Historic Laredo

ing out the natives and terrorizing settlers until late
in the 19th century.
LOS QUE SIGUIERON:
THE COLONIAL SETTLERS
The few remaining old stone buildings of
Laredo are of the same vernacular vintage as the
sandstone block structures of the abandoned and
sometimes partly submerged Spanish colonial
townsites of Guerrero Viejo, San Bartolo, old
Lopeño, old Falcón, Uribeño, old Ramireño, El
Tigre, El Clareño, El Capitaneño, and Tepezán.
Except for Guerrero Viejo, which remains largely
intact since its abandonment by condemnation in
1952, the waters of the Falcón reservoir have done
much to lay to waste the grandness of the architecture
of those small Spanish colonial settlements.
Fortunately, much vernacular architecture has been
preserved downriver in San Ygnacio and Roma as
well as in Ciudad Mier and Ciudad Miguel Alemán.
The richness of architectural detail that survives
in these old structures tells a story of the lives of
those who built them over 200 years ago and what
were their criteria for comfort and survival in so
inhospitable a terrain.
It takes but a second to intuit by the precisely
square mass of un-mortared sandstone blocks the
enduring craftsmanship of the early builders. A
longer look at the whole of a stone wall with its drystacked
arches, cypress lintels over doors and windows,
and troneras (gun ports) bears out the intended
permanence of the homes, homes meant to offer
enduring shelter and formidable protection. The
durable aesthetics of those old buildings with their
elegant, hand-forged hardware of ancient doors
allow, too, a look into the character of those
builders, those owners who meant to stay. There is
a refrain to the contemplation of function fused with
the beauty of those old structures: with their hands.
It is not difficult to find the few surviving old
sandstone block buildings left in Laredo, those
remaining after the city gave up many of its architectural
treasures to the construction of the Juárez
Lincoln International Bridge through the heart of
one of its oldest and most historically rich neighborhoods,
El Azteca. You have only to walk along
Zaragoza Street at the river’s edge to view some
excellent examples of the architecture of the early
residents of this region. Between the Juárez
Lincoln Bridge and International Bridge I, you will
come across the Agustín Vidaurri Home, now the
American Legion building (809 Zaragoza); the
Lockwood Customs brokerage house (819
Zaragoza); or the Bartolomé García Home, once
the capital building of the Republic of the Río
Grande and now the Republic of the Río Grande
Museum (1000 Zaragoza).
Author Andres Tijerina characterizes early
ranching in South Texas as a system of defensive
settlement that the Spaniards had used for a thousand
years in Spain and in the New World.
Tijerina’s Tejano Empire is a concise narrative for
the lives of those early settlers, a valuable resource
that gives the names and explanations for the
objects, customs, and ranch traditions of the colonial
settlers. Tijerina provides a wealth of detail for
the casas de sillar (quarried block houses), what
grew in the gardens of those homes, how they
worked their livestock, what they wore, and the
objects that filled their homes.
That narrative, coupled perhaps with a walk
through the ruins of Guerrero Viejo or the narrative
of an abuelo (grandfather) allows a picture of
cultured, genteel ranching families making their
lives on this edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Who were those people and what were their
names? What fire of soul and spirit pointed the compass
of their hearts north from the center of Mexico?
Who were those first colonial settlers, adventurous
and intrepid sons and daughters of those who had
sailed Spanish ships to step onto Mexican soil at
Veracruz or Panuco in the 1600s? Who were they,
those who for the next century-and-a-half would
move north to Mexico City, Monterrey, and Revilla
and the other border settlements and ranchos that
became a springboard for José De Escandón’s colonization
of the Spanish province of Nuevo Santander
on both banks of the Río Bravo del Norte?
Like many other residents of this region, I can
chart on a globe the who, what, when, where, why,
❖
The drystacked (now razed and lost)
wall of sandstone block of the
Margarito Sanchez home in
downtown Laredo.
WEBB COUNTY HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Chapter I ✦ 7