Latino USA: The Lone Legislator

In patnership with Latino USA, this feature tells the story of intrepid Texas state representative José Tomás Canales, who led an investigation into the abuses of the Texas Rangers. Founded in 1835, the Rangers operated as law enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border before the Border Patrol existed. After the tumult of the Mexican-American War and the Mexican Revolution, the ranks of the Rangers swelled with untrained members, and so did the reports of their abuses. 

Residents of South Texas reported that members of the law enforcement agency were going rogue: beating, torturing, and even killing people, often Mexican-Americans or African-Americans, in the name of protecting Anglo settlers.When the complaints reached Canales, the only representative of Mexican heritage in the Texan legislature at the time, he felt that it was his duty to do something about them. However, the investigation that would follow in 1919 wouldn’t just put the Texas Rangers on trial, it would unexpectedly also become a personal interrogation of Mexican-Americans as a community, and eventually of Canales himself.

Guided by the work of Dr. Monica Muñoz Martinez, assistant professor of American and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and author of the book “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” and by Dr. Richard Ribb—we take you inside that historic investigation. Over 80 people testified, resulting in thousands of pages of transcribed documents.