Even I grew up in South Texas, but in school we're never taught that the underground railroad had a southern route that went through our own backyards. In this special episode of Hungry for History, we'll learn about freedom fighters in Mexico and in Texas, and we'll meet Sylvia Weber, often referred to as the Harriet Tubman of the South,
along with her husband John. We'll welcome doctor Maria Hamac, a scholar and historian whose work bridges histories of liberation and abolition, as well as Sofia Brabo and OJ and Leslie Trevigno of the Weber Family Preservation Project and ancestors of Sylvia and John Webber. My name is Eva Longoria and I am Mate remez Rajon and welcome to.
Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
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Many people aren't aware of this, but Mexico abolished slavery thirty six years before the United states before before before by its second president after Independenceity Senterero. He was an Afro Mestiso. No he yeah, yeah, he was the son of a woman of African descent and a Mestiso. He
was president of Mexico and he abolished slavery. And so after this time, after eighteen twenty nine, enslaved Africans from the US were fleeing the south and finding freedom and refuge in Mexico in the southern route of the underground railroad. So this is something that I learned about recently. This is not something that I mean, I took Texas history for years in junior high in Ice well ever learned.
Never learned about this this no, But also I knew this because what I did searching for Mexico when we were in Veracruz. That was the main port where a lot of the slave ships came in and they built this neighborhood from the wood of the boats that brought them over like they're resilience.
We visited that La Waca neighborhood in red ac Cruz, which is incredible. But more enslaved people were brought to Mexico then to the US, and at one point in history there were more enslaved people in Mexico than in Brazil. Between the conquest fifteen nineteen to eighteen twenty nine, when slavery was abolished by Cinte Arero, was estimated that about two hundred thousand slaved Africans were taken to New Spain.
Right what is now you know Mexico, But this abolition played this really key role in the nation's early history.
My name is Maria sar Hammock, and I am a scholar of a Mexican scholar of like liberation in North America, and I I'm trying to recover or help recover what I argue is the experiences but also the legacies, the intellectual and physical legacies of black women who engineered channels
of liberation to Mexican spaces. Part of the work that I do is I argue that the first diaspora that shaped Mexico was this first diaspora that came in from African nations and people that were brought and slaved, and how they started fighting for freedom as soon as they arrived on Mexican soil. You start seeing individuals as Gasparajanga who escaped and went to the mountains and took a lot of people with him and started helping others to
get to the mountains. And it wasn't only until they made a treaty with the people on the ground, with the authorities to say okay, they needed assistance to fight certain battles. So they said, okay, we can help you, but just know you're going to have to recognize us as free people. So we are free, we're no longer enslaved, and if we do help you were going to you're
going to have to treat us as such. So I do argue and the histories that I've read, and like the documents that I have been able to access in Mexican collections do show this process where people as soon as they arrived, black women, men and children were fighting to be free. So this is also engages the notion of the freedom fighter. People didn't just arrived enslaved and we're happy being enslaved. That never happened consistently. People were
escaping consistently, consistently, people were running in Mexican soil. So by the eighteen hundred, so many people in Mexico who had been enslaved had ran or escaped or maneuver ways to be free. That by eighteen hundreds. So by eighteen hundreds and eighteen ten and the Mexican independence movement began, most people, most black Mexicans, were free. The number of people with that remain enslaved was significantly lower by eighteen hundred.
So the history that I try to highlight that is part of this first diaspora is this, when independence begins, the independence movement begins in Mexico, you have a large population of free black Mexicans or free black people that live in Mexico.
Because at this.
Time in eighteen ten, when Girito the Lord has happened and miguelid Algo rose up and morellos rose up, Mexico was part of Spain, but it was still Mexican soil, but it was under the Spanish crown, so it wasn't necessarily the Republic of Mexico yet. But in this era, the majority of people in Mexico were free, only a
small number remain enslaved. The people who are leading this movement for independence, a lot of these individuals who are fighting at the forefront for the insurgent movement, which is for freedom for Mexico and independent Mexico from Spain were black Mexicans, people who were either born enslaved themselves or whose parents had been born enslaved, or whose grandparents had
been born enslaved. So they had a vested interest to fight for freedom, for freedom against the Spanish rule, right, but also to say, okay, we're fighting for the freedom of this new nation, whatever that will be. But also we want to make sure that if we're fighting for freedom for this nation, we want to make sure that this nation has freedom for our children. So we want to make sure that our children are going to be
free in this new nation we're fighting for. And so these are the individuals who start fighting to make sure that the slavery is fully abolished. And some of the leaders that come up with this movement is Vicente Guerero is our first Afro Mexican president, who was the one who decreed the abolition of slavery in eighteen twenty nine. His grandparents were born enslaved and so he had a
vested interest. And so that goes to show that people who were fighting for the independence of Mexico had backgrounds and had vested interest. So they had black roots and so they were vested in the ideas of freedom and you know, personal freedom, and that's what shaped Mexican abolitionist processes as early as Mexico secured independence from Spain, which was eighteen twenty one. So abolition was always at the
forefront because these black Mexican leaders as well. It also indigenous after indigenous and indigenous people, they were at the forefront of this movement. So I argue that this is the first diaspora that shaped Mexico because a lot of the times when we talk about Mexico and what Mexicans are, we don't consider that Mexico has black roots or that Mexicans have black roots. But most of the leaders who fought for independence were black, or Afro indigenous or Afro mestizo.
