Returning Lipan Apache women's laws, lands, & power in El Calaboz Rancheria, Texas-Mexico ...

686 Pages·2010·25.03 MB·English

by  Margo Tamez

NÁDASI‘NÉ‘ NDÉ' ISDZÁNÉ BEGOZ'AAHÍ' SHIMAA SHINÍ' GOKAL GOWĄ GOSHJAA
HA‘ÁNÁ‘IDŁÍ TEXAS-NAKAIYÉ GODESDZOG
Translation:
RETURNING LIPAN APACHE WOMEN‘S LAWS, LANDS, & POWER IN EL CALABOZ
RANCHERÍA, TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER

By
MARGO TAMEZ

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
Program in American Studies
MAY 2010
© Copyright by MARGO TAMEZ, 2010
All Rights Reserved
UMI Number: 3421696

All rights reserved

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© Copyright by MARGO TAMEZ, 2010
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To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the
Dissertation of MARGO TAMEZ find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

______________________________
Linda Heidenreich, Ph.D., Chair

______________________________
Jeffrey Shepherd, Ph.D., Co-Chair
______________________________
Joni Adamson, Ph.D.

______________________________
Angelique EagleWoman, (Wambdi A.
WasteWin) J.D., L.L.M.

______________________________
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Ph.D.

______________________________
Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Ph.D.

______________________________
Rory Ong, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ahe‘he‘e Ussen, Bik‘ehgo‘ihi‘‘nán, Ndé, shimaa, shitaa, shiwoyé, isdzán shimaa,
Isdzánałesh. I would like to thank those who made the writing of this dissertation possible, and
without whom this project would not have come into its present form.
I thank the community members who gave of their time and energy selflessly and
generously: Eloisa García Támez, Lydia Esparza García, Margie Esparza, Daniel Castro
Romero, Enrique Madrid, Teresa Leal, and Michael Paul Hill.
I thank my committee Chair and Co-Chair, Dr. Linda Heidenreich and Dr. Jeffrey
Shepherd for their faith in me, their models of academic rigor and ‗discipline,‘ and their positive
contributions to all aspects of this project. The inspiration, support and enthusiasm of my
committee members, Dr. Carmen Lugo-Lugo, Dr. Joni Adamson, Dr. Kēhaulani Kauanui, and
Professor Angelique Eagle Woman (Wambdi A.WasteWin), J.D. contributed a spirit of solidarity
at all stages of the project. A special thank you to Dr. Rory Ong for compassion and
commitment in his support offered to me. I wish to acknowledge the spirit of collegiality and
mutual respect received from Dr. Luz María Gordillo.
This project would not have been possible without individuals whose work enabled the
‗virtual‘ transnational research, and whose kindness blessed this project at various stages along
its journey. I wish to thank Theron Desrosier at the Center for Teaching and Learning
Technology (CTLT) for opening up a creative and critical place to explore alternative and
Indigenous knowledge systems and for his spirit of amistad. At CTLT, I also want to thank
Jayme Jacobson, Nils Peterson, and Gary Brown for their support of my project. I thank
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the Washington State University Holland Library staff members, Cerci Lee Anderson and Dave
Smestad for their gracious support in assisting me in gaining smooth access to archival materials.
I wish to thank Rose Smetana, Program Coordinator, Program in American Studies, who
answered my questions about process with kindness and calm. I thank my excellent Spanish
professor, Liz Siler, whose humor and grace renewed my confidence to read and translate 16th
and 17th century Spanish colonial texts. At the University of Texas at San Antonio, the Institute
of Texan Cultures, Patrick Lemelle‘s cheerful emails provided me long-distance Internet support
in my efforts to acquire access to UTSA special photograph collections documenting Indigenous
communities of South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande. At the University of Texas at Austin, I
thank Lisa Aguilar, Research Services Division, University of Texas Libraries, and Bruce
Kellison at the Bureau of Business Research for permissions granted to re-print archival
documents. At the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas, I thank the Registrar, René L.
Gonzales for permission to reprint an image of a Lipan warrior from the collection. At the
Center for Military History Online, I thank LTC Robert G. Smith, for generous access to the
collections. I thank the Texas General Land Office, and Deputy Commissioner, Mark W.
Lambert, for permission to re-print maps from the archives related to Cameron County and San
Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant. I wish to acknowledge Jennifer Weldy and Mary Anderson for
their generous technical assistance at various stages.
My transnational investigations into the Indigenous cultural landscapes of Ndé,
Tlaxcalteca, Nahua nobleza and Basque-criollos were strengthened by the many bridges
extended to me by leading scholars in México and South Texas. I wish to thank Dra. Valentina
Garza Martínez, of Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
(CIESAS), Dra. Patricia Osante Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and
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Elizabeth K. Butzer, (University of Texas at Austin) for their generosity extended in sharing their
research and analysis of the Tlaxcalteca, Basque, and criollo in northeastern Mexico and South
Texas, and fascinating email dialogues on the intersections of Tlaxcalteca influences in the Ndé
domains. Their exchanges came at crucial stages in evaluating and determining the transnational
spatialities of the El Calaboz Ranchería communities identified within the Esparza Family
Genealogical Archive.
There are many individuals who gave me their unconditional love, strength, and most
importantly, their prayer, during the more difficult, and yes, excruciating moments as I examined
the specific challenges of Indigenous memory and oral history related to genocide, atrocity, and
Diaspora. The border wall construction raised and elevated immense suffering for impacted
elders and survivors of intergenerational human rights violations, and these overshadowed the
border wall in their colossal scale which confronted me during this project. I wish to
acknowledge the following for spiritual, emotional, and strength offered selflessly to me and to
my family—as my family and I experienced this project together and we were grateful to the
compassionate support of: Jeff Shepherd, Joni Adamson, Michael Paul Hill, Michelle Jack,
Ayano Ginoza, Genevieve Yazzie, Jody Pepion, Carmelita Lamb, Rebeca Támez Drury, Daniel
Castro Romero, Cynthia Bejarano, Teresa Leal, Lori Thomas Riddle, April Cotte, Clifford Allen,
Judy Meuth, Madeline Rios, as well as a large number of friends (too numerous to name here)
who supported me personally while writing this dissertation and developing an international
organization to challenge the border wall. You know who you are, and I thank you, familiares,
who prayed for me to stay strong.
The potent prayer and love of my children sustained me. I wish to acknowledge the brave
warrior hearts of my youngest children, Hawk-Milagro, Milpa de Otoño, Maura Sunshine
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Squash Blossom, and Aria Mikassandra Reina Mundo Yellow Basket Weaver, who endured the
many instances when the project‘s dimensions itself demanded that I pull away from them in
order to do be fully in this work. I missed many glittering moments of your young lives, whilst
my fingers were attached to a keyboard and my eyes glued to a computer screen. I honor each of
you for your enduring patience, belief and faith. I am grateful for the many laundry loads you
did, dishes washed, and how well you took care of each other while I wrote. I am deeply
indebted to you for holding a sacred space when I excavated, and when I grieved. Your
witnessing affirmed that genocide moves across generations. Thanks for drying my eyes with
your musky t-shirts! I cherish you! And, for Justin Anthony Kassise, for his ongoing strength
and beauty in his journey towards possible worlds… and the journey ‗home‘—to shini shimaa
Ndé.
I thank my partner—Erik Kristofer Tamez-Hrabovsky—for his good advice and counsel
which sustains me in a space of spiritual oasis, mutual respect and love. His insights into
migrations, purges, returns, bitter endings and rebirth gave me the eyes, ears, sixth sense and
heart which this project demanded infinitum.
Finally, I humble my self to my mother, Eloisa García Támez, who gave me life, gifted
me many precious stories along my journey, and raised me to be a writer, reader, critical thinker,
and a shape-shifter, with faith in the impossible, to be a contrast to the majority and to injustice,
to be a tireless inquisitor of the past and shaper of the future. Ahe‘he‘e.

