REVIEW OF TEJANO PATRIOT: Southwestern historical quarterly

Tejano Patriot: The Revolutionary Life of José Francisco Ruiz, 1783–1840. By Art Martínez de Vara. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2020. Pp. 269. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)

     Art Martínez de Vara's biography of José Francisco Ruiz is another in a growing list of biographies of Tejano leaders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Well-written and readable, the book skillfully weaves and contextualizes Ruiz's life into a broader historical story, providing more than the title's promise. Martínez de Vara's fourteen chapters include excellent coverage of the late Spanish period, the Mexican independence era, the Mexican period, Native American affairs, relations with the United States, and Texas independence and politics through 1840.

     As with other books on Tejano political figures of this era, this text explores Ruiz as what historian Raúl Ramos has called a cultural broker among Mexicans, Anglos Americans, and Native Americans. Also, in keeping with prevailing historiography, the study adheres to the now familiar interpretation of Béxar's Tejano elites as mostly provincially minded and pragmatic historical actors primarily interested in defending their town and region from centralized power in Mexico City while pursuing economic interests with those coming from the east. Martínez de Vara tells us that Ruiz prioritized his economic interests, protected local prerogatives, and threw his lot in with Anglo Americans and Texas independence.

     Besides exploring these themes, Martínez de Vara explores, albeit briefly, a mostly unexplored aspect of Tejano intellectual history. He draws on Raúl Coronado's award-winning book A World Not to Come: A History of Latino Writing and Print Culture (Harvard University Press, 2013), which  treats religious and philosophical currents in northeastern New Spain in the late eighteenth century. Martínez de Vara embraces Coronado's argument that the region's elites shared a worldview framed by Spanish Catholic liberalism and scholasticism. Coronado traced this through the writings of Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, an ardent supporter of insurgent leader Miguel de Hidalgo, who invaded Béxar from Louisiana in 1813 and declared Texas an independent Mexican state. Martínez de Vara confidently argues that Gutiérrez de Lara's ideas also influenced Ruíz and his fellow elite Bexareños as they made revolutionary decisions during the Hidalgo era and later.

     While Martínez de Vara's view that Ruiz and others in this frontier town shared Bernardo de Lara's revolutionary commitment to liberal Catholic principles in 1813, he does not explicitly explore the theme through the rest of the book. Instead he describes Ruiz as a man with a pragmatic understanding that his economic interests and future lay to the east among Anglo-American Protestant immigrants. The need to pursue pragmatic actions driven by circumstance certainly competed with his Catholic values, but how did his thinking evolve over time? Given the thorough research reflected in this book, apparently Ruiz did not leave much testimony on the subject; Martínez de Vara does not return to the question along the way except to reiterate the point in the conclusion.

     The extent to which Catholicism and scholasticism influenced the political worldview of Ruiz and other Béxar elites remains an open question, but Martínez de Vara did a favor in raising the issue and alerting Tejano biographers to explore the intellectual history of these important figures. In the process, historians may even explore the extent to which Tejano liberals may have shared similar views with fellow travelers in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico during this period and later who also pragmatically looked to the United States as a model for their own societies even to the point of outright annexation.

                                                                                                       Gerald Poyo, St. Mary's University