Brazil and Canada: Economic, Political, and Migratory Ties, 1820s to 1970s by Rosana Barbosa (review)
In November 1910 a mob of white Texans forcibly removed Antonio Rodríguez from jail in Rocksprings, Texas, beat him badly, and then burned him alive. Rodriguez had allegedly confessed to killing the wife of a prominent rancher. Seven months after the Rodríguez lynching, a revenge-seeking mob of Texans of German descent in the town of Thorndale snatched 14-year-old Antonio Gómez from law enforcement officials and hanged him. Gómez had stabbed a local German American man in an altercation following harassment of the boy by several men. The perpetrators of the crime were acquitted by a jury. In the third case, Villanueva argues that a “legal” lynching took place in Pecos in 1914 when León Martínez Jr. was executed following his conviction for murdering a white Texas woman, because she allegedly had resisted León’s sexual advances. Villanueva contends that a biased legal system in Texas yielded the unfair verdict that ended in Martínez’s execution.