According to author Robert Elman, Juan Cortina and his followers were the first "socially motivated border bandits," similar to the Garzistas and the Villistas of later generations.

Tension increased between Cortina and the Brownsville authorities, and on September 28, he raided and occupied the town with a posse of between forty and eighty men.

These have connived with each other, and form, so to speak, a perfidious inquisitorial lodge to persecute and rob us, without any cause, and for no other crime on our part than that of being of Mexican origin, considering us, doubtless, destitute of those gifts which they themselves do not possess.

Because of appeals from Brownsville residents, the United States Army sent troops from San Antonio to the nearby Fort Brown, which had been abandoned a few years ago.

With increasing pressure from the United States and Mexican Governments to cease all hostile activities, Cortina remained away from the scene for more than a year.

The American Civil War had just begun, and Cortina, who had aligned himself with the Federal government of the United States, invaded Zapata County, Texas.

[citation needed] Mexican author Carmen Boullosa published the novel Texas in 2013, which presents a fictionalized account of the First Cortina War.