Roma, Texas

Everything Roma is known for

3 songs mention this city 0 artists from here

Music in Roma

Songs About Roma

Route 90
Clarence "Bon Ton" Garlow
35%
heard it all before
bob wayne
19%
leavin' texas
jerry jeff walker
10%

Artists From Roma

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Roma

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Roma.

Rio Grande / Río Bravo 163 songs Rio Grande / Río Bravo 250 songs

Musical Heritage

Jose 'Pepe' Maldonado RoadyGoat

Pepe Maldonado picked cotton in the fields around Rio Grande City before he was old enough to know it wasn't his future. At thirteen he decided he'd be an artist instead — and then he taught himself accordion, bass, and bajo sexto, all three. Through the fifties and sixties he worked the Valley playing "El Troquero" and "Amorcito Consentido," and in 1967 a song called "Al Pie de un Crucifijo" carried his name all the way to New York. By the seventies he'd built his own label, Del Sur Records, and a studio called El Rancho Sound, where conjunto groups drove up from Monterrey and Reynosa to cut records. Lydia Mendoza herself made an album there. Eighty-three years old, and the Valley still runs right through his hands.

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History of Roma

The Steamboat Capital of the Rio Grande RoadyGoat

Imagine standing on the bluffs overlooking the Rio Grande in 1870. The air would be filled with the sound of steam whistles and the sight of tall-stacked paddlewheelers churning the muddy water. This was Roma's golden age. Because of shallows further upstream, Roma was the head of navigation — the end of the line for river traffic coming up from the Gulf. Steamboat men like Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, before they became legendary cattle barons, ran the boats that worked this river, hauling cotton and silver out of Mexico and freighting supplies inland. The stone and brick buildings you see in the Roma Historic District were built on the profits of that trade — warehouses, stores, and homes for the merchants who thrived in this bustling port. And then the river itself gave out. Irrigation upstream drew off so much water that by 1874 the channel at Roma had dropped nearly three feet, and by the 1880s the levels were too low for commercial navigation at all. The steamboats vanished, leaving Roma a perfectly preserved monument to the riverboat era.

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Roma, TX RoadyGoat

The Roma National Historic Landmark District contains over 30 structures built before 1900, including the Customs House, the John Vale/Noah Cox House, the Leocadia Garcia House, Ramirez Hall, the Manuel Guerra Building, the Néstor Saenz Store, the Edward Hord Office, the Filomeno Gongora House, and Our Lady of Refuge Church. These landmarks provide a glimpse into Roma's rich history and architectural heritage.

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Hollywood on the Rio Grande: 'Viva Zapata!' RoadyGoat

In 1951, the quiet town of Roma was transformed into a bustling movie set. Director Elia Kazan and a crew from 20th Century Fox arrived to film the epic 'Viva Zapata!', starring Marlon Brando as the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. They chose Roma because its historic plaza and beautifully preserved 19th-century architecture looked more like a vintage Mexican town than any place they could find in Mexico itself. Local residents were hired as extras, and for a few months, Hollywood stars walked the same streets you’re driving on now. The film, written by John Steinbeck, became a classic, and Roma’s role in it is a major point of pride. If you visit the Roma Bluffs, you can see the very buildings and landscapes that appeared on the silver screen, a lasting connection between this small border town and the golden age of Hollywood.

