In 1918, a group of Texas Rangers were sent to West Texas to investigate a raid that happened near Porvenir, a small village in Presidio County.
They narrowed their suspects down to a group of 15 Mexican Americans. Despite having no evidence of any wrongdoing, the Rangers, along with members of the U.S. Army and local ranchers, dragged the villagers out of their homes and killed them.
Nobody involved in the massacre was ever held legally responsible, but in 2019, the Texas Historical Commission dedicated a marker in the area to honor the victims.
Soon, the Trump administration’s new border wall could cut off access to the landmark.
Peter Holley, a senior editor with Texas Monthly who has written a new piece about this, joined the Texas Standard with the details.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Texas Standard: Well, let’s talk about this massacre. A lot of people may not know about it. It happened during a period historians refer to as La Matanza, or the killing. Give us some more details about when this happened.
Peter Holley: This is a period that many Texans just aren’t aware of, and it refers to a period of state-sanctioned vigilante anti-Mexican violence in South Texas that took place between 1910 and 1920, roughly. And during this period, hundreds — if not thousands, according to some estimates — of Mexican Americans were lynched, shot and executed without trial.
And the context here is that at the time Anglo settlers were moving to South Texas, and this campaign of terror was designed to displace Mexican American landowners.
Many of these deaths came at the hands of law enforcement, and even today, it’s a stain on the Texas Rangers’ legacy and one that the Department of Public Safety has yet to officially apologize for.
How will new border wall construction impact access to this historical site in West Texas?
This is a sensitive area, both the nature and what remains of the execution site. The border wall, though we can’t be entirely precise about where it’s going to be because it’s still subject to being moved, appears to be directed right through the site, almost through the heart of it.
And the problem with that is that a border wall will often contain roads and other displacement. And so it’s safe to say that a border wall construction will not only deeply affect the site, but almost certainly cut off access to it from the American side, meaning that the descendants who are connected to this site will no longer have any access to moving forward.
So tell us about the legislative effort to get this landmark. Lots of people turned out to show support.
Yeah, this effort actually began decades earlier with Arlinda Valencia doing research among family members. And as she learned more about the massacre, she began lobbying public officials, reaching out to educators, trying to spread the word about what happened.
This finally resulted, after several decades of fighting, in a historical marker and a celebration at the state Capitol in Austin that was attended by 400 people. And these people are all connected to the original 15 victims of the Porvenir Massacre.
Now, you spoke to one of these descendants, Arlinda Valencia, for the story. How does she feel about all of this?
This is a deeply hurtful and painful thing to find out that after a century and really decades of research and trying to bring this massacre to light and finally getting the state to acknowledge it a few years ago, that suddenly it’s gonna be, in their minds washed away potentially — literally if the border wall cuts it off.
And so they’re hurt, they’re troubled, and they don’t understand why something that’s now come to light is now once again kind of being erased.
It’s my understanding that this site has been excavated by researchers before. What were they looking for, and what did they find?
Yeah, the site was excavated in 2015, and it confirmed a few things. It confirmed the exact location of the executions and the killings.
It also revealed that the U.S. military was more heavily involved. Roughly 20% of the recovered bullet casings and ammunition were connected to the U.S. military, which directly challenged this historical narrative that had minimized their involvement in the past.
Well, we have learned a lot about lynchings in the South, in other parts, in other states. But why do you think this part of the country that’s remained largely hidden when it comes to Mexican-Americans living in Texas?
It’s hard to say. Obviously, what happened in South Texas in many ways resembles the period between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement across the South. Our history very much aligns with it.
But it was left out of textbooks, and it was covered up from the beginning. In fact, the governor during this period, James Ferguson, offered pardons to Texas lawmen for their involvement in the atrocities.
So I think from the very beginning, was a cover-up in place and the families who were deeply affected by it. They often didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t. They grappled with it privately. Both of those things had repercussions for decades to come.
Yeah, not to mention the fear. Do we know if the Trump administration has responded to any of the concerns about preserving this historic site?
When I reached out to Homeland Security and asked for comment, they did not directly acknowledge the Porvenir Massacre site. They do claim that they are in touch with locals and that the site of the border wall is still up for debate.
But it’s hard to say; there’s not a lot of communication, and people feel very much like the Trump administration is not interested in their concerns about the site.
There have been a lot of questions, of course, with the border wall in that region and Big Bend National Park, and out where I am, you know, we have a religious site in Mount Cristo Rey. So it’s been hard to get information.
Well, you visited the site. Tell us about the experience. What do you remember?
The Porvenir Massacre site is in Presidio County, near the U.S.-Mexico border, and getting there is a very arduous task. It takes several hours, ideally in an off-road vehicle.
You’re going over gullies and through desert, and it’s hard to access. That’s one of the reasons that I think people have not acknowledged this site, it’s that it’s a difficult place to get to. But once you do, you find yourself surrounded by extreme beauty and extreme desolation.
This is a very somber location. I was really struck by how delicate it is, too. You have a sense that any kind of construction there will certainly kind of wipe it off the face of the earth.
There’s, on a personal level, there’s this haunting kind of stillness in the air. And when I wrote about it, I mentioned that it felt more like an echo than a form of serenity. And I really feel like when you visit the place, you can feel that something heavy happened there. And something that should probably be acknowledged publicly.
What are you keeping an eye on going forward?
Well, we’re gonna be watching very closely where the border wall is constructed and how the maps change that are already online. And we’ll be following this site and seeing how it’s impacted and continue to tell the stories of people who are connected to it.
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