Zermeño no en contacto

Zermeño no en contacto - Texas

Mrs. Zermeño, maestra de primer año (8/xii/00) Benito Martinez Elementary, El Paso, Texas

Erminia Zermeno, oficial de correcciones Pecos County, Texas

Estella Zermeno, historiadora del Victoria Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Society of Texas (8/xii/00)
Celebrating Mexican Heritage - 1999 Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Printer Friendly - Email Article
GOLIAD, Texas, May 5, 1999
Estella Zermeno's home is a small, neatly kept, bicultural family shrine. There is a
hand-colored photo of her seven brothers, each in his U.S. military uniform. There are
vivid photos of nieces and nephews who are firefighters and police officers - all public
servants.

And there are the older, faded photos of Mexican washerwomen and dark-skinned men
wearing stiff white collars. They, too, are family.

The Zermenos are proud Americans, they said, but they also take a special pride in
their Mexican ancestry. Estella Zermeno can follow her lineage back two and a half
centuries to the beginning of Goliad, designated as the focal point for this year's statewide Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Zermeno's heritage was not easy to record, she said. History and prejudice have
obscured the area's Hispanic legacy. At times, Spanish was the mother tongue; at
times it was strictly forbidden. Records were often ignored, events forgotten.

"The schools didn't teach as much of our history as they should,'' Zermeno said. "A lot
of us were educated in Texas, and all we got was the Alamo.''

Until the late 1920s, Mexican-American children in Goliad went to a segregated
school, and then only to the seventh grade. There was no high school for them.

"We were looked down on,'' Zermeno said. "We felt ashamed to be Mexican. We were
people who worked hard, and once we had land and big ranches.''

Goliad was established in October 1749 when Mission Espiritu Santo was built along
with Presidio La Bahia. Spanish soldiers were stationed at the presidio to protect the
mission and to protect Spain's interests in the region against the French and British.
Later, they would fight the Texians.

Names that remain prominent in Goliad, as the town was later named, include Becerra
and Cabrera. Estella Zermeno is kin to both. "Becerra was Portuguese. He was a soldier at the presidio,'' she said. "Cabrera was a
Canary Islander who moved here from San Antonio. She came in 1749.''
On a dining room table, the Zermenos have a half-dozen three-ring binders filled with
documents tracing their lineage. Photocopies of ancient, Spanish-language reports
show dates and places of marriages and births and military discharges.

One diary, kept by Don Manuel Becerra, talks of a trip during which he guided Don
Esteban Austin and 10 Anglo-Americans to the mouth of the Colorado River "to select
the most suitable site for a new town which they were authorized to establish.''

The trip began Sept. 15, 1821. In 1835, after the battle of Gonzales, Texas forces captured the presidio, or fort, in Goliad. They overpowered the 24-man Mexican garrison and rallied to sign the "Goliad Declaration of Independence,'' the first Texas declaration of independence.

"People don't know about the atrocities the Anglo troops committed against the
Mexican people of Goliad,'' Zermeno said. "They beat the men, raped the women and
ran a lot of people off their land. It was hard being a Mexican here.''

The next year, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered that Col. James Fannin and
his nearly 500 troops, who had been captured at Coleto, be executed. The Goliad
Massacre became a battle cry of the republic and further deepened the division
between Hispanic and Anglo settlers.

"Our own families were divided,'' said Emilio Vargas, a justice of the peace and lifelong
resident of Goliad. "It was like the Civil War; some Mexican families fought for the
Texas independence, some fought for Mexico.''

There was a strong sentiment toward Mexico in Goliad. One of its native sons soon
became a Mexican national hero. While the Civil War raged in the United States,
Mexico found itself at odds with England, Spain and France over increasing debts.

Mexican President Benito Juarez suspended payments of those debts, and foreign war
ships appeared at Veracruz. The English and Spanish eventually withdrew, but the
French were determined to establish control over Mexico and sent an army inland
toward Mexico City.

On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces led by Ignacio Seguin Zaragoza defeated the French
army. Zaragoza was born in La Bahia. Although the French won the war, Zaragoza's
victory instilled a pride in the Mexican people that is still celebrated in Cinco de Mayo
observances in Mexico and the United States.
A Zaragoza Society in Goliad was established to perpetuate the Zaragoza name and
keep his history alive. Vargas is president of the society; the Zermenos are members.
It is open to all races, Vargas said, an indication that the cultural differences in Goliad
have been bridged.

