TEXAS: The Land of Parr

The deep southeastern triangle of Texas is a land of aching distances and blazing sun, of endless, string-straight roads and dusty little towns. Oil derricks stand on its horizons, and beef cattle move unseen amid its dreary leagues of tangled mesquite brush. To the west, across the Rio Grande, lies Mexico, to the east the cloud-hung Gulf. Spanish is the country’s common tongue; the greater part of its people are poor, underpaid Mexican-Americans. For more than a half-century, southeast Texas has been the Land of Parr.

Alliance with Baronies. Archie Parr, a six-bit-a-day cowboy turned politician, started the empire on June 18, 1911. It was election day and there was blood in the dusty street of tiny San Diego, county seat of Duval County; gun-packing “Anglos,” bent on rule by the gun, shot down three local Mexicans. Archie Parr, who spoke Spanish, took the side of the Mexicans. After that, in the old Mexican tradition, he reigned as their jefe—the man who solved their problems and gave them orders. He voted the people—and in return he gave Duval County Latin American officials.

By the time Archie’s son and political heir, George, came back home from the University of Texas in 1926, the Parr empire had grown; its founder had made alliances with the baronies of Kenedy and Kleberg and with other county political bosses, and extended his sway mightily. Affable, well-spoken, well-dressed George Parr did more; hidden away in his hot and dusty plains, he turned southeast Texas into one of the most rigidly controlled political machines in the nation. He grew rich in oil and cattle, built a walled mansion with lushly landscaped grounds, a swimming pool and a private race track in San Diego, bought a 50,000-acre ranch beyond the barred gates of which only a chosen few could venture.

When he went abroad, two dark-skinned, cowboy-booted bodyguards were seldom far away. To the Mexicans of Duval County he represented both love and fear. Like his father he spoken fluent Spanish, almost invariably named a full slate of Latin Americans for the voters to elect. The sick, the jobless, the unlucky were seldom turned away from Parr’s air-conditioned office. Duval County got good roads (built by George Parr’s road company). He took care of important friends even more dramatically; one Thomas Y. Pickett, named as county oil evaluator (a job which takes but a few days a year) back in 1926, has gotten as much as $46,934.40 a year in fees. Parr’s enemies, on the other hand, have had trouble, e.g., shortly after a radio commentator named W. H. (“Bill”) Mason rashly began opposing Parr on the air in 1949, the deputy sheriff of Jim Wells County shot him dead on the street.

The Coming of Trouble. Investigations of Parr almost always fizzled out (he did nine months in a federal reformatory for income-tax evasion back in 1936, but President Truman was happy to issue him a full pardon a few years later). When George Parr passed the word, Duval County produced automatic majorities of 100 to 1. In surrounding counties the vote was often almost as high.

The Parr machine reached its arrogant zenith during the close 1948 senatorial race between ex-Governor Coke Stevenson (a discarded Parr favorite) and present ‘Senator Lyndon Johnson. A post-election day “correction” of the southeast Texas vote gave Johnson a margin of 87 out of almost a million Texas votes and” the nickname “Landslide Lyndon.”

In the years since, however, the life of Boss George Parr, now 52, has been increasingly beset by trouble. Some of the most slavish among Parr’s political serfs were secretly disturbed, one night 18 months ago, when a gunman killed a 22-year-old youth from Alice, Texas named Jacob S. Floyd Jr.—apparently mistaking him for his father, a vehement enemy of Boss Parr. Two years ago Texas Governor Allan Shivers openly declared war on Parr and sent pistol-toting Texas Rangers into his empire. Meanwhile both state and federal investigators began probing into Duval County affairs.

The Mesquite Tree. Under pressure, Parr’s affability has turned to moroseness. But when he invaded an opposition political meeting last month, a lowly tortilla-maker named Manuel Marroquin had nerve enough to go to the Rangers and complain that the boss had brandished a pistol. Parr was promptly charged with illegal possession of a firearm. He fought back; his own Jim Wells County grand jury indicted two Rangers with whom he had scuffled on a charge of assault with intent to murder. Last week, when Parr sat down for a cup of coffee in little San Diego’s Windmill Café, five armed men in dust-colored hats and faded khakis stood ostentatiously near the door outside and a curious tension hung in the streets. But many a southeast Texas politico guessed that the palm-studded empire of Parr was crumbling.

“Don’t bet on it, though,” said one. “This is mesquite country. You know how hard it is to kill a mesquite tree; you can chop it, you can burn it, but the roots go way down deep and it’ll keep coming up again.”