Mines, Cattle and Rebellion - The History of the Corralitos Ranch
The History of the Corralitos Ranch
An Intimate Portrait of the Mexican Revolution
Mines, Cattle and Rebellion is the factual story of the 275-year history of the Corralitos Ranch and its impact on American and Mexican Relations. The 1.5 million-acre Corralitos Ranch and mining empire was involved the last days of the bloody Mexican-Indian wars.
The ranch was the centerpiece of activity of the infamous Apache chiefs: Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, Victoriano, and Geronimo; and provided the region’s major smelter operation at the near terminus of the Copper Trail from the mineral rich mountains of what is now New Mexico.
This rich history further served as an example of foreign capital intrusion into Mexico as a possible catalyst to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. One of the earliest ventures of the anti-Díaz and anti-American revolt was ignited on the lands of the Corralitos Ranch. The ranch was an active center of the battles between the Mexican federals and the rebels.
As General John J. Pershing, with the American Punitive Expedition in 1916, searched for Pancho Villa after Villa’s invasion of Columbus, New Mexico, the Corralitos Ranch was at the forefront of this early failure of the American military forces.
The Corralitos’ Candelaria Mining Company became one of the largest and most profitable mining operations in northern Mexico. The Corralitos Ranch was an early impetus to the building of the Mexican Northwestern Railroad that brought the newly captured ore into the emerging smelter center and transportation hub of El Paso, Texas.
Underestimating the Mexican people to band together and renew “Mexico for the Mexicans” was a difficult lesson for the Corralitos Company to learn. The Corralitos Ranch was in the middle of it all.
This history of the Corralitos is told by those who were and are there. The letters and journal entries contained in Mines, Cattle and Rebellion shed a heretofore-unpublished look at the life, the culture, and the entrails of the history that is the Corralitos..
387 Pages