José Antonio Navarro

American statesman, merchant, and revolutionary

• Born: February 27, 1795
• Birthplace: San Antonio de Béxar, New Spain (now San Antonio, Texas
• Died: January 13, 1871
• Place of death: San Antonio, Texas

Navarro favored Mexican independence from Spain and supported the Anglo settlements in Texas. He later supported independence for Texas in 1835-1836 and annexation to the United States in 1845. He helped to write the state’s constitution and served two terms in the Texas Senate.

Early Life

José Antonio Navarro (hoh-ZAY ahn-TOH-nee-oh nah-VAH-roh) was born into a prominent noble family in San Antonio de Béxar, Texas, a small frontier community that was part of Spanish colonial Mexico. His father, Angel Navarro, an immigrant from Corsica, became a successful merchant and served several terms as mayor (alcalda) of the town. The Navarro family included nine children. José Antonio Navarro studied law and business for a short time in Saltillo, Mexico, although he acquired most of his education from reading books and working with the family business.

While in his late teens, Navarro supported the Mexican Revolution against Spanish rule. In 1912 and 1913, he participated in the filibuster expedition led by Lieutenant Augustus Magee and the revolutionary agent, José Bernardo Gutiérrez. Although Navarro was never a soldier, he acquired the title of “colonel.” Following the defeat of the rebels at the battle of Medina, he and his family went into exile in Louisiana, where they remained until the king of Spain granted a pardon to the insurgents in 1815. After returning home, Navarro established a personal friendship with Stephen F. Austin and helped him to acquire his first Mexican contract to bring Anglo settlers into Texas. The two men shared a vision of Texas as a place where both Anglos and Tejanos would be able to prosper together.

Life’s Work

When Coahuila y Texas became a Mexican state in 1824, Navarro was elected to its legislature. He was a strong defender of the liberal Federal Constitution of 1824, and he continued to work with Austin to increase Anglo immigration. When Mexico made slavery illegal, he helped preserve the institution by supporting a law that classified slaves as “indentured servants” with lifelong contracts. In 1831, the state governor appointed him commissioner of Green DeWitt’s colony of Anglo settlers. In this capacity, he supervised the organization of the colony, including the issuance of surveys and of land titles. Somewhat later he also served as land commissioner in the Béxar district.

In 1935, Navarro was elected to the National Mexican Congress as representative from Coahuila y Texas, but he resigned later that year in order to support the movement for Texas independence, which was growing in popularity. On March 2, 1836, he was one of the three Spanish-speakers (called Tejanos) who helped draft the Texas Declaration of Independence. After Texas became an independent republic, Navarro was elected a member of the national Congress, where he worked with Juan Seguin to encourage legislation favorable to Tejano interests. Navarro’s law practice was successful, and he acquired large ranches in several parts of Texas. In 1838, he settled his family on a 6,000-acre ranch about twenty miles west of San Antonio.

A political ally of President Mirabeau Lamar, Navarro strongly encouraged the movement to expand the border of Texas westward to the Rio Grande River. In 1841, he accompanied General Hugh McLeod’s ill-conceived expedition to Santa Fe, with the goal of persuading the residents of the region to secede from Mexico and join Texas. Unfortunately, Navarro and other members of the expedition were captured, and he was sentenced to death as a traitor to his native country. When President Antonio de Santa Anna offered Navarro a pardon and a government position if he would recant and pledge allegiance to Mexico, he rejected the offer, against the advice of his family. Soon thereafter, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. After staying in the Acordada prison and the dungeon of San Juan Ulloa, he finally escaped in 1845 with the aid of Vera Cruz army officers.

Returning to San Antonio, Navarro was given a hero’s welcome, and he was the only Tejano to be elected to the Statehood Convention of 1845, which accepted the U.S. offer of annexation and drafted the state’s constitution. At the convention he successfully prevented the word “white” from being added as a requirement for the right to vote, but he was unable to obtain recognition of ancestral lands granted to Tejanos during the Spanish colonial period. After serving as a member of the state senate from 1846 to 1849, he spent the next two decades working on his several ranches. He continued to participate in local politics and was elected to the office of San Antonio alderman in 1853. Distressed to observe the growing discrimination against Latinos, he openly criticized the Anglo nativism and anti-Catholicism of the American (or Know-Nothing) Party.

Always a strong advocate of states’ rights, Navarro supported the secession of Texas from the United States in 1861. All four of his sons served in the army of the Confederacy, and two were promoted to the rank of captain. When the early accounts of Texas history ignored the role of the Tejanos, Navarro wrote and published Apuntes históricos (1869, Historical Notes), which traced Tejano struggles and achievements beginning with the movement for independence from imperial Spain. When he died in 1871, the people of San Antonio held an unusually large funeral procession.

Significance

Recognized as one of the preeminent founders of Texas, Navarro was a leading participant in the revolution that resulted in the independence of Texas in 1836, and he made valuable contributions to its subsequent development as an independent republic and then as a state within the United States. Despite the anti-Latino prejudices at the time, he was well known and respected by Anglo citizens throughout Texas.

Bibliography

Alonzo, Armando. Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. History of Latinos in the lower Rio Grande Valley, showing how they adapted to changes, resisted Anglo encroachments, and maintained a sense of community.

Dawson, Joseph Martin. José Antonio Navarro: Co-creator of Texas. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 1969. A relatively brief account, emphasizing Navarro’s significance in the creation of the state’s political institutions.

MacDonald, L. Lloyd. Tejanos in the 1835 Texas Revolution. Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2009. Detailed discussions of the roles of individual Tejanos in battles and conventions that brought about independence from Mexico.

Matovina, Timothy. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Collection of all known accounts by Tejanos, demonstrating that many were allied with Anglo rebels, sharing a common history and a common plight.

McDonald, David. José Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth Century Texas. Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2010. The standard biography that corrects a number of misconceptions and includes a wealth of details.

McDonald, David, and Timothy Matovina, eds. Defending Mexican Valor in Texas: José Antonio Navarro’s Historical Writings, 1853-1857. Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1995. In the first Tejano publication of Texas history, Navarro emphasized achievements and contributions of his ethnic group.

Reséndes, Andrés, ed. A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico: José Antonio Navarro and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition. Dallas: DeGolyer, 2005. A scholarly and detailed account of the fiasco and resulting trial.