Cynthia E. Orozco presents at Latino history Texas symposium

Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco, Eastern New Mexico University Ruidoso professor of history and humanities, recently attended a National Endowment for the Humanities conference commemorating the achievements of Texas state legislator J.T. Canales, a critic of the Texas Rangers.

University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University in College Station professors organized a symposium at the Bob Bullock Texas History museum in Austin to discuss Canales’ 1919 investigation of state-sanctioned violence by the Texas Rangers against Mexican Americans and Mexicans in the Rio Grande Valley in the 1910.

Estimates of those range between 300 to 5,000, Orozco said.

Canales of Brownsville, Texas was an 1898 University of Michigan law school graduate and served five terms in the Texas legislature in the 1900s and 1910s. He was the only non-Caucasian legislator and the only Mexican American lawyer in Texas at the time.