Antonio Sanchez · History

History

Antonio Sanchez was a bootmaker in Mercedes, Texas. Joe Nick Patoski’s June 2002 Texas Monthly profile “Alive and Kicking” calls him a 76-year-old working out of a garage, and a companion profile of R.J.’s Boot Company calls him “maybe the state’s finest craftsman,” working semi-exclusively for the Houston shop’s owner, Rocky Carroll.

Texas Highways (September 2019) quotes bootmaker Henry Camargo saying Sanchez was “the greatest boot designer of them all,” and that his designs helped put Rios of Mercedes on the map, with some still used by the company. Sanchez was a native of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, who lived most of his life in the Rio Grande Valley, worked at the Rios of Mercedes factory, and later went into business for himself, remaining Camargo’s mentor until his death. Sources differ on when he died: he was working as of 2002, but the 2019 article speaks of him as already deceased without giving a year.