Perspectives

Fearing for their lives after the murder of the Mexican political boss, the Anglo residents of El Paso sent for the commander of the Texas Rangers Frontier Battalion on Oct. 24, 1877. At first glance the killing of Luis Cardis looked like nothing more than the violent climax of a particularly nasty personal feud. But in reality the trouble in El Paso was all about salt. Massive formations of the natural resource were located near Guadalupe Peak 100 miles east of Texas’ westernmost town. Under Spanish rule private ownership was forbidden making the highly coveted commodity free for the taking. Generations of poor Mexicans eked out a modest living hauling salt to El Paso and into the interior of Mexico. Following Texas independence and annexation by the United States, the practice persisted in open defiance of a new law which declared that the salt was no longer public property. Anglo arrivals did not learn of the existence of the salt until 1862, but the Civil War made private exploitation impossible. On the heels of the Confederate collapse, Radical Republicans took over in El Paso and elsewhere throughout Reconstruction Texas. They formed the secret Salt Ring in 1868 for the purpose of reaping enormous profits, but dissension in their ranks and fear of the Mexican reaction postponed seizure of the Guadalupe deposits.