"When I was growing up in the 1940s, we were ashamed of what we were,'' Vargas said.
"We called ourselves Mexicans, Latin Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chicanos,
Latinos, Hispanics. What are we?

"Now, we are very proud of our ethnic group. We are Americans first, but we preserve
our heritage and customs. We are very much Mexican, and we can celebrate that.''
Goliad, Texas wzermeno@txcr.net

William Zermeno, Parliamentarian of the Victoria Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Society of Texas (8/xii/00) Goliad, Texas wzermeno@txcr.net

Erminia Zermeno has been selected as Correctional Officer of the Month for July 1998. She was transferred to the RCDC on August, 1995, from the Reeves County Sheriff's Office Transportation Department. She serves at the RCDC as a correctional officer III for the Custody Department. "Zermeno is the proud mother of two boys. She has proven to be an outstanding all-around officer who handles any job assignment in a very effective and efficient manner. Her diligence, dedication and hard work has gained her this
honor," said Franco. "Ms. Zermeno's contributions are
appreciated by the administration." (8/xii/00) Pecos Country of West Texas

William Zermeño, retired postal worker (20/vii/03) War of Words Divides Residents of Texas Town. July 19, 2003. By SIMON ROMERO. GOLIAD, Tex., July 16 - In history books, the killing of more than 300 Texan rebels by Mexican troops here has long been known as the Goliad Massacre. But to many residents of Goliad, with its 18th-century Spanish fort and towering monument to the dead, that brutal episode in its history is still open to interpretation.
At the heart of the dispute, largely between Anglos and Mexican-Americans, is the porous definition of who is a Texan and what is Texas history at a time when Hispanics are growing in number and influence.
Some of Goliad's Mexican-American residents prefer "execution" to "massacre" in describing what happened here in 1836 because of Mexican law at the time, which was explicit in meting out de facto death sentences for
foreigners taking up arms against the government.
"For so long in Texas history classes it's been drilled into us that Mexicans were the demons and Anglos the enlightened heroes," said Emilio Vargas III, an assistant principal at the Goliad elementary school and a descendant of Canary Islanders who settled here in the 18th century. "On this point we're no longer going to accept it without a fight."
Such talk has shaken Goliad, where the population of 2,000 is almost equally divided between Hispanics and Anglos, with a small black minority. The dispute has included the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the Presidio de la Bahía, the site of the killings 167 years ago, when American and European settlers were engaged in a war to pry Texas from Mexico.
Responding to letters and protests from parishioners and residents in Goliad, the Diocese of Victoria two years ago stuck with the long-used interpretation of events and refused to describe the killings as an execution. The church has owned the Presidio, a fort that operates as a tourist site and includes a chapel, since 1853.
"I'm aware of the sensitivity of the issue, but it's historically been called a massacre, and we don't feel qualified to change the name," Bishop David Fellhauer said.
The bishop's view might have signaled the end of the dispute, but tempers have continued to flare around Goliad, with many residents refusing to accept the church's position.
Benny Martinez, president of Goliad's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that many Anglos "still hate Mexicans and using `massacre' is a subtle way for them to express it." Mr. Martinez said he ruffled feathers at a meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in April when he said that the 1836 killings should be described as an execution.
