Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Goseacochea (16 May 1824 – 30 October 1894) was a Mexican general, politician, caudillo, and outlaw of American West who engaged in socially-motivated border banditry against the United States from 1859 to 1861 in the "Cortina Troubles.
Biography[]
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Gosecochea was born in Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico on 16 May 1824, and he was raised in the disputed Rio Grande Valley region on the border of Mexico and the Republic of Texas. He joined the Mexican Army in 1846 at the start of the Mexican-American War, and he fought at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. With the end of the war and the US annexation of Texas, Cortina became an important political boss for the South Texas Democratic Party and remained a large rancher, even as his estates were taken away from him. He went on to train a private army in response to the harassment of the Hispanic Tejanos by the white "Anglos", and the tensions between his army and the Brownsville authorities escalated into open conflict on 13 July 1859, when he seized the town, holding it until 30 September 1859. He led his paramilitary mounted militia in several raids against Anglo-American settlers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but he was easily defeated by the Texas Rangers and the US Army and forced to flee into Mexico. President Benito Juarez appointed Cortina the commander of the Mexican Army in Tamaulipas, and, from 1862 to 1866, he was the de facto ruler of the state during the Franco-Mexican War, briefly joining the invaders before turning on them and aiding in their defeat. He later supported Porfirio Diaz's rise to power, only to be imprisoned for his continued raids on Texas. He was imprisoned at the Santiago Tlatelolco military prison until 1890, when he was moved to house arrest. Cortina died in the Mexico City suburb of Azcapotzalco.
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