Nicasio Idar was born at Point Isabel in December 1855, went to school in Corpus Christi and moved to Laredo in 1880. In a seventeen-year publishing career he put out La Revista, a Masonic paper with readers abroad, and he helped found the Caballeros de Honor. La Crónica probably began in the 1890s, and he likely became its publisher and editor in 1910. He and his wife, Jovita, had eight children, and three of them, Jovita, Clemente and Eduardo, worked on the paper.
The paper in 1910
In 1910 and 1911 La Crónica covered segregation, lynching and the denial of civil rights to Texas Mexicans. Nicasio ran a series, "The Mexican Children of Texas," against separate schools and neighborhoods. On November 3 or 4, 1910, near Rocksprings, a mob took Antonio Rodríguez, a 20-year-old ranch hand charged with killing Mrs. Lem Henderson, from the jail and killed him. On June 19, 1911, white vigilantes lynched Antonio Gómez, 14, at Thorndale after he was accused of killing garage owner Charles Zieschang. Four men were arrested, Z. T. Gore Jr., Ezra Stephens, Garrett Noack and Harry Wuensche; Wuensche's charge was dropped and the other three were acquitted.
September 1911
Clemente Idar proposed a meeting. Invitations went to lodges and mutual-aid societies, every Mexican consul in Texas, Texas-Mexican journalists and women. The Primer Congreso Mexicanista met in Laredo from September 14 to 22, timed to the Diez y Seis celebrations. Delegates cited the deaths of Rodríguez and Gómez. They set out to protect Texas Mexicans from abuse by public officials and to fight the segregation of Mexican students.
The congress founded the Gran Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y Protección and the Liga Femenil Mexicanista, under the motto Por la Raza y Para la Raza. Accounts differ on Nicasio's place: one has him chosen leader, another lists him as vice president under José P. Reyes of Brownsville, and another says the Gran Liga apparently never took hold. Jovita Idar was elected president of the Liga Femenil, whose main work was free schooling for poor children. Clemente, who helped issue the call, could not attend.
The doorway
Nicasio died at home on April 7, 1914, after an intestinal illness kept him from publishing. Jovita then edited La Crónica. Many tellings put the Rangers at her door in 1914, but the documented trouble came in 1916 at El Progreso, where she wrote against sending troops to the border. On May 15 the Webb County district attorney, John A. Valls, had Ranger Captain J. J. Sanders arrest its editor, Leo D. Walker, for criminal libel. In June a civilian mob kidnapped Walker, forced him across the Rio Grande, wrecked the office and ordered the staff to stop publishing. Jovita was likely among the women local papers called staff or bystanders. The scene of her blocking Rangers in the doorway comes from interviews in the 1980s with her brother Aquilino and her niece Jovita Fuentes Lopez, and recent research challenges it.
She married Bartolo Juárez in 1917, moved to San Antonio, started a free kindergarten and died in 1946.
Start in San Agustín Plaza, then find the state markers for El Primer Congreso Mexicanista and Jovita Idar.