Zeferino Rios

History

Zeferino Rios is the bootmaker the Rios of Mercedes name comes from. By the Rios family's own history, the family worked as zapateros (shoemakers) in Mexico, and by 1853 was making boots and saddles in General Terán, Nuevo León, before later settling in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The family's first boot shop opened in Raymondville in 1928, and Zeferino opened his own shop in nearby Mercedes the following year.

Texas Highways' 2019 account differs on some details: it says the family relocated to the Valley in 1925, that Zeferino and his brother Abraham opened the Raymondville shop together in 1928, and that a disagreement between them the next year sent Zeferino to Mercedes on his own. Sources differ on when the family arrived in the Valley — ‘around the turn of the century’ by the family's own account, 1901 in a company booklet, or 1925 per Texas Highways — and on how Zeferino's ownership ended: he is said to have retired in 1969, with Joe and Trainor Evans buying Rios of Mercedes in 1975, or alternatively to have sold to West Texas investors in the late 1960s.

A 2002 Texas Monthly profile calls him ‘the revered bootmaker’ whose Mercedes factory trained many makers working in El Paso and in the Valley towns of Mercedes and Raymondville, noting the family had been in the boot business for nearly 150 years by that point.