A 12-page bill called The Unclaimed Mineral Proceeds Act, is expected to be introduced at the Texas Legislature this year. The bill would release millions of dollars in royalties to descendants of Spanish and Mexican land grant holders, authorities say.
Approximately 500 descendants of the land grantees met in San Antonio to discuss the proposed bill and hopes of finally being able to claim oil and mineral royalties that have been derived from their ancestral lands.
Those royalties represent about $200 million to $561 million of the state’s $2.2 billion in unclaimed funds.
“Through the years, our ancestors—my father, his parents, his grandparents and his great-grandparents—all have been seeking justice and compensation of what our forefathers left us,” said Lilia Gonzalez Kohandani, an heir of Joaquin Galan, who settled in the area of what’s now South Texas in the early 1700s, the San Antonio Express-News reported Saturday.
