- In 1898 Eugenio María de Hostos
founded the League of Patriots in New
York City. Other Puerto Rican patriots in
New York City included Luis Muñoz
Rivera, who helped persuade Spain to
grant a measure of autonomy to Puerto
Rico in 1897, and Santiago Iglesias
Pantín, the father of Puerto Rico’s labor
movement. Despite the presence of these
exiles, however, the Puerto Rican commu-
nity in New York and elsewhere on the
mainland United States would not achieve
significant size until after the Spanish-
American War made Puerto Rico an
American possession.
Conflict in New Mexico
and the SouthwestWhile Florida and New York played host
to new groups of Hispanics, New Mexico
continued to be the site of conflict
between Anglo-Americans and the
Mexican Americans whose ancestors had
been there for centuries. In the decades
after the Civil War, New Mexico became
a dangerous and lawless place. Cattle
ranchers, mostly Anglos arriving from
Texas, competed for range space with
mostly Hispanic sheepherders. Both
kinds of ranchers competed with newly
arrived homesteaders who came to New
Mexico to plant farms. Nuevomexicanos
cried injustice when communal village
lands were claimed and divided up by
what they viewed as Anglo land-grab-
bers. Meanwhile, Anglos and Hispanics
alike fought wars with Native Americans,
and desperadoes from better-policed
western regions fled to the territory for
fresh raiding.
Cycles of violence and retribution
were rampant, as one group attacked
another, prompting retaliatory counterat-
tacks. In the 1870s the violence took the
form of the Lincoln County War, a pro-
longed struggle between rival cattle inter-
ests and their armed henchmen. Most
Mexican Americans sided with rancher
John Chisum against his opponent
Laurance Gustave Murphy, in a war that
began with the murder of one of
Chisum’s associates, John H. Tunstall.
The violence was marked by racial hatred
on both sides. In one incident in Lincoln
County, an Anglo gang led by cattle
rustler John Selman shot down two
Hispanic men and two Hispanic boys.
Lincoln County’s Mexican Americans
were reportedly roused into planning
revenge on “the first Americanos, in par-
ticular Tejanos, that came their way.”
The Lincoln County War did not
end until a new governor, General Lew
Wallace, working with Mexican-
American militia leader Juan Patrón,
restored peace around the end of the
decade. Patrón was later shot dead in a
saloon by a cowboy some believed to
have been hired by the Murphy gang.
Some Mexican Americans emerged
from this period as folk heroes. In one
incident in the 1880s, Nuevomexicano
deputy sheriff Elfego Baca shot a Texan
and was confronted by a lynch mob of
Texans determined to exact “justice.”
Reportedly, Baca single-handedly held
off the mob for three days, killing four
and wounding several. He went on to
become an influential New Mexican
political leader.
Impressive as the gunfighting was,
the real drama in post–Civil War New
Mexico took place behind the scenes.
There, an informal alliance took shape,
linking a small group of Anglo bankers,
businessmen, lawyers, and politicians to
about 20 families of rich Hispanic
Americans, or ricos. Known as the Santa
Fe Ring, they conspired to buy up New
Mexican land, using every political and
legal means at their disposal. The ring
controlled the governorship and most
territory offices and was supported by
the territory’s most influential newspaper,
the New Mexican. Through the Santa Fe
Ring’s machinations, many poor
Nuevomexicanos were deprived of their
lands. By 1894, one of the leaders of the
Santa Fe Ring, lawyer Thomas B. Catron,
held title to about 2 million acres. He
later became one of New Mexico’s first
U.S. senators.A TIME OF TRANSITION 115Mexican American Catholic church, in
Deming, NM (Library of Congress)