Discussion focuses on battle for truth in killing of 3 Tejanos
A bridge was built across generations Wednesday during a conversation about the killing of three Tejanos mischaracterized as liquor smugglers.
On April 1, 1920, several men, including Crescencio Oliveira Jr., Dionisio Maldonado and Vicente Aguilar, were on their way to a wedding in Mexico. They were carrying gifts for the bridal party when they decided to stop near the Texas-Mexico border.
Marianella Q. Franklin, a descendant of Maldonado and retired chief sustainability officer for UTRGV, and Arelis R. Hernández, a journalist from The Washington Post, spoke about the controversy surrounding the case during the presentation of “El Corrido de Dionisio Maldonado: Family, Memory, and History in the Borderlands.”
The Center for Mexican American Studies hosted the discussion in the Borderlands Room in the Education Complex on the Edinburg campus, which was filled with the descendant families of the three Tejanos and members of the UTRGV community.
Oliveira Jr., Maldonado and Aguilar, who were traveling from Benavidez, Texas, to Parás, Nuevo León, México, were labeled as liquor smugglers by U.S. law enforcement officers in South Texas.
“What happened next has been debated for more than 100 years,” wrote Hernández and Frank Hulley-Jones, the senior designer for The Washington Post, in a May 15 article on the 1920 case. “Public records and history books tell one version of the story, while the travelers’ descendants tell another.”
According to Franklin, when the Texas Rangers spotted the travelers, they opened fire, resulting in the deaths of Maldonado, Aguilar and Oliveira Jr., who was the groom.
Franklin said she attended a conference with her mother in 2017, where a corrido, or ballad, of her great-grandfather Dionisio Maldonado and the other two men who were killed was going to be performed.
As they were listening, they realized the story they knew was different from the corrido, as it was labeling the three Tejanos as liquor smugglers.
Families of the victims remembered the events differently.
“And the question is, ‘What was happening in the 1940s that they would omit half of the story?’” Franklin said during the discussion. “The half of the story that we know as a family, because el corrido also portrays them as tequileros, which they were not.”
Over the years, she has heard corridos with different versions.
“You can’t have a future if you don’t know the past,” Franklin said. “History is very important. And people say you shouldn’t dwell on the past. We are not dwelling on the past. We just want to make sure that the past, the information that’s provided, is correct.
“And I’m not here to say anything negative about law enforcement back then. … I just want to make that clear. I’m not happy with the way things happened back then. There’s nothing I can do about it other than share that I want this story to be told and not to be one-sided.”
When Hernández got to work in South Texas for The Washington Post in 2019, she was fascinated that there were Latinos who could trace their roots.
It was important for her as a journalist to be rigorous in her work and to try and verify as many details as possible.
“It felt like detective work where you had one side of the story, and not even just one side [but], sort of, shades of the story from different perspectives,” Hernández said. “… I’m not saying that we shouldn’t question all, you know, oral histories as well. I think we should question the official narrative and oral history and look at what we have from both and see what details we can verify through whatever means still exist, like even a third-party verification and that kind of thing.”
Franklin said it is important to talk about the case to find the truth.
“It’s something that we need to continue looking at in making sure that we share what we know and allow them to share what they know,” she said. “And let’s see, you know, where the truth lies. We need the truth because this was something that happened many years ago.
“It did hurt very many people. It’s not a reflection of them today. We’re not here to try and say that they’re doing the same thing today. We’re just trying to uncover the truth.”
Miguel Mendoza, curriculum and education graduate student and graduate associate instructor with the Department of Teaching and Learning, attended the event Wednesday and shared his thoughts on the importance of learning about family history.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have a similar history, [and] I’m one of those people,” Mendoza said. “On my mom’s side, we do have Texas Rangers. So, it’s a little crazy to hear these stories, that they can intertwine and you brought up like why not talk about the history and doubting moral history.
“And I think sometimes people don’t talk about it because we doubt our own history as well. … But I think this is great to understand because we are all part of this, like, borderland. … And so, there’s a lot definitely here in this room. So, I’m just very appreciative of you sharing your story because it’s reinvigorating my life story as well.”