Bishop Fellhauer and Newton M. Warzecha, director of the Presidio de la Bahía, consulted historians when a group of residents from the General Zaragoza Society, a Latino rights organization, sought to change the fort's
description of events.
Few experts dispute the brutality of the killings: Mexican forces shot hundreds of Texans on river roads near the Presidio, burned their bodies and left the remains to vultures. Documents from the time show that even among high-ranking Mexican officers there was ambivalence over carrying out the orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to kill the Texans, who had surrendered after a battle.
"Those men might have fought to the death if they thought their lives would not have been spared," said Ron Tyler, a history professor at the University of Texas and director of the Texas State Historical Association.
The different views illustrate a rift between old-school historians and a newer group who assert that Hispanics were marginalized - sometimes brutally - after Texas gained independence from Mexico.
"The cliché that victors write the history is too simple for Goliad," said Andres Tijerina, the author of several works on 19th-century Texas. "Would we be surprised today if the U.S. government executed a group of pirates, or
terrorists, as they're known in modern language, who were found operating on American soil?"
Mr. Tijerina and other historians who say "massacre" is too clumsy and insensitive a term call attention to the methods Anglos used to suppress Mexican-Americans in Goliad in the decades that followed Texas independence and statehood.
Near the courthouse here is a large oak, called the Hanging Tree. A plaque describes the Cart War of 1857, when Anglos attacked competing Mexican-American ox cart drivers, stole their freight and hanged 70 Mexican-American drivers on the tree.
"There's no mention of that violence when the fort does its re-enactments," said William Zermeno, a retired postal worker who lives a few hundred yards from the Presidio, where hundreds of people gather each March for
re-enactments of the 1836 killings.
Many people in Goliad find history hard to ignore. The town was founded in 1749 as a missionary outpost and was later known as La Bahía del Espiritu Santo. In 1829, its leaders changed the name to Goliad, a phonetic anagram of the surname of Miguel Hidalgo, the Roman Catholic priest who is known as the father of Mexican independence. Texans of Anglo and Mexican descent gathered here in 1835 to sign a declaration of independence. Some people here think it folly to dwell so much on the past.
"No wonder our town is not growing," said Rajesh Bhakta, an immigrant from India and manager of the Antlers Inn on Goliad's outskirts. "Who wants to invest in a place with all this unseemly fighting over long-ago affairs?"
Some friction is unavoidable in a place where it is almost impossible not to cross paths. Mr. Zermeno and his wife, Estella, also an outspoken "execution" proponent, attend the same church as Mr. Warzecha, the administrator of the Presidio and a staunch member of the "massacre" camp. They often avoid one another.
"I don't know if it's bad conscience on their part, if they feel guilty," said Mr. Warzecha, who grew up in the nearby ranching town of Cuero. "My best advice to them would be to just go on to better things."
There are few signs of appeasement from either side on the matter of the past. But divisions are not insurmountable. Anglos and Hispanics mingle freely in Goliad and intermarriage is becoming common. Robert Parvin, a
photographer who had an ancestor killed at Goliad, came to the aid of the Zermenos this week after Hurricane Claudette damaged their home.
"`Massacre' is so engraved in people's minds that we don't realize this is not a semantic issue but a moral one," Mr. Parvin said. "When you boil this thing down, it's about power, one group having more than the other. How long is
that supposed to last?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/national/19DEBA.html?
ex=1059644701&ei=1&en=53eddecfcf2ecd27 (21/vii/03)

