| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4 | The History Cooperative

*Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas*. By Jerry Thompson (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. ix + 332 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $32.50, cloth.)
This is the most well-researched and thorough account of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina's life that we have. Cortina was a legendary defender of Mexicans on the South Texas-Mexico border, a self-appointed governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, an important military leader in the liberal struggle against the French imperial army in Mexico and a supporter of the Union during the U. S. Civil War.	1
After twenty years of prodigious research in U. S. and Mexican archives, Jerry Thompson has given us a detailed biographical account of Cortina's life, emphasizing military battles and political struggles. In the end, Thompson sees Cortina as a "social bandit" who was both "fearless and enterprising," as well as "often excessively violent, erratic, pompous, [and] callous" (p. 251). This more balanced depiction moves us beyond the racist depiction of Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, who portrayed Cortina as a "bandido" who "plundered and murdered," and Carey McWilliams's hagiographic portrayal (pp. 1–3).	. . .

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