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TIENDA DE CUERVO, JOSÉ (?–?). José Tienda de Cuervo served as juez inspector of the colony of Nuevo Santander under Agustín Ahumada y Villalón, Marqués de las Amarillasqv, in the mid-eighteenth century. As juez, he was commissioned to report on the progress of José de Escandón's colony of Nuevo Santander in 1757. The report, Expedientes relativos á Ynspección y estadística de la Colonia de Santander, contains among other things a detailed description of Laredo, Texas, two years after its founding. Tienda de Cuervo, a resident of Veracruz, was a caballero of the order of Santiago and captain of dragoons of the city. He became governor of the province of Sinaloa a few years after his assignment as juez. Assisting Tienda de Cuervo in the expedition was Agustín López de la Cámara Alta, an engineer and lieutenant colonel in the royal army. The two led a commission that was ordered to visit each settlement in the colony, taking statistics and observations of the people and their land and making recommendations for its future development. They departed from Mexico City on April 1, 1757, and took six months to complete the journey. The inspection touched on a variety of subjects. First, it provided statistics on the demographics of the province as well as a variety of geographical characteristics. It also touched on details of the relations with local Indian groups. It scrutinized the environment of Nuevo Santander with an eye for the potential benefits in agriculture, mining, and shipping. The report mentions the expenses that went into the founding of new settlements, as well as their effect on older settlements. Finally, it makes a variety of recommendations for improving the colonization effort and the profit to be gained from it.


Herbert Eugene Bolton, "Tienda de Cuervo's Ynspección of Laredo, 1757," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 6 (January 1903). Lawrence Francis Hill, José de Escandón and the Founding of Nuevo Santander (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1926).

Raúl A. Ramos



Raúl A. Ramos, "TIENDA DE CUERVO, JOSE," Handbook of Texas Online (, accessed October 06, 2015. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.