Calavery Army

Calavera Army

 

08/31/2006

When we were kids, growing up out west of Edinburg, we often chose up sides and declared war on each other.  We fought with those sling-shot type weapons that we called  “nigasootas” using chinaberries as ammunition.  

Maybe reading about the Texas Battle of San Jacinto recently triggered this memory.  As you remember, when the Texas army under General Sam Houston caught the Mexican Army napping in the early afternoon and wiped out about half of the Santa Anna  troops in a 20-minute battle, the Texas are said to have yelled “Remember the Alamo” as they inflicted mayhem on the Mexicans.  

In one report I read that some Mexicans pleaded,” me no Alamo” as they were being slaughtered.  Whether this is simple braggadocio of the winners who wrote this history, is not for me to know -- but I digress.  

Anyway, I remember the names we gave to our chinaberry armies who fought on the canal banks of South Texas.  One side proudly bore the name  “Aguila Negras" and the other the “Calaveras.”  Interestingly, I knew that “aguila negra” meant “black eagle” but I could only guess the meaning of “calavera.”  I always thought that maybe it was some cognate of the English word, cultivator.  But it makes little sense that Roberto Garza, who came up with these names, would invent such a wimpy name as cultivator for such a macho group of young warriors. Looking back over the 60-odd years since we fought these battles, I began to question my memory.  But no!  Whenever I remember charging, shouting and shooting, it always still comes out as “calavera.”  So, today I finally looked up the definition of the Spanish word,  “calavera" and it all began to make more sense.  According to my dictionary, one meaning of calavera is “wild life” — as in  “es un calavera,” “he leads a wild life.”

 

Now it makes perfect sense that we would proudly terrorize our chinaberry enemies by shrieking that the wild ones were on their way to annihilate, dismember and give no quarter to those sissy Aguila Negras.  Roberto Garza, Ruben Garza, Ruben Guerra, my brothers and other assorted friends who inflicted chinaberry welts on each other -- that we wore with such great honor -- I miss you guys!  But I don’t miss the welts.

 

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