Book excerpt: Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, in Vaquero of the Brush Country, called Juan Nepomuceno Cortina "the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit, not even excepting Pancho Villa, that ever wet his horses in the muddy water of the Rio Bravo." Juan Cortina and the Texas Mexico Frontier, 1859-1877 is the story of an illiterate Brownsville ranchero who rose to become a rugged and fearless frontier "caudillo" and governor of Tamaulipas. Jerry Thompson has compiled the first schorlarly work on Cortina in 40 years. Using nine of Cortina's pronunciamentos," Thompson sees his subject as more than a "social bandit," someone who simply reacted to the evils of a racist society that suppressed the Mexican-Texans socially, economically and politically. Thompson says, "He shot the Brownsville marshal, ambushed Texas Rangers, captured the U.S. mail, defeated the Matamoros militia, battled the U.S. army, harassed the Confederate Army, ambushed French Imperialists, attacked Mexican liberals, and fought anyone who dared get in his way." He shows Cortina to have been among the most important political and military figures on the border during much of the 19th century, a folk-hero to many Tejanos and Mexicanos, a man whose disputed legacy remains an integral part of the history of both Texas and Mexico.