Alfaro & Cisneros

Sunday, Aug. 23, 1998

Ex-general's latest mission: Lead A&M-Kingsville

By HEATHER HOWARD
Staff Writer

Corpus Christi lawyer Dan Alfaro knew more than 30 years ago, as a young Army second lieutenant at Fort Sam Houston, that barracks-mate Marc Cisneros was a born leader.
It was the summer of 1961, and Alfaro, then barely 22, was impressed with Cisneros' always-immaculate uniform, unfailing devotion to his wife and intense dedication to the Army.
``He was always up at . . . 5 a.m. in the morning, ready to go, always ahead of me,'' Alfaro said. ``I could tell right then and there when I met him that he was destined to do great things, not only in the Army but in his life.''
Those things included a 35-year Army career with three tours of combat duty -- two in Vietnam, one in Panama -- and a position as a corporate executive.
Last week, Texas A&M University System regents unanimously selected Cisneros, who retired from the Army as a three-star general, to take over as president of Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
He will replace Manuel Ibanez, who announced in January that he would step down Sept. 1 after nine years as university president. Ibanez has said he will remain at A&M-Kingsville to teach biology.
Born in Brownsville and raised in Premont, Cisneros, 59, is a former commander of the 5th Army headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and was responsible for Army activities in states west of the Mississippi River. In 1996, he became an executive for Fluor Daniel Inc., a San Antonio construction company.
``I think (Cisneros) exemplifies honor to your country, which I think in our society is something all of us are losing,'' Alfaro said. ``I think he will lead A&M-Kingsville with that same dedication.''
It will be a tough mission, Cisneros said -- one he hopes to fulfill by recruiting aggressively, becoming a mentor to young people and reaching out to area school districts to help them better prepare students for college.
About half of A&M-Kingsville's students must take remedial courses -- something Cisneros wants to change.
``That's a challenge throughout Texas,'' he said. ``I want to develop a comprehensive overview of what they can do to cooperate with area high schools to overcome this. I'm not accepting that there's nothing we can do to improve.''
The university also has faced declining enrollment in the past few years -- a trend at least partially attributed by university officials to the 1994 conversion of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to a four-year campus.
A&M-Kingsville enrolled 6,576 students in fall 1993. Last fall, the school's enrollment was 6,050, university officials have said.
In fall 1993, A&M-Corpus Christi had 4,475 students. Last fall, it enrolled 5,686 -- a 27 percent increase.
``That was a big factor that caused the challenge in enrollment decline,'' Cisneros said.
Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi the top public regional university in the state in its 1998 ranking of the nation's best colleges.
The magazine, however, rated A&M-Kingsville among the lower level of schools that were ranked.
Cisneros said he is not deterred.
``I think Kingsville has some advantages no other schools (in the area) have,'' he said.
Those include, he said, nationally recognized engineering and agriculture programs and a campus that has the potential to bustle with student life.
``We have a beautiful campus,'' he said. ``Part of the development and maturing of child is an opportunity to be away from home. And yet it's close enough to get home on the weekends.''
Cisneros said he wants to encourage more students to live on campus -- something he hopes to do, in part, by seeking Legislative funding to provide money to help students with housing.
``If students are just commuting to school and leaving . . . that doesn't create a complete academic environment,'' Cisneros said.
Cisneros' said his No. 1 goal is to develop a mentoring relationship between faculty and students -- an ability friends say Cisneros honed in the military.
``He has mentored and led hundreds of young people,'' said Stephen ``Tio'' Kleberg, former head of the King Ranch's cattle and farming operations and a friend of Cisneros for more than 20 years.
But doing that also will depend, Cisneros said, on convincing students to go to college in the first place.
Cisneros said he intends to spend a great deal of time recruiting, talking one-on-one with students and parents and trying to convince students that going to college will give them more opportunities -- and show them how going is possible.
``A lot of parents are sending first-generation children to the university,'' Cisneros said. ``They don't have, a lot of them, the experience of how to get children through school.''
Kleberg said Cisneros' South Texas roots will help bridge that gap.
``I think he realizes there's an awful lot of potential and what he's faced with are third and fourth generations of people in families without college degrees,'' said Kleberg, who served on the committee that chose candidates for the president's position.
Helping those students succeed will be the key, Cisneros said, to securing a better future for South Texas.
``I was raised, my heart was developed, my values were developed in South Texas,'' Cisneros said. ``If I have been successful at all, I have done it because I was raised in the Coastal Bend area. When this opportunity came up . . . I said this would give me a great opportunity to contribute to the area.''

King Ranch was built on the knowledge that came from the earlier Tejano ranches in the region, especially the Bobedo.

URL: http://www.caller.com/ccct/opinion_columnists/article/0,1641,CCCT_843_5226513,00.html

King Ranch absorbed older Bobedo Ranch

December 20, 2006

Years before Richard King established King Ranch there was a large ranch a few miles to the south - the Bobedo Ranch owned by Manuel Ramirez Elizondo. The Bobedo straddled the main route from Corpus Christi to Brownsville northwest of Baffin Bay.

The Corpus Christi Star on March 26, 1849 reported: "Our correspondent en route to Brownsville writes from this well-known ranch: The Bobedo is owned by Manuel Ramirez . . . who has 'manadas' of mares for breeding . . . and between 2,000 and 3,000 head of cattle. Yet for all this stock - worth perhaps $20,000 - he employs only one herder . . . I may as well remark, though, that the extent of the land, embracing 12 leagues, is so great as to isolate his stock from that of others."

