Cortina Troubles The Cortina Troubles is the generic name for the First Cortina War , from 1859 to 1860 , and the Second Cortina War , in 1861 , in which Mexican paramilitary forces , led by the local leader Juan Nepomuceno Cortina , confronted elements of the United States Army , the Confederate Army , the Texas Rangers , and the local militias of Brownsville , Texas , and Matamoros , Tamaulipas . According to author Robert Elman , Juan Cortina and his followers were the first " " socially motivated border bandits , " " similar to the Garzistas and the Villistas of later generations . The fighting took place in the Rio Grande Valley area , which straddles the international border of Texas and Mexico . Trouble . First Cortina War . The First Cortina War began at Brownsville on July 13 , 1859 when Cortina shot the town marshal , Robert Shears , in the arm for his brutalizing of Cortina ' s former employee , Tomás Cabrera . Tension increased between Cortina and the Brownsville authorities , and on September 28 he raided and occupied the town with a posse of between forty and eighty men . His enemies , however , had fled , and during the occupation of Brownsville , he issued a famous proclamation to reveal his intentions to both communities . " " ( . . . ) There is no need of fear . Orderly people and honest citizens are inviolable to us in their persons and interests . Our object , as you have seen , has been to chastise the villainy of our enemies , which heretofore has gone unpunished . These have connived with each other , and form , so to speak , a perfidious inquisitorial lodge to persecute and rob us , without any cause , and for no other crime on our part than that of being of Mexican origin , considering us , doubtless , destitute of those gifts which they themselves do not possess . ( . . . ) Mexicans ! Peace be with you ! Good inhabitants of the State of Texas , look on them as brothers , and keep in mind that which the Holy Spirit saith : " Thou shalt not be the friend of the passionate man ; nor join thyself to the madman , lest thou learn his mode of work and scandalize thy soul . " " Cortina retained control over Brownsville until September 30 , 1859 , when he evacuated the town at the urging of influential residents of Matamoros . The following days , the townsfolk of Brownsville formed a twenty man group in order to fight Cortina , called the " Brownsville Tigers " . In November , the Brownsville Tigers learned that Cortina was at his mother ' s home , called Rancho del Carmen , five miles west of Brownsville . They immediately launched an attack , only to be sent into retreat in disarray by the " Cortinistas " , as they were called . Later the same month , the Brownsville Tigers were joined by a group of Texas Rangers , and Cortina decided to attack them . The offensive was unsuccessful , and in December , a second group of rangers led by Captain John " Rip " Ford arrived , larger and better organized . Because of appeals from Brownsville anglo - occupying forces , the United States Army sent troops from San Antonio to the nearby Fort Brown , which had been abandoned a few years ago . The fort ' s new commander , Major Samuel Heintzelman , united and coordinated all armed groups to put an end to the Cortinista threat . Cortina retreated up the Rio Grande , until on December 27 , 1859 Heintzelman and Ford engaged him in the Battle of Rio Grande City . Cortina ' s forces were decisively defeated , losing sixty men and all their equipment . Pursued and defeated by Ford again a few days later , Cortina retreated into the Burgos Mountains . The First Cortina War was mostly finished , and with increasing pressure from both the United States and Mexican Government to cease all hostile activities , Cortina remained away from the scene for more than a year . The final engagements of the war were the Battle of La Bolsa , on February 4 , 1860 , and the Battle of La Mesa , on March 17 . The Texas Rangers , under Ford , successfully defended their riverboat in the first engagement and then went on to rout the Cortinistas across the river at La Mesa , Mexico . Second Cortina War . In May 1861 , the much shorter Second Cortina War occurred . The American Civil War had just begun , and Cortina , who had aligned himself with the Federal Government of the United States , invaded Zapata County . He was defeated by Confederate Captain Santos Benavides at the Battle of Carrizo and retreated back into Mexico , after losing eighteen men . Cortina would no longer conduct large scale military incursions within the territory of the United States , albeit accusations of promoting guerrilla actions against the richer Texan landowners in the area were numerous throughout the following years .