City Cemetery
Laredo, Webb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The earliest burial grounds in Laredo were known as camposantos (Saints' Fields) by Spanish settlers. Laredo's first camposanto was probably the one at San Agustín Church. In 1892 the Laredo City Council decreed that the cemeteries then in use were full. The city dedicated four blocks for a burial ground, and half was conveyed to the local bishop for use of the Catholic church. The original plan included a Jewish section and a potters field for indigent citizens. Large private plots were set aside for local church groups, such as the Ladies' Guild of Christ Episcopal Church, and for fraternal, civic and labor organizations including Mutualistas, Mexican American benevolent groups essential to the Mexican labor movement in the United States. A deadly smallpox epidemic in 1898-1899 caused the daily burials of small children and the closure of public places such as churches and schools. In 1926, bodies from an earlier city cemetery on Scott Street were reinterred here and at the Catholic Calvary Cemetery. By the 1930s, an African American section and an infants section had been added. Through the 1950s Laredo citizens honored the Mexican custom of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), also known as All Souls' Day, with the eating and offering of food and cemetery decoration. A veterans section was added in 1974. The cemetery continued to grow throughout the 20th century. Grave decoration and funerary art reflect Mexican American traditions. The lack of formal shrubbery and landscaping is offset by highly elaborate floral displays. The Laredo City Cemetery is a chronicle of the city's ethnic and religious diversity. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Laredo's earliest burial grounds were the Spanish camposantos, or "saints' fields," the first likely beside San Agustín Church. When the city dedicated this four-block cemetery in 1892, it set aside sections for Catholics, a Jewish burial area, a potter's field, and plots for church, civic, and labor groups — including the Mutualistas, mutual-aid societies vital to the Mexican American labor movement. A smallpox epidemic, an African American section, and generations of Día de los Muertos observances all left their mark on its grounds.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a physical chronicle of a border city's ethnic, religious, and working-class diversity, preserving Mexican American funerary traditions across more than a century.
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Related events
- · Día de los Muertos
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bishop Peter Verdaguer
Laredo, TX
Born in Catalonia and educated in the United States, Peter Verdaguer was ordained in San Francisco in 1862 and served Catholic Indian missions in California before being named to lead the Vicariate of Brownsville. Consecrated a bishop in Barcelona in 1890, he settled in Laredo in 1891 to shepherd some 42,500 Catholics amid deep poverty and the great drought of the 1890s. Traveling by horseback across South Texas to baptize, marry, and confirm ranch families, he oversaw new churches and schools until his death, by which time the flock had grown to 82,000.
Calvary Catholic Cemetery
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As Laredo boomed in the late 1800s, the border city needed a fourth camposanto, but politics, money, and neighborhood objections delayed the new Catholic cemetery until 1901. Its grounds hold special sections for infants, for priests, and for the Marist brothers and four orders of nuns who served the city, alongside laity and soldiers. Among the notable dead are Civil War figures Santos and Refugio Benavides and Bishop Pedro Verdaguer of the Vicariate of Brownsville.
Zuniga House
Laredo, TX
Roberto Zuniga crossed from Monterrey, Mexico, to Laredo in 1916 and, with his brother Alfonso, opened a customs brokerage in 1918—an essential trade in a city that lived by cross-border commerce. In 1923 Roberto and his wife Elvira hired the local John O. Buenz Lumber Company to build this house, a comfortable emblem of the family's rising fortunes.
El Barrio Azteca
Laredo, TX
El Barrio Azteca grew from land first platted into lots in the 1870s and 1880s, making it one of Laredo's earliest residential neighborhoods. Its residents worshiped at San Augustin Catholic Church and, after 1895, at the Presbyterian 'La Iglesia Presbiteriana Sinai,' reflecting a community of deep Mexican-American roots and varied faiths. The barrio grew alongside the border city during its late-nineteenth-century expansion.