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Mrs. Zermeño, maestra de primer año (8/xii/00)		Benito Martinez Elementary, El Paso, Texas
Erminia Zermeno, oficial de correcciones		Pecos County, Texas
Estella Zermeno, historiadora del Victoria Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Society of Texas (8/xii/00)	Celebrating Mexican Heritage - 1999 Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Printer Friendly - Email Article GOLIAD, Texas, May 5, 1999 Estella Zermeno's home is a small, neatly kept, bicultural family shrine. There is a hand-colored photo of her seven brothers, each in his U.S. military uniform. There are vivid photos of nieces and nephews who are firefighters and police officers - all public servants. And there are the older, faded photos of Mexican washerwomen and dark-skinned men wearing stiff white collars. They, too, are family. The Zermenos are proud Americans, they said, but they also take a special pride in their Mexican ancestry. Estella Zermeno can follow her lineage back two and a half centuries to the beginning of Goliad, designated as the focal point for this year's statewide Cinco de Mayo celebration. Zermeno's heritage was not easy to record, she said. History and prejudice have obscured the area's Hispanic legacy. At times, Spanish was the mother tongue; at times it was strictly forbidden. Records were often ignored, events forgotten. "The schools didn't teach as much of our history as they should,'' Zermeno said. "A lot of us were educated in Texas, and all we got was the Alamo.'' Until the late 1920s, Mexican-American children in Goliad went to a segregated school, and then only to the seventh grade. There was no high school for them. "We were looked down on,'' Zermeno said. "We felt ashamed to be Mexican. We were people who worked hard, and once we had land and big ranches.'' Goliad was established in October 1749 when Mission Espiritu Santo was built along with Presidio La Bahia. Spanish soldiers were stationed at the presidio to protect the mission and to protect Spain's interests in the region against the French and British. Later, they would fight the Texians. Names that remain prominent in Goliad, as the town was later named, include Becerra and Cabrera. Estella Zermeno is kin to both. "Becerra was Portuguese. He was a soldier at the presidio,'' she said. "Cabrera was a Canary Islander who moved here from San Antonio. She came in 1749.'' On a dining room table, the Zermenos have a half-dozen three-ring binders filled with documents tracing their lineage. Photocopies of ancient, Spanish-language reports show dates and places of marriages and births and military discharges. One diary, kept by Don Manuel Becerra, talks of a trip during which he guided Don Esteban Austin and 10 Anglo-Americans to the mouth of the Colorado River "to select the most suitable site for a new town which they were authorized to establish.'' The trip began Sept. 15, 1821. In 1835, after the battle of Gonzales, Texas forces captured the presidio, or fort, in Goliad. They overpowered the 24-man Mexican garrison and rallied to sign the "Goliad Declaration of Independence,'' the first Texas declaration of independence. "People don't know about the atrocities the Anglo troops committed against the Mexican people of Goliad,'' Zermeno said. "They beat the men, raped the women and ran a lot of people off their land. It was hard being a Mexican here.'' The next year, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered that Col. James Fannin and his nearly 500 troops, who had been captured at Coleto, be executed. The Goliad Massacre became a battle cry of the republic and further deepened the division between Hispanic and Anglo settlers. "Our own families were divided,'' said Emilio Vargas, a justice of the peace and lifelong resident of Goliad. "It was like the Civil War; some Mexican families fought for the Texas independence, some fought for Mexico.'' There was a strong sentiment toward Mexico in Goliad. One of its native sons soon became a Mexican national hero. While the Civil War raged in the United States, Mexico found itself at odds with England, Spain and France over increasing debts. Mexican President Benito Juarez suspended payments of those debts, and foreign war ships appeared at Veracruz. The English and Spanish eventually withdrew, but the French were determined to establish control over Mexico and sent an army inland toward Mexico City. On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces led by Ignacio Seguin Zaragoza defeated the French army. Zaragoza was born in La Bahia. Although the French won the war, Zaragoza's victory instilled a pride in the Mexican people that is still celebrated in Cinco de Mayo observances in Mexico and the United States. A Zaragoza Society in Goliad was established to perpetuate the Zaragoza name and keep his history alive. Vargas is president of the society; the Zermenos are members. It is open to all races, Vargas said, an indication that the cultural differences in Goliad have been bridged. "When I was growing up in the 1940s, we were ashamed of what we were,'' Vargas said. "We called ourselves Mexicans, Latin Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chicanos, Latinos, Hispanics. What are we? "Now, we are very proud of our ethnic group. We are Americans first, but we preserve our heritage and customs. We are very much Mexican, and we can celebrate that.''	Goliad, Texas	wzermeno@txcr.net
William Zermeno, Parliamentarian of the Victoria Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Society of Texas (8/xii/00)		Goliad, Texas	wzermeno@txcr.net
Erminia Zermeno has been selected as Correctional Officer of the Month for July 1998. She was transferred to the RCDC on August, 1995, from the Reeves County Sheriff's Office Transportation Department. She serves at the RCDC as a correctional officer III for the Custody Department. "Zermeno is the proud mother of two boys. She has proven to be an outstanding all-around officer who handles any job assignment in a very effective and efficient manner. Her diligence, dedication and hard work has gained her this honor," said Franco. "Ms. Zermeno's contributions are appreciated by the administration." (8/xii/00)		Pecos Country of West Texas
