Come and Take It
What if the Texas Rangers threatened your family’s business? I don’t mean the baseball team, either. In 1914, the Rangers were called to shut down a radical Mexican-American newspaper in Laredo. Tejana suffragist and civil rights activist Jovita Idár held her ground in front of the paper’s office and challenged the Rangers to a standoff, armed with her words and her belief in the freedom of the press. This is the fifth article in my series Ask Her About Her Zero F*cks.
On a sunny morning in 1914 in the border town of Laredo, Texas, a group of Texas Rangers rode through the streets on horseback. They were looking for the office of El Progreso, a Tejano publication owned by the prominent Idár family. The ideologically radical newspaper ran an article by one Jovita Idár (1885–1946), who had the nerve to criticize the involvement of the US military in the Mexican Revolution. This uppity lady Jovita was trying to stir up treason among the Tejanos in Laredo and she had to be stopped.
The Rangers thought it would be easy. They parked their steeds in front of El Progreso and shouted threats at the office door about “Governor’s orders to shut you down,” et cetera. They expected the Idárs and their employees to walk out humbled and fearing for their lives. After all, this was the era of La Matanza, or the Massacre. And if these folks knew what was good for them…
Forget. That. Jovita Idár herself appeared in the doorway, undeterred by the Rangers’ rifles. They told her to move. Jovita planted herself in front of the door and said (her words, not mine):
“No. I’m standing here and you cannot come in because it’s against the law.”
First Amendment, bro. There was no legal basis for shutting down an entire newspaper over one article. But there was plenty of anti-Tejano discrimination in Texas border towns, so silencing El Progreso would have been all in a day’s work for the Rangers. Jovita knew she risked her life and family’s livelihood by defying the armed Anglo men before her. Not a f*ck in sight, though. The Rangers, who killed Tejano men without compunction, backed down from the unarmed woman. However, they returned later to destroy the printing presses with sledgehammers and arrest the paper’s employees.
By the time she faced off with the Rangers, Jovita was well-known as a revolutionary thinker. She was also the founder and president of La Liga Feminil Mexicanista (League of Mexican Women). Even her childhood was radical: Jovita was raised in a socially aware, middle-class family where she enjoyed the same access to education as her brothers. Her father worked at a Spanish-language newspaper in Laredo. Even though the Idárs did well for themselves, their community was denied access to economic resources and under constant threat of violence and land theft from Anglos. Not ones to sit on their privileges, the Idárs organized the First Mexican Congress in September of 1911.
Partly in response to the lynching of a Tejano teenager in Thorndale, Texas, which highlighted the Tejano population’s disempowerment, the Congress brought together hundreds of people from Laredo and surrounding areas. Finally, here was an opportunity for them to acknowledge the dangers and discrimination they faced. Their kids’ schools were in awful shape, their neighborhoods were patrolled by Rangers out for blood, and their civil rights were curtailed by Juan Crow laws. In addition, Tejanas shared a problem with Anglo women: they could not vote. Jovita used the Congress as a launchpad for La Liga to unite women around suffrage, school improvement, and issues concerning their families.
Jovita had firsthand experience of the unjust conditions facing Tejano children. In 1903, she earned her teaching license and worked in a segregated school, which was falling apart and had no books. The history she had to teach her students exalted the conquest of Texas by white Americans and vilified Tejanos and Mexico as a whole. Children were discouraged from speaking Spanish in public. Jovita discovered to her horror that Tejano youngsters were basically learning self-hatred and indifference to their heritage. It was bad enough being treated like shit by Anglos, but this was a true sociocultural catastrophe. Jovita knew that Tejanas needed the vote and needed to organize against the destruction of their community from the inside out.
Wielding her typewriter and her family’s printing press, Jovita began writing articles promoting women’s suffrage and bilingual education for Tejano children. She used the aliases “Astrea”, the Greek goddess of justice, and “A.V. Negra,” or Black Bird. She called on women specifically to participate in political decision-making. La Liga opened free bilingual schools, raised funds for poor families, and offered adult education for women. Jovita’s mantra was “When you educate a woman, you educate a family.” La Liga worked in Laredo and across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
In 1913, the Mexican Revolution reached Nuevo Laredo. Jovita crossed the border to volunteer as a nurse in La Cruz Blanca (White Cross). La Cruz Blanca was founded after the Red Cross refused to treat revolutionaries wounded in combat. Jovita’s friend Leonor Villegas de Magnón started a branch in Nuevo Laredo. The all-volunteer corps followed the troops down to Mexico City. Jovita was greatly affected by the bloodshed she witnessed while doing this dangerous work.
Her brief career as a volunteer battlefield nurse only reified Jovita’s commitment to the struggle for Tejano civil rights and women’s suffrage. She also greatly opposed US intervention in the Mexican Revolution. Her controversial 1914 article in El Progreso made this clear. In response, the Governor of Texas dispatched the Rangers to Laredo to shut the paper down. But at 29, Jovita had seen enough carnage, ill treatment, and discrimination against her community for several lifetimes and was not here for it.
The Idárs rebuilt their newspaper business after the Rangers’ sledgehammers wrecked their equipment and Jovita wrote for other publications. She and her brother Eduardo founded their own paper, Evolución, to continue their advocacy for Tejano civil rights and women’s suffrage. In 1917, Jovita moved to San Antonio, Texas and married Bartolo Juárez. They founded the Democratic Club and Jovita started an escuelita. Escuelitas, found in Texas and other Southwestern border states, were Spanish-language pre-schools for Mexican American children designed to fill educational gaps caused by discrimination and foster cultural pride. When she wasn’t writing for the Methodist newspaper El Herald Christiano, Jovita taught childcare and hygiene classes in Spanish at the Bexar County Hospital and worked as a translator there. She died in 1946.
Jovita Idár left a legacy of action, community organizing, and unbowed dedication to improving the lives of Tejanos when they were being marginalized against a border that had crossed them. I write mostly about women from the Progressive Era because (nerd alert) the multitude of causes, ideas, and leaders from this time fascinates me. Jovita embodied the Progressive Era zeitgeist. She used her journalist acumen to raise consciousness in her community. She believed in the power of women and in the necessity of their participation in public life. She zeroed in on education as the starting point for helping young Tejanos thrive. She maintained her unshakeable commitment to preserving Tejano culture and history. Ask her about her zero f*cks for Rangers, racism, and censorship.
Who:
- Leonor Villegas de Magnón, friend of Jovita and fellow activist
- La Cruz Blanca and its original founder Elena Arizmendi Mejia, a prominent Mexican feminist
What/where:
- Jovita Idár’s El Progreso Park in Laredo, Texas
- The Idár family Bible at Bullock Texas State History Museum, part of the 2016 exhibit “Life and Death on the Border, 1910–1920” (Austin, Texas)
- She needs to be in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, IMO. Jovita is finally getting her due from historians, so hopefully she will end up there someday.
Read:
- La Rebelde (Spanish)/The Rebel (English). Leonor Villegas de Magnón, Arte Público Press, Houston 1994.
- Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights. Gabriela González, Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico: Portraits of Soldaderas, Saints, and Subversives. Kathy Sosa, Ellen Riojas Clark, Jennifer Speed, Trinity University Press, 2020.
- Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries who Shaped our History…and our Future!. Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl, City Lights Publishers 2015. (Perfect for younger readers. J is for Jovita!)