(The name Bobedo is a corruption of the Spanish grant, Rincon de la Boveda.)

In April or early May, 1852, Richard King and friends rode from Brownsville to Corpus Christi to attend Henry Kinney's Lone Star Fair. Many accounts say that King camped at a spot on the Santa Gertrudis Creek, where Kingsville is today, and that's where he got the idea of starting a ranch. Another account, however, says King stopped to visit Manuel Ramirez (Elizondo) at the Bobedo Ranch and while there King asked about land for sale.

This story was told by King Ranch vaquero Francisco Alvarado, as related to a grandson, Victor Rodriguez Alvarado. The grandson remembered in his final years what his parents and grandparents told him about the early years of King Ranch.

Alvarado said King asked Ramirez about land suitable for ranching that might be for sale. Ramirez told him about the Santa Gertrudis grant 12 miles to the north. Praxides Uribe of Matamoros claimed title to the grant.

King asked Ramirez to intercede for him and his partner "Legs" Lewis in the purchase of the land. Ramirez agreed. A contract between Ramirez and Uribe in 1854 conveyed the Santa Gertrudis to Ramirez for $1,800, $150 per league of land, but no money was paid. It was contingent on Uribe providing papers showing ownership; he refused to do so until he had cash in hand. In 1856, three years after he had begun his ranch, King bought the land for $5,000.

"In order to build his first houses," Alvarado said, "King went to the Bobedo and got my grandfather, Francisco Alvarado, as workman, to build houses (jacals they were called). My grandfather, my father, and their families also came . . . they made the first houses of wood and dirt with thatched roofs."

King Ranch was built on the knowledge that came from the earlier Tejano ranches in the region, especially the Bobedo.

The Bobedo Ranch was still a thriving, working ranch after the Civil War. What happened to the Bobedo is a puzzle hidden in the pages of history.

In 1874, Manuel Ramirez (Elizondo) died. John McClane, Nueces County sheriff and a friend of Richard King, petitioned the court (the ranch was then in Nueces County) to be named administrator of the estate. McClane was appointed. Of the three appraisers of the estate, at least one was a close associate of King, Reuben Holbein. The appraisers valued the estate at $56,000; cattle were valued at $3.50 per head, well below market value. King purchased all the land and cattle, paying Ramirez's sons.

Victor Rodriguez Alvarado in his memoirs noted that the Bobedo cattle were taken to Kansas and sold. "The money he got from the steers was sufficient to pay the entire cost of the ranch. In such a manner, King did his business . . ."

However it came about, the Bobedo was absorbed by King Ranch. In 1907, Theodore Koch bought some 20,000 acres of the old Bobedo from Henrietta King, widow of the late Richard King. Koch laid out new towns he named Riviera and Riviera Beach.

Accusations as old as Texas claim that cunning Anglo land-grabbers used their influence with friends in high places to steal land that rightfully belonged to Spanish and Mexican grantees. No doubt some of that happened, but blatant prejudice frames the issue on both sides. We can't judge what happened by the standards of their time, and it would be unfair to judge it by the standards of our own.

But it is long past the time to either prosecute or defend. Whether land-stealing happened with Manuel Ramirez Elizondo's Bobedo Ranch is certainly open to question. In any event, the younger King Ranch became famous throughout the world, while the story of the older Bobedo Ranch, which showed the way, is almost unknown.

Note: Memoirs of Victor Rodriquez Alvarado in an unpublished manuscript were sent to me years ago by Carmel Alvarado of Agua Dulce. Some details of how King acquired the Bobedo Ranch are covered in the book "Tejano Legacy" by Armando C. Alonzo.

Murphy Givens is Viewpoints Editor of the Caller-Times. Phone: 886-4315; e-mail: HYPERLINK mailto:givensm@caller.com givensm@caller.com.

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The sword or the pen?

Van Halen - Ballot Or The Bullet Lyrics

Give me liberty or give me death

No truer words have ever been said

Well are you prepared for your very last breath?

Don't you dare start what you cannot finish



So when we face, face the adversary

No longer are we the minority



And when history repeats her hour

The pendulum will swing, swing into power

Though not in vain like our forefathers

Freedom, never had no room for cowards



For in the end, there will be equality

By any means necessary



The ballot or the bullet

The choice is up to you

The ballot or the bullet

Tell me what you gonna do

The sword or the pen

Can be held by the same hand



What's it gonna take to liberate?

An emancipation, a false proclamation?

All these token words that you legislate

Sound a little bit absurd. Hey! And a little too late



When a house is divided, it just will not stand

Once it's decided, a line drawn in the sand



Ah! The ballot or the bullet

The choice is up to you

The ballot or the bullet

Tell me what you gonna do

The sword or the pen

Can be held by the same hand



(Guitar Solo)



The ballot or the bullet

The choice is up to you

The ballot or the bullet

Tell me what you gonna do



The ballot or the bullet

The choice is up to you

The ballot or the bullet

Tell me what you gonna do

The sword or the pen can be

The sword or the pen can be

The sword or the pen can be

The sword or the pen can be

The sword or the pen can be

held, held by the same hand!