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Guerra, Manuel

1894

Manuel Guerra, banker, rancher, and Democratic leader in Starr County politics, the son of Jesús Guerra Barrera, was born in Mier, Tamaulipas, in 1856. The claims of the Guerra family to land in South Texas originated in 1767, when José Alejandro Guerra secured two Spanish land grants that straddled the Rio Grande. Unlike many Hispanic families with property north of the border, the Guerras did not lose their land to aggressive Anglo ranchers and speculators. In fact, the Guerras' business enterprises and ranch holdings grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After living in Mier and Corpus Christi, in 1877 Manuel Guerra settled in Roma, Texas, where he launched his successful career in business and ranching and married Virginia Cox. In 1894 he won a seat on the Starr County Commissioners Court and formed an alliance with Sheriff W. W. Shely that dominated county politics until Shely became incapacitated with a nervous disorder in 1905. For the next decade Guerra ruled as the political boss of Starr County. His reign was marked by the mobilization of lower-class Mexican-American laborers, who formed a majority of the local population, by widespread corruption and outbursts of violence, by close cooperation with the dominant political figure of the lower Rio Grande valley, James B. Wells of Cameron County, and by challenges from a growing movement of Anglo farmers and businessmen organized in the northern part of Starr County under the leadership of rancher Edward Cunningham Lasater . The political turbulence came to a climax with the election of 1906 and its aftermath. After both Guerra's Democrats and Lasater's Republicans organized large forces of armed men, the district judge, a Democrat, was murdered in his sleep the night before the election, and drunken rioting erupted in the county seat, Rio Grande City, the next day. Less than three months later, in January 1907, a Republican organizer and customs inspector, Gregorio Duffy, was killed in a gunfight involving Guerra's cousin, Deodoro, who was the newly elected sheriff. Under pressure from Republican prosecutors, a federal grand jury indicted Manuel and Deodoro Guerra, two deputies, and a Texas Ranger, for conspiring to murder a federal official, but all the defendants eventually won acquittals. Guerra's legal victory in 1909 did not end his political problems. The collapse of a short-lived accommodation with Lasater, a state investigation confirming local charges of corruption on the part of the Guerra ring, and the development of a factional split in his party prompted the Hispanic boss to endorse a legislative scheme to organize a new county for the dissidents in the northern part of Starr County. With the formation of Brooks County in 1911, Guerra was able to complete the consolidation of his control over Starr County politics. He died on June 9, 1915, but his family continued to rule Starr County until the post-World War II era. See also BOSS RULE .

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Ramirez, Mario Efrain

1950

Mario Efrain Ramirez, celebrated physician, Starr County judge, educator, member of the University of Texas Board of Regents, and son of Efren Manuel and Maria del Carmen (Hinojosa) Ramirez, was born in Roma, Texas, on April 3, 1926. He had three younger siblings: Maria del Carmen, Efren Ramirez, Jr., and Roel. In 1940 Efren Ramirez, Jr. died from an infection after he was initially misdiagnosed, and his death, in part, inspired Mario E. Ramirez to become a physician. At the age of sixteen, Ramirez graduated from high school in Rio Grande City in 1942. He attended the University of Texas at Austin but left in January 1945 because the University of Tennessee Medical School granted him early admission. Ramirez graduated in June 1948 and completed his internship and residency at Shreveport Charity Hospital in 1950. In 1949 he married Sarah Aycock, a nursing student. This couple had five children: Mario Ramirez, Jr.; Patricia Anne Kittleman; Norman M. Ramirez; Jaime E. Ramirez; and Roberto L. Ramirez. In 1950 Ramirez returned to Texas and opened his general medical practice in Roma, where for much of his career he was the only practicing physician. In 1951 the Starr County Commissioners Court appointed him the county health officer, and he served from 1951 to 1969. In the early 1950s he accepted an appointment as a U.S. public health officer at border quarantine stations in Roma, Falcon Dam, and Rio Grande City. From 1955 to 1957 Ramirez served in the United States Air Force. He was assigned to the 6048th Air Base Wing at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, and worked at the Tokyo International Airport Dispensary, where servicemen obtained medical supplies or medicine. He ended his tour in Laredo, Texas, and was honorably discharged on April 8, 1958, at the rank of captain. In 1958 Ramirez returned to Roma and opened the Manuel Ramirez Memorial Clinic and Hospital. The fifteen-bed facility, which Ramirez named in honor of his grandfather, was the first hospital in Roma. In 1964 it expanded to include twenty-one beds and a surgical wing; it continued operating until 1975. As the only hospital in Starr, Zapata, and Jim Hogg counties, the facility often relied on visiting specialists from as far as ninety miles away, such as Laredo surgeon Leonides Cigarroa, Sr. , who drove to Roma once a week to perform surgery on Ramirez’s patients. During one visit, Ramirez inspired Cigarroa’s teenaged nephew, Francisco, to pursue a career in medicine. Francisco Cigarroa later went on to become an accomplished transplant surgeon, the first Hispanic president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and the first Hispanic chancellor of the University of Texas System. In 1967 Ramirez achieved considerable notoriety after Hurricane Beulah, one of the strongest hurricanes in Texas history, flooded Texan and Mexican communities throughout the lower Rio Grande Valley. Ramirez spearheaded medical relief efforts in Roma, Rio Grande City, Camargo, and Ciudad Miguel Aleman and cared for or organized the treatment of thousands of displaced people. U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart later commended Ramirez with a special citation for his leadership role. In 1969 Ramirez was appointed Starr County judge to finish the term of a departing judge. He was then elected to two additional terms in 1970 and 1974. During his tenure, he cleared a backlog of court cases, improved county finances, and strengthened the region’s infrastructure, including the construction of the Starr County Memorial Hospital, which opened in Rio Grande City in 1975. Ramirez relocated his medical practice to Rio Grande City that year and served as the hospital’s first chief of staff. In addition to serving Starr County as a judge and health officer, Ramirez also directed the Starr County Migrant Health Project and the Starr County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Program, served one term as president of the Hidalgo-Starr County Medical Society in 1963, and sat on

