The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 4, July 1900 - April, 1901 Page: 190

190 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.

DIFFICULTIES OF A MEXICAN REVENUE OFFICER
IN TEXAS.
EUGENE C. BARKER.
"The Mexican National Congress met on the first of January,
1835, in pursuance of the plan of Cuernavaca. The centralists had
triumphed everywhere, except in the two states of Zacatecas and
Coahuila and Texas."1 And steps were already in progress to estab-
lish the ,central authority in the Texas part of the latter state.
Near the last of January, 1835,2 there arrived at Anahuac a
detachment of thirty-four Mexican soldiers and two officers from
the regiments of Abasola and Jimenes8, sent by General Cos under
the command of Captain Antonio Tenorio, to assist in re-establish-
ing there the custom house. Anahuac was the chief port of the
department of Nacogdoches, whose imports in 1834 were valued at
$265,0004, and the duties on these would perhaps have paid the
government a small profit above the cost of collection; but it is
easy to imagine in the renewed attempt to enforce the revenue
laws at this time the beginning of a scheme for the gradual exten-
sion, under the color .of constitutionality, of the central power over
the province of Texas. No effort, however, had been made to col-
lect customs in this department for "several years"5-presumably
not since the expulsion of Bradburn and Ugartechea in 1832,-and
'Yoakum: History of Texas, I, 329-30.
2Texas Republican, August 8, 1835.-Austin Papers, in the collection of
Hon. Guy M. Bryan. Also Tenorio to Ugartechea, January 31, 1835.-
Bexar Archives.
Edward (History of Texas, 235) says they arrived in "the fall of 1834;"
and Mrs. Harris (Reminiscences of Mrs. Dilue Harris, Quarterly of the
Texas Historical Association, IV, 107) says that "more" troops were sent
to Anahuac in May, 1834.
'Tenorio to Ugartechea, January 31, 1835.-Bexar Archives.
4Almonte's Report, in Kennedy's Texas, II, 78.

"Texas Republican, August 8, 1835.-Austin Papers.