Loud, thundering calls for “that greaser” travelled through the hallways and doors of the Gonzalez County jail in south-central Texas during a hot summer evening in 1901. Men’s voices could be heard loud and clear as a mob of about 300 approached the entrance of the county jail and a waiting Sheriff Frank M. Fly. He struggled to keep the mob under control, claiming it was he who had authority over the prisoner, their “greaser,” a 37-year-old farmhand and tenant worker named Gregorio Cortez. After a heated exchange with the unruly group of locals from Gonzalez and farther towns, Fly finally convinced the last of the men to leave and “allow the state of Texas to do its job.” This harrowing scene was described in newspapers of the period as well as in the landmark book With His Pistol in His Hand (1958), whose publication signaled the establishment of the field of Mexican American history. There was even a 1982 film inspired by the book, entitled “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.”
While the news of a “sheriff killer and greaser” who had fatally shot a lawman in Texas spread like wildfire at the time, little was reported on Leonor Díaz, Cortez’s spouse, or their four children. Though With His Pistol in His Hand included a few paragraphs on Díaz, the film—with the potential to reach greater public audiences—only dedicated a few minutes to Leonor’s character and nowhere in the credit lines did the name of the actress portraying the wailing wife appear. I still do not know who portrayed Leonor.
I set out to recover a history of state violence from the lens of Leonor Díaz both because of this lack of scholarly concern with her life and because of my childhood growing up along the border. One of my fondest memories is listening to corridos during family barbecues. As my father fired up the grill, he would play Mexican ballads or corridos, songs which I still love to this day. I come from a musical family; my maternal grandfather played accordion and bass, my mother played guitar, and four of her brothers played an instrument. I was always intrigued by the stories I heard via the beautiful tonada produced by the accordion and bass. I grew up listening to corridos of “bandits” smuggling tequila over the border during Prohibition, outsmarting customs agents.