While most Anglo-Texans saw Juan Nepomuceno Cortina as a border bandit, he was a significant land-owner who considered himself as a guardian of Mexican rights. While occupying the border city of Brownsville, Texas, with a small army in the fall of 1859 to reinforce his point, he issued the second of two proclamations on November 23, 1857 calling for the Texas state government to respect and protect the rights of Mexican-Americans. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Francisco Arturo Rosales, Chicano!: The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement (Houston, TX: University of Houston, 1996), 10.