In the early Spring of 1913, families fleeing the political violence in northern Mexico arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas. One of Mexico’s revolutionary leaders, Francisco Villa, began to expropriate the ranches, homes, businesses, and lands owned by Anglo-Mexican families, causing panic.
My petite 19-year-old grandmother, Lupita James-Tejada, arrived in Eagle Pass aboard the last of the evacuation trains scheduled by the Mexican International Railway Company. She, her siblings, and parents, Frank B. James of Alabama and his Mexican wife, Guadalupe Tejada, stepped out of their passenger car into a throng of curious people who welcomed the newcomers.
One onlooker, a young attorney, almost fell off his horse when he spied Lupita, stunned by her beauty. The previous day, her father, a railroad employee, received word that their home, located on the outskirts of Monclova, Mexico, would be seized by Pancho Villa’s revolutionaries.
Guadalupe’s marriage to her Anglo husband, like other inter-cultural Anglo-Mexican marriages, enraged Villa and his followers, forcing her family to flee Mexico or face inhumane cruelty or death.
Lupita’s idyllic life in Monclova, Mexico, was violently uprooted and now the family faced an uncertain future. The James family was forced to leave all their possessions in Monclova that would not fit in a small suitcase. The abandoned items included their furniture, a treasured baby grand piano, other family heirlooms, and the inventory of her father’s general store.
However, Lupita brought with her one valuable item, the lessons taught to her by her mother and father— “the barriers of ignorance can be broken by wisdom, tenacity, and valor.”
She would say in later years, “As Mexican refugees, we may have been considered poor, but we never knew it. We carried our poverty in our wallets, not in our hearts. Our families were our safe harbor and the bonds of community saw us through the rough times. But we, as a family, were rich in ways that most people would never understand.”
In 1915, Lupita, a beauty in form and spirit, married that young attorney, David E. Hume, in Eagle Pass. They purchased a handsome two-story home located at 609 North Monroe Street where they raised their two children, David and Lorna.
Lupita Hume was a renowned piano teacher and a celebrated Scoutmaster of the Eagle Pass BSA Troop 90. Her students’ piano recitals became social events. She taught Sunday School classes at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer near her home. She became an active member of the Eagle Pass community, able to sneak a kernel of empathy into every conversation and story. She took the task of empowering women seriously. Her belief that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things inspired many. Like other refugees, Lupita Hume demonstrated uncommon courage to survive, persevere, and rebuild her shattered life’s dream.
Lupita James-Tejada Hume’s journey from danger to safety was not the first such occasion in the history of the world. Civil wars, violence, and tyrannical regimes have displaced people from their homelands for thousands of years. But today, in this chaotic moment in southwest Texas, displaced people and refugees struggle to find safe harbors.
Lupida’s favorite quotation was one her mother recited on the train during the family’s 1913 exodus: “The Lord proclaims: Do what is just and right; rescue the oppressed from the power of the oppressor. Don’t exploit or mistreat the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. Don’t spill the blood of the innocent in this place.” Jeremiah 22:3
She never forgot those words…and neither should we.
