Mexican folk hero/military leader/ border bandit. The son of Estéfana and Trinidad Cortinas, later changed to Cortina, Juan Cortina was born in Camargo, Mexico on 5/14/1824.His aristocratic mother was one of the heirs of a large land grant in the lower Rio Grande valley, including the area that surrounded Brownsville. The family moved to that land when Cortina was still young. In the Mexican War Cortina served as a part of an irregular cavalry during the battles of Resaca de la Palma and Palo Alto under Gen. Mariano Arista of the Tamaulipas Brigade. After the war he returned to the north bank of the river, where he was accused on at least two occasions of stealing cattle by the Cameron County grand jury. He had grown in popularity and political influence among the Mexicans there and even though he was seen frequently in public, he was not arrested on the indictments. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Cortina developed a hatred for a group of judges, attorneys and land speculators whom he accused of stealing land from Texas Mexican unfamiliar with the American judicial system and in the process became a leader to many of the poorer Mexicans who lived along the banks of the river. Cortina had sworn he would kill these men for stealing land from the Mexican Americans. The incident that ignited the first so-called Cortina War occurred on 7/13/1859, when Cortina saw the Brownsville, Texas, city marshall, Robert Shears, brutally arrest a Mexican American who had once been employed by Cortina. Cortina shot a town marshall in the impending confrontation and rode out of town with the prisoner. Early on the morning of 9/28/1859, he rode into Brownsville again, this time at the head of some forty to eighty men, and seized control of the town. Five men, including the city jailer, were shot during the raid, as Cortina and his men raced through the streets shouting "Death to the Americans" and "Viva Mexico." On person killed during the rais was Constable Morris, who was found at his home. He tried to escape but was surrounded by Cortina's men and hacked to death with swords. His wife reportedly had to gather his body pieces in a sack for burial. Many of the men whom Cortina had previously sworn to kill, however, escaped or went into hiding. Several members of Brownsville's leading citizens contacted Mexican authorities in Matamoros for help in dealing with Cortina. They asked José María Carbajal, a local influential Mexican who had lived and studied in Kentucky and Virgina and was an ardent Protestant, for help. He agreed and crossed the river to negotiate with Cortina who subsequently agreed to evacuate the town and retreated to the family ranch at Santa Rita in Cameron County. On 9/30/1859, Cortina issued a proclamation asserting the rights of Mexican Texans and demanding the punishment of anyone violating these rights. Tensions in Brownsville remained high and soon town posse captured one of Cortina's men, Tomás Cabrera. About twenty citizens of the town formed a group called the Brownsville Tigers, and, assisted by a militia company from Matamoros, moved against Cortina, who was reported to be at his mother's ranch some six miles upriver. With two cannons the Brownsville-Matamoros force launched a weak, unorganized attack, which Cortina easily repulsed; the "Tigers" lost their cannons and retreated in complete disarray. Cortina was idolized by many of the poorer Mexicans on both sides of the river who viewed him as a protector or a "Robin Hood" of sorts and as a result his small army grew as recruits joined his ranks. Cortina demanded that Brownsville release Cabrera or he and his men would burn Brownsville to the ground. The result of this threat was the arrival of an undisciplined company of Texas Rangers commanded by Capt. William G. Tobin who proceeded to hand Cabrera the next day. They also tried an unsuccessful attack against Cortina. On Cortina issued a second proclamation on 11/23/1859 asking Governor Sam Houston to defend the legal interests of Mexican residents in Texas. By early December a second company of rangers, commanded by John Salmon "Rip" Ford, arrived, as did Maj. Samuel P. Heintzelman with 165 US Army regulars. Cortina, who it is claimed had over 400 men by this time, retreated upriver, laying waste to much of the lower Valley. On 12/27/1865 Maj. Heintzelman engaged Cortina in the battle of Rio Grande City where Cortina was decisively defeated, losing sixty men and much of his equipment. Cortina retreated into Mexico and next appeared at La Bolsa, a large bend on the Rio Grande below Rio Grande City, where he attempted to capture the steamboat Ranchero, owned and operated by two of his antagonists, Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy. With the approach of the steamboat, Major Ford and his rangers crossed into Mexico, secured the south bank, and forced Cortina to retreat. US Army Col. Robert E. Lee, now in command of the Eighth Military District, arrived in the lower Valley determined to restore peace and threatening to invade Mexico if necessary. Cortina, however, had retreated into the Burgos Mountains, where he remained for more than a year. With the secession of Texas from the Union, Cortina appeared on the border again and started the second Cortina War. In May 1861 he invaded Zapata County and attacked the county seat, Carrizo. He was defeated by Confederate captain Santos Benavides and retreated back into Mexico. Cortina lost seven men in the fray, while eleven others were captured by Benavides who promptly hung or shot them. On 5/5/1862, during the period of French intervention in Mexico, Cortina helped to defend San Lorenzo at Puebla. He saw action at Matamoros and, envisioning himself as an independent and powerful "caudillo", briefly cooperated with the imperialists. Later he fought in central Mexico and was at Querétaro at the execution of Maximilian. In 1863 Cortina proclaimed himself governor of Tamaulipas and was promoted to general of the Mexican Army of the North by President Benito Juárez. Cortina appointed himself governor again in 1866 but immediately relinquished the office to General Tapia. Cortina returned to the border in 1870, and forty-one residents of the Valley, including a former mayor of Brownsville, signed a petition asking that he be pardoned for his crimes because of his service to the Union during the Civil War. The petition failed in the Texas legislature on its second reading, in 1871. In subsequent years, stockmen in the Nueces Strip accused Cortina of leading a large ring of cattle rustlers. Subsequent American diplomatic pressure was largely responsible for his arrest in July of 1875 and his removal to Mexico City. He was kept at the military prison of Santiago Tlaltelolco, without being tried or sentenced. He remained there until 1890, when he was paroled to a big hacienda below Mexico City. Cortina never again regained power in Mexico. He died in Azcapotzalco, Mexico City, of pneumonia on 10/30/1894 (some records show his death as 1892). His wish to be buried in Texas on his family land was denied and his body was buried somewhere in Mexico, reportedly with full military honors by the Mexican governement.∼Politician. Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Goseacochea, also known by his nicknames 'Cheno Cortina,' the 'Red Robber of the Rio Grande' and the 'Rio Grande Robin Hood,' was a Mexican rancher, politician, military leader, outlaw and folk hero. He was an important caudillo, military general and regional leader, who effectively controlled the Mexican state of Tamaulipas as governor. In borderlands history he is known for leading a paramilitary mounted Mexican Militia in the failed Cortina Wars. The "Wars" were raids targeting Anglo-American civilians whose settlement Cortina opposed near the several leagues of land granted to his wealthy family on both sides of the Rio Grande. Anglo families began immigrating to the Lower Rio Grande Valley after the Mexican Army was defeated by the Anglo-Mexican rebels of the Mexican State of Tejas, in the Texas Revolution. From 1836 to 1848 when Cortina was 12–24 years old, parts of the Cortina Grant North of the Rio Grande River was in the disputed territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers, claimed by both Mexico and the Republic of Texas. The situation had a big impact on Cortina and his perspective on government and power. When the United States defeated Mexico in the Mexican–American War in 1848, Mexico was forced to cede the disputed territory to Texas. Cortina opposed this concession. However, Cortina's Mexican militia was easily defeated and forced to flee into Mexico when the Texas Rangers, the United States Army and the local militia of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas all organized and fought against his forces. According to Robert Elman, author of Badmen of the West, Cortina was the first "socially motivated border bandit," similar to Catarino Garza and Pancho Villa of later generations. His followers were known as the "Cortinistas."