William Zermeño, retired postal worker (20/vii/03)		War of Words Divides Residents of Texas Town. July 19, 2003. By SIMON ROMERO. GOLIAD, Tex., July 16 - In history books, the killing of more than 300 Texan rebels by Mexican troops here has long been known as the Goliad Massacre. But to many residents of Goliad, with its 18th-century Spanish fort and towering monument to the dead, that brutal episode in its history is still open to interpretation. At the heart of the dispute, largely between Anglos and Mexican-Americans, is the porous definition of who is a Texan and what is Texas history at a time when Hispanics are growing in number and influence. Some of Goliad's Mexican-American residents prefer "execution" to "massacre" in describing what happened here in 1836 because of Mexican law at the time, which was explicit in meting out de facto death sentences for foreigners taking up arms against the government. "For so long in Texas history classes it's been drilled into us that Mexicans were the demons and Anglos the enlightened heroes," said Emilio Vargas III, an assistant principal at the Goliad elementary school and a descendant of Canary Islanders who settled here in the 18th century. "On this point we're no longer going to accept it without a fight." Such talk has shaken Goliad, where the population of 2,000 is almost equally divided between Hispanics and Anglos, with a small black minority. The dispute has included the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the Presidio de la Bahía, the site of the killings 167 years ago, when American and European settlers were engaged in a war to pry Texas from Mexico. Responding to letters and protests from parishioners and residents in Goliad, the Diocese of Victoria two years ago stuck with the long-used interpretation of events and refused to describe the killings as an execution. The church has owned the Presidio, a fort that operates as a tourist site and includes a chapel, since 1853. "I'm aware of the sensitivity of the issue, but it's historically been called a massacre, and we don't feel qualified to change the name," Bishop David Fellhauer said. The bishop's view might have signaled the end of the dispute, but tempers have continued to flare around Goliad, with many residents refusing to accept the church's position. Benny Martinez, president of Goliad's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that many Anglos "still hate Mexicans and using `massacre' is a subtle way for them to express it." Mr. Martinez said he ruffled feathers at a meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in April when he said that the 1836 killings should be described as an execution. Bishop Fellhauer and Newton M. Warzecha, director of the Presidio de la Bahía, consulted historians when a group of residents from the General Zaragoza Society, a Latino rights organization, sought to change the fort's description of events. Few experts dispute the brutality of the killings: Mexican forces shot hundreds of Texans on river roads near the Presidio, burned their bodies and left the remains to vultures. Documents from the time show that even among high-ranking Mexican officers there was ambivalence over carrying out the orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to kill the Texans, who had surrendered after a battle. "Those men might have fought to the death if they thought their lives would not have been spared," said Ron Tyler, a history professor at the University of Texas and director of the Texas State Historical Association. The different views illustrate a rift between old-school historians and a newer group who assert that Hispanics were marginalized - sometimes brutally - after Texas gained independence from Mexico. "The cliché that victors write the history is too simple for Goliad," said Andres Tijerina, the author of several works on 19th-century Texas. "Would we be surprised today if the U.S. government executed a group of pirates, or terrorists, as they're known in modern language, who were found operating on American soil?" Mr. Tijerina and other historians who say "massacre" is too clumsy and insensitive a term call attention to the methods Anglos used to suppress Mexican-Americans in Goliad in the decades that followed Texas independence and statehood. Near the courthouse here is a large oak, called the Hanging Tree. A plaque describes the Cart War of 1857, when Anglos attacked competing Mexican-American ox cart drivers, stole their freight and hanged 70 Mexican-American drivers on the tree. "There's no mention of that violence when the fort does its re-enactments," said William Zermeno, a retired postal worker who lives a few hundred yards from the Presidio, where hundreds of people gather each March for re-enactments of the 1836 killings. Many people in Goliad find history hard to ignore. The town was founded in 1749 as a missionary outpost and was later known as La Bahía del Espiritu Santo. In 1829, its leaders changed the name to Goliad, a phonetic anagram of the surname of Miguel Hidalgo, the Roman Catholic priest who is known as the father of Mexican independence. Texans of Anglo and Mexican descent gathered here in 1835 to sign a declaration of independence. Some people here think it folly to dwell so much on the past. "No wonder our town is not growing," said Rajesh Bhakta, an immigrant from India and manager of the Antlers Inn on Goliad's outskirts. "Who wants to invest in a place with all this unseemly fighting over long-ago affairs?" Some friction is unavoidable in a place where it is almost impossible not to cross paths. Mr. Zermeno and his wife, Estella, also an outspoken "execution" proponent, attend the same church as Mr. Warzecha, the administrator of the Presidio and a staunch member of the "massacre" camp. They often avoid one another. "I don't know if it's bad conscience on their part, if they feel guilty," said Mr. Warzecha, who grew up in the nearby ranching town of Cuero. "My best advice to them would be to just go on to better things." There are few signs of appeasement from either side on the matter of the past. But divisions are not insurmountable. Anglos and Hispanics mingle freely in Goliad and intermarriage is becoming common. Robert Parvin, a photographer who had an ancestor killed at Goliad, came to the aid of the Zermenos this week after Hurricane Claudette damaged their home. "`Massacre' is so engraved in people's minds that we don't realize this is not a semantic issue but a moral one," Mr. Parvin said. "When you boil this thing down, it's about power, one group having more than the other. How long is that supposed to last?" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/national/19DEBA.html? ex=1059644701&ei=1&en=53eddecfcf2ecd27 (21/vii/03)