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Roma-San Pedro International Bridge

1928

Erected by the Starr County Bridge Company, this single span steel suspension bridge was built over the Rio Grande in 1928. This is the only surviving suspension bridge constructed on the international border of the United States and Mexico. The 700-foot long steel bridge was designed by engineer George Cole of Houston, and built by Joseph Erastus Pate. It represents an early business enterprise between the United States and Mexico. This crossing point has been in continuous use from prehistoric times to the present. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1996

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Roma - The Stone City on the Rio Grande

1765

Roma's 19th-century stone buildings on the Rio Grande form one of the best-preserved examples of border architecture in the United States. Elia Kazan filmed Viva Zapata! here in 1952.

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Mier Expedition, The

1842

A body of Texans intent on invading Mexico camped here on December 21, 1842. After being made prisoners at Salado, Mexico, they drew beans, white for life in prison, black for death. 17 members of the expedition were shot by order of General Santa Anna, March 25, 1843. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

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Peyote

Peyote ( Lophophora williamsii ) is a comparatively small, spineless cactus indigenous to the Rio Grande valley of Texas and to northeastern Mexico. Roma, Texas, is a center for its collection. The entire plant is carrot-shaped, with a slightly flattened, hemispherical head, depressed in the center, which protrudes above the ground for an inch or two. This head, grayish-green in color and covered with small tufts of silky hairs, is cut off and dried and is commonly known as a button and erroneously called a mescal button. Its importance lies in its narcotic properties and its use by Indians over a wide area. The innocent-looking plant has an amazing reputation. To the missionary it is a diabolic root and an insidious evil; to the Indian it is a panacea, a giver of visions, the door to an earthly paradise; to the scientist it is a potential medicinal drug whose properties and whose effects on the human system are not completely understood. Chemical analysis shows that the plant contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the isoquinoline series, some of them strychnine-like in physiological action, the others morphine-like. The plant has not proved to be of commercial value in this country except as it is used by the Indians. In parts of Europe it seems to have the status of a patent medicine. The physiological reaction usually is visual hallucinations (frequently color visions), as well as kinaesthetic, olfactory, and auditory derangements. There are no ill after-effects, and the drug is not known to be habit-forming. The Tarahumara, Huichols, and other Indian groups of northern Mexico have used peyote for as long as they can remember. The Carrizos and Lipan Apaches also knew of its use before historic records. In more recent years the use has spread to other groups. The Kiowa Apaches say they obtained the plant and its ritual from the Lipans in the 1880s and then introduced it to the Kiowas and Comanches. The Tonkawas are reported to have obtained it from the Carrizos. In the late 1880s and early 1890s it spread rapidly throughout most of the plains area. With the extermination of the buffalo the Indians' old way of life with its accompanying rituals rapidly disappeared, and the Indians grasped at any cultural straw that seemed to give meaning to a disintegrating way of life. Peyote, because of its narcotic properties and the resulting visions, with the accompanying rite functioning as an integrating factor, gave meaning and euphoria to an almost completely disorganized people. The rite, differing slightly from group to group but with the same basic pattern throughout the plains area, is held infrequently, usually when someone is ill and occasionally to celebrate an anniversary. Meetings usually last one night, although the Tonkawas' rites are said to have lasted four days and nights. After proper ceremonial cleansing, prayers, and ceremonial smoking of tobacco, the peyote buttons are passed. Whether dried or green the plant is bitter and nauseating, and the retching that frequently results is considered as cleansing, physically and spiritually. Individual reactions differ according to the participant's constitution, his physical condition, the amount of peyote eaten, and cultural factors that condition the visions. The ceremonial is repeated until about sunup when it concludes with four morning prayers. Then comes the ceremonial breakfast, relaxation, and a tribal dinner at noon. The rite is a combination of two or three basic complexes, depending on the tribe. Christian influences include prayers addressed to Jehovah through Christ. Some few tribes place the Bible on the altar. The importance of the rite lies in its giving the individual participant a feeling of contentment, of peacefulness, of the worthwhileness of life. It brings the tribe together and gives it a sense of unity as a people. The cult is dying out because of the rigors of participation and the acquisition of White ways by younger members of the tribe, which make th

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Everything Near Roma

88 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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