So the roots are there and the records don't lie.
Right.
When we come back, we'll talk about Sylvia Weber, the Harriet Tubman of Texas and speak with some of her ancestors.
That's after the break, stay with us. Who was Sylvia Weber? Was she at Texan?
Now Sylvia Weber is fascinating, right, So where there's oppression, there's a fight for freedom, whether it's Mexico, whether it's the US, or wherever it is. There's a president, there's freedom, and a lot of women led the liberation process. Harriet Tubman, of course, is the one that most people in the States are familiar with. But Sylvia Weber was one of these women who helped enslaved people cross to Mexico. She was born in Spanish Florida. From Florida, she was taken
to what is now Austin. So she came to Texas's property of John Crier when she was nineteen, and there she met a man named John Weber, who was a white business partner of John Criers. So they fell in love while still enslaved. She gave birth to three children, and then eventually she gained her freedom papers and she and John could not legally marry in Texas. But actually there was one person that with them. He was a
Catholic priest named Father Muldan, so he married them. And imagine this eighteen hundreds, eighteen thirties, an inter racial couple inandace scandalous, It's crazy. So she was described as intelligent and kind and welcoming. She was known for her good deeds, for her charity work. Her house was always open, you know, to anyone, and you know, human being was ever sent away, and nobody left their home, you know, hungry.
They ended up getting a little tired of the discrimination in Central Texas and they moved to the Rio Grand Valley, which is near the US Mexico border, and their ranch, which was called the Weber Ranch, was a stop in the underground railroad. Like I wish I knew this history, right, They helped I know, this is so fascinating. They helped fugitives find you know, safe haven in Mexico because again
Mexico abolished slavery. They built it ferry landing and licensed a ferry stop that led directly from their home on the Rio Grand to Mexico. And she was just the staunch anti slavery advocate through the Civil War, and you know, her and her family stood against the Confederacy, who, by
the way, persecuted them for being Union sympathizers. And then they eventually fled to Mexico in the eighteen sixties to escape the Confederacy and they did not return until eighteen eighty two, and then John died soon after that.
They went through our backyards and we spoke with some of their ancestors, and they didn't even know that they were ancestors of this woman. So it's this part of history that's just kept such hush hush for soul along. It makes me so angry and I'm so cheated that I was not taught this in Texas history and that it's not taught in the in the US. But so there were not a lot of written records, like they couldn't say, oh, so and so a person is going to cross and so and so in person's because it
was dangerous. But people like John Ford known as rip Ford, this Confederate colonel and Texas ranger during the Civil War. He wrote about them like, oh damn it, this is Sylvia and John Webber. He went out of his way to make their lives hell.
That's first of all, none of this is in Texas history books. And also kind of the false narrative of the Alamo. This is such a I think, a monument of freedom, but in reality it's the opposite. Because Texas was was Mexico and slavery had already been abolished, and the white settlers in Texas knew that if they wanted their economy to grow, which was the three c's cotton, copper, and cattle, they were going to need enslave labor, so they refused to assimilate to Mexico and this resulted in
Texas revolting against Mexico. But we're taught like a remember the Alamo, it's a monument to freedom. But in reality it was a country defending its values, which was do not enslaved people. You know, speak the language, by the way. That was one of the requisites was speak Spanish. Nobody they refused to learn Spanish, and they said be Catholic,
by the way. That was one of them. And these were wasp white Anglo Saxons, and they were like, we're not gonna be Catholic, We're not gonna speak Spanish, and we're going to keep our slaves. And so part of this, you know, rebranding meant erasing important figures in Texas and South Texas well. We sat down with Leslie Dutcher Trevigno, president of the Weber Family Preservation Project and wife of Oj Trevigno, a descendant of the Webers.
The Webers were pretty well known. I mean, there's a town called Weberville outside of Travis, Like it's in Travis County, sixteen miles south of Boston, and they were well known to have helped people, and that's actually in several different accounts,
given they were union sympathizers. In fact, so much so that four during the Civil War went out of his way to find them and arrest them in the Rio Grand where they were living in Texas at that time after they moved, and they stuck in his cross so badly that they're actually mentioned by name in his very long winded autobiography that he wrote. And so it is there.
