico's finance minister, who had spent several weeks in Galveston, Texas, "enjoying life at the seaside." In hindsight, Gustavo Madero's sojourn by the sea may appear like fiddling while Mexico burned, for even then, in the summer of 1912, his brother, the president of Mexico, Francisco I. Madero, was battling insurrection from Emiliano Zapata in the south and from Pascual Orozco in the north, as the Daily Times also reported in various issues spanning August 9 to August 15. However, the Laredo Daily Times apparently missed the opportunity to interview Gustavo Madero, since no mention is made of any comments made by him during his stopover. This omission might have been due to the absence of the newspaper's editor and publisher, who had left for San Antonio on the day before. Justo S. (Justo Sabor, born James Saunders) Penn had traveled on the International and Great Northern Railway on Tuesday, August 13, accompanied by Webb County Sheriff Amador Sánchez, to attend the State Democratic Convention held in San Antonio. Both were delegates from Webb County, according to the Daily Times. Laredo in 1912 was well served by the railroads. Four lines had had depots there since the 1880s. The International and Great Northern was "one of the principal feeders to Jay Gould's great southwest system [and had] its southern terminus at the foot of Eagle Pass street [where it had] built large and commodious freight and passenger depots, besides round and coach houses," according to a pamphlet published in 1889 by the Laredo Immigration Society (Tarver 9). Coming from the other direction, the Mexican National Railroad had its northernmost terminus in Laredo, a distance of 837 miles from Mexico City. According to the same promotional pamphlet of the Immigration Society, the Mexican Railroad had built in Laredo "one of the largest, most elegant and costly depot buildings in the state. . . . It is equipped with palatial sleeping and dining cars, and its scheduled passenger time between Laredo and the City of Mexico will be 36 hours" (Tarver 10). Annotation "I find this story interesting and captivating. I think it will be of general interest to the public because the story chronicles an important part of our history. It can serve to gauge the progress we've made in society and in our legal system. I strongly recommend it."--Hon. Raul A. Gonzalez, former Justice, Texas Supreme Court "Esto no es cosa de armas" (this is not a matter for weapons). These were the last words of Don Francisco Gutieacute;rrez before Alonzo W. Allee shot and killed him and his son, Manuel Gutieacute;rrez. What began as a simple dispute over Allee's unauthorized tenancy on a Gutieacute;rrez family ranch near Laredo, Texas, led not only to the slaying of these two prominent Mexican landowners but also to a blatant miscarriage of justice. In this engrossing account of the 1912 crime and the subsequent trial of Allee, Beatriz de la Garza delves into the political, ethnic, and cultural worlds of the Texas-Mexico border to expose the tensions between the Anglo minority and the Mexican majority that propelled the killings and their aftermath. Drawing on original sources, she uncovers how influential Anglos financed a first-class legal team for Allee's defense and also discusses how Anglo-owned newspapers helped shape public opinion in Allee's favor. In telling the story of this long-ago crime and its tragic results, de la Garza sheds new light on the interethnic struggles that defined life on the border a century ago, on the mystique of the Texas Rangers (Allee was said to be a Ranger), and on the legal framework that once institutionalized violence and lawlessness in Texas "Esto no es cosa de armas" (this is not a matter for weapons). These were the last words of Don Francisco Gutiérrez before Alonzo W. Allee shot and killed him and his son, Manuel Gutiérrez. What began as a simple dispute over Allee's unauthorized tenancy on a Gutiérrez family ranch near Laredo, Texas, led not only to the slaying of these two prominent Mexican landowners but also to a blatant miscarriage of justice. In this engrossing account of the 1912 crime and the subsequent trial of Allee, Beatriz de la Garza delves into the political, ethnic, and cultural worlds of the Texas-Mexico border to expose the tensions between the Anglo minority and the Mexican majority that propelled the killings and their aftermath. Drawing on original sources, she uncovers how influential Anglos financed a first-class legal team for Allee's defense and also discusses how Anglo-owned newspapers helped shape public opinion in Allee's favor. In telling the story of this long-ago crime and its tragic results, de la Garza sheds new light on the interethnic struggles that defined life on the border a century ago, on the mystique of the Texas Rangers (Allee was said to be a Ranger), and on the legal framework that once institutionalized violence and lawlessness in Texas.