Welcome to the Republic of the Rio Grande.

Episode 15, The Concessions of Camargo.

I'm Brandon Seale.

After his defeat at the Battle of Morrellos on March 25, 1840, the old Federalist brush fox, Antonio Canales,

high-tailed it across the Rio Grande. One third of his Federalist army had been left behind

dead on the battlefield or consumed in the brushfire that followed it. Another third or so

were now prisoners of the Centralist Army.

In the fighting spirit of the Rio Grande Federalists,

the very avatar of the Rio Grande Bias, Antonio Zapata, had been executed.

Proof of this fact arrived in Laredo just a few days after Antonio Canales did on April 4, 1840.

There, in San Augustine Plaza, in the center of Laredo, the purported seat of government for the purported Republic of the Rio Grande, a company of centralist riders arrived,

unloaded a cask of brandy, and pulled Antonio Zapata's pickled head out of it.

Two days later, they repeated the same grotesque performance in Sapata's hometown, Guerrero, but with an added flare.

They placed Zapata's head on a pike right in front of his house and left it there, where Sapata's four grieving daughters would have to look at it every time they stepped outside.

Only after three days of this cruel spectacle was the parish priest given permission to take

Zapata's head down. The people of Guerrero, Zapata's people, did not take well to this

provocation.

400 enraged citizens and Carriso Indians mounted up and rode down the centralist attachment that had delivered Zapata's head to their central plaza,

killing the unfortunate messengers almost to a man.

And yet, centralist general,iano Arista let this slide.

He was back in a hearts and minds mode, and so he made a point not to retaliate against the people of Guerrero.

He also made a point to very publicly pardon all of the men that he had captured after the Battle of Santa Rita de Morrellos.

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