It's just been very intentionally kind of washed over to make it go away, because Texas has done a master job of rebranding itself in terms of cowboys, trills, drives, rodeos, that kind of thing, to erase its history that is so entrenched in slavery. That's what this economy Texas was built on. That economy, and Austin said Texas must be a slave country, and so that was the very foundation of it. And the Webers are there and they're mentioned.
It's just, like I said, been very overlooked intentionally, even so much so that descendants weren't aware of their own ancestry. Sadly, as things keep going the way they are, I think it might stay that way. If you know, the powers that be have their way.
I'm a fifth generation descendant from so In John Webber and also the secretary of the Weber Family Preservation Project.
Sylvia was brought into Texas through her enslaver and then John also came down through Texas because he was a big tobacco smuggler, all right, so he kind of was working his way south and that was just kind of part of his route and what he was doing, and settled into Texas, and then I believe we have documented somewhere around eighteen twenty nine, I think is somewhere where we kind of estimate that John and Sylvia met and
kind of started their relationship and started having children, you know, right around that time, you know a little bit after that, while she was still enslaved, right, they had three children while she was still enslaved by John Cryer. And this was, like I said, between eighteen twenty nine and eighteen thirty four, and then in eighteen thirty four, June eleventh, eighteen thirty four is when they secured her freedom from John Cryer.
And that's where those were the freedom papers that Maria found when she was working on her you know, doctor
thesis at the University of Texas. And I mean, that's that was an amazing find because that has really helped us find so much more and open the door for us finding that information into where we are, you know today, because there's kind of so much in there that you can read, you know, in those papers, you know, the the ask you know, for for her freedom and that of her three children at the time were two other children under the age of three, a male and a
female under the age of three was the ask. Now inside of those papers, what they worked in was if they did not pay in children or in life or life, then they had their land up for collateral right. And by that time they had already established their Weberville land, which at that time was called Weber's Prairie. But they had already established that land, and that was somewhere in the three thousand and five thousand acres somewhere that in that range. So it was quite a bit of land
that they put up for collateral right. And that's kind of what we knew for a little while. And then again Maria through her work found papers where John Weber forfeited the land to John Cryer as part of this agreement and fulfilling these freedom papers. After that, you know, that's you know again eighteen thirty four, right. Then they were in Weberville until eighteen fifty, which is when they
signed over those that land over to Crier. They you know, from eighteen thirty four eighteen fifty, they were in there. They got a tutor, they were tutoring their children. They
ended up having another eight nine children. I think they had thirteen untilal twelve survived to adulthood, so you know, they had several children, you know, after that between eighteen thirty four and eighteen fifty and they got kicked out of their own town because as more white settlers coming in and realizing, you know, this is an interracial couple.
They are tutoring their children exactly right, and you know, how dare they you know, even want to educate their children, right, And so educating the children, the tutor started receiving death threats, you know, I mean, it was just you know, not
good conditions. So they started making their way down to the valley and settled in Donna, Texas in eighteen fifty three is where they settled and purchased I think again over eight thousand acres of land and a big portion that had and it was again right along the river banks there in the real Grande Leslie has researched and the doctor Hammock of research is that the knowledge that Sylvia had and brought right from her time of being enslaved and having to work with you know, flat bottom
boats and stuff like that, that was the education that she used and the knowledge that she used, you know, across the river to help you know, free enslave people.
And he talks about this one drop rule, like, did you know about this one drop rule?
That's what this role was about, was this huge discrimination in the twentieth century because they said, you know, a single drop of black blood makes a person black.
Yeah, and this is why a lot of people like oj Devigno and Sophia Bravo, another ancestor of the Webers that we spoke about, they didn't know about this because oh, if there's one drop rule, so it would be dangerous. They decided to then just keep it quiet. Oh you're part black and you're park Mexican like this is it was just it was just too much, so they just kept this history quiet. So there were so many freedom
fighters and we can't mention them. All and also even if we wanted to, so many of them will never know by name. But it's also I think really interesting to note that the Webers lived near Matilda and Nathaniel Jackson, another interracial couple also in the Rio Grande Valley that were known to help fugitive slaves and asylum seekers.
Well, just last year, the Jackson Ranch near the banks of the Rio Grande in present day Hidalgo County was recognized by the National Park Service as a historical significant part of its Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. That's pretty cool. So as part of the journey, many who traveled South to Freedom like that left the United States
and went into Mexico. They carried with them food that they could use to barter or trade with with the indigenous people or the Mexican people along the way for safe passage. And this included bacon, corn meal, and peaches. I don't know there was peach trees in Texas.
Trees, Yeah, peach trees were introduced to Florida by Spaniards in the mid fifteen hundreds. So actually, if we go way way back, peaches are originally from China, but they were brought over like so many other things. They were brought over. They became a staple across the South by the seventeenth century, and in Texas they were abundant in the mid eighteen hundreds, and Sylvia Weber and her family were known to have sold peaches for sustenance.