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NÁDASI‘NÉ‘ NDÉ' ISDZÁNÉ BEGOZ'AAHÍ' SHIMAA SHINÍ' GOKAL GOWĄ GOSHJAA
HA‘ÁNÁ‘IDŁÍ TEXAS-NAKAIYÉ GODESDZOG

Translation:
RETURNING LIPAN APACHE WOMEN‘S LAWS, LANDS, & POWER IN EL CALABOZ
RANCHERÍA, TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER
Abstract

By Margo Tamez, PhD
Washington State University
May 2010

Chair: Linda Heidenreich
―Nádasi‘né‘ nde' isdzáné begoz'aahi' shimaa shini' gokal gową goshjaa ha‘áná‘idiłí
texas-nakaiyé godesdzog, [Translation: Returning Lipan Apache Women‘s Laws, Lands, &
Power in El Calaboz Ranchería, Texas-Mexico Border], documents nineteen generations (1546-
2009) of Ndé (Lipan Apache), Tlaxcalteca, Nahuatl Noble, and Basque colonials in the
Indigenous-Texas-Mexico borderlands. Indigenous women‘s genealogies are traced, exposing
the intersections of colonization, governmentality, legal challenges, slavery, exploitative labor,
militarization and resistances. This dissertation re-imagines a critical interdisciplinary dialogue
between Native American Studies, Indigenous Studies, American Studies, History, Critical Legal
Studies, Gender Studies, and Border Studies.
In 2007, Indigenous peoples in El Calaboz Ranchería challenged the U.S. border wall
along the Texas-Mexico border as a violation of human rights and constitutional law. The
community‘s resistance to the state‘s will to dispossess them of ancestral lands, owned
communally through aboriginal and Crown Land Grant title, inspired the investigations by
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Indigenous women to untangle their community‘s legal, social, economic and political histories
in land-tenure along the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Their challenges to the state‘s use of
sovereignty and militarization exposed how the government naturalized the border wall within
the discourse of development. However, their legal investigation unburied centuries of legal
disputations between Indigenous peoples and more than one sovereign. Indigenous women‘s
analysis of the border wall excavated a longer history of sovereignty and state violence as
interlocking tools to normalize dispossession. Drawing from colonial archives, genealogical
records, community documents, photographs, government documents, and interviews of El
Calaboz Ranchería, from the clans of Lipan Apaches and their kinship relationships, this
dissertation recovers Indigenous perspectives and principles related to dispossession and
genocide resistance against four goverments, across five centures: Spain, Mexico, Texas and the
U.S. This project is both historical and critical memory recovery which challenge normative
conceptions of Native American and Indigenous genocide history.

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