Peach leaves were also used medicinally to help heal wounds, and they have anti microbial properties. And also, you know, we know canning food obviously prolongs it. And we've talked about the history of of canning, but canned foods were instrumental to slaves escaping to the South via the underground railroad, because then they could have more to eat.
They would do a lot of canning. They used to process a lot of Canyon used to have can They used to can all the tomatoes and onions and cabbages. And because that's the way we would grow around that ranch, around those farms, and they would can them and they would put them away and when people come along, you know, that's what they would give them. You know, they would come and it was yeah, because canyon was I mean
it was I was even part of that. They used to make us go good, go and wash the jars and my grandma. They used to beat an assembly line of people just cannying those vegetables and putting them away. And I would tell Grandma, why do you want so many? And she's like, you don't ask that, just go wash the jar. And we're like, okay, yes, but it was part of our life. You would can, and they would can,
and they would can. I mean they would. They would spend cannying and canyon for you know, for what I do not know that we were not allowed to ask. My name is Sophia Brabo and I am the vice president of the nonprofit that we have that we're still preserving the Weber family. I am a direct descendant of the Weber I'm the caretaker of that Weber cemetery where all our relatives are buried. And I'm the one that if you want a tour, or you want any information, or you want to go visit, I'm the one that
you get a hold of. And I'll be more than glad to go take you out there. I do it to whoever asked.
I'll go.
You know, I will find time, I will schedule time, and you know you're I will be more than glad to tour you to that cemetery. My grandma was the one that everybody used to go visit, even oh, mom, Mom used to go visit, and his grandparents used to go visit my grandmother because she was like an elder. And you would hear those stories, oh you know this and that. But you were not allowed to even claim that you were part of the black community. You know,
there was a very hush hush situation. Because of that situe, you know, I guess it were scared that if you were part of the well, they were Webers. Of course, my grandmother was Marcella Weber. But they would never say what why there were Webers or why, you know, they would just claim John, John Webber, you know John. But Sylvia was always left behind because Sylvia was the one there was an African American. But everybody, well, I'm related to John. John was a white boy. He was a
white man. So everybody, oh, yeah, I'm white, you know, because of John. But they never said poor Sylvia was always left to one side.
You know.
Oh my god, you are not allowed to say you are black, especially in South Texas, South Texas, you were not allowed.
Endless histories and culinary traditions have been passed down through generations, but many names were never recorded. Thankfully, people like doctor Marie Hamac searching for these stories and sharing them with the world. One such story is about a woman who may have started the butter industry in northern Mexico. Here is doctor Hamak sharing this story.
We don't know her name. I have been looking for several years in the Mexican archives to try to find her name. I haven't been that lucky, but I've been able to retrace some of her journey, like to Situarya, where she was from in Mississippi, and then I don't know how she made it to Mexico, but when she
was in Mexican what she was doing. And there's accounts that talk about how she was the only person in the market in again in mont Cloba, in the open market that was selling butter and people were like wow, like we've never had butter. This butter is delicious.
What is you know?
And people stop and like this is delicious, and any other she was also selling other dairy products, but tracing that story, it was like, Okay, where she had been born,
they made butter as well. It was the enslay people that were forced to make the butter, and so she had, you know, she knew how to make it, and so it was only logical if she, however, she made it to northern Mexico that she knew she could make a living there by introducing this with everybody else was using lard, and there were people that were only the upper classes had butter like in other places, but not necessarily butter. They had other types, but lard was deep thing that
was used. And I tried, I did do my due diligence to ask other scholars who work on food history if they knew anything about battery in Mexico. And really nobody has done an in depth study on who introduced better in Mexico. And I believe that it was this black woman from Mississippi who was free being free in
northern Mexico in the eighteen thirties. Butter was being made also on the other side in Texas as early as eighteen twenty eight by the enslaved that were brought by the Stephen Austin colonists.
And so there's a lot that points to the fact that she may have been the first woman to introduce butter and butter businesses into northern Mexico.
The best things in life, freedom and butter. A huge thanks to our special guest, doctor Maria Hamac sofia A Bravo and OJ and Leslie Trevigno for sharing their time, their family histories, and their expertise. You can find links to their work and the episode description. Next week, we'll continue exploring the southern route of the Underground Railroad through a unique cookbook and Juneteenth, which has been celebrated in
a community in northern Mexico since the nineteenth century. Well welcome doctor Hamak back to the show along with Windy Goodlow and Corinata of the Seminole Indian Scouts Cemetery Association.
Please join us as always, thank you for listening and joining us today.
If you have any dishes or foods you want to hear about on this show, send us a message. Bye everyone.
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