Anywhere from 500 to 5,000 people were killed as part of la matazana, or the massacre — a period of state-sanctioned violence along the Southwest border during the 20th century.
From July to November of 1915, up to 300 ethnic Mexicans were killed in the South Texas counties of Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy, and Kenedy.
No one was ever held accountable for this period of violence, and these homicides have never officially been recognized by the state of Texas or county law enforcement.
The recent report, A Matter of Justice: The Uninvestigated Homicides of La Matanza, aims to pursue justice for the victims of la matanza. The report compiles records, sources, and approximate dates and locations of the murdered in an attempt to identify victims’ names.
Author Trinidad Gonzales, co-founder of the public history project Refusing to Forget, said this is all part of a broader effort to get the state to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“We cannot move forward as a society without truthfully confronting our past and reconciling that past with how we want to be as a community today,” he said.
Two of Gonzales’s own ancestors were killed by the Texas Rangers during this time.
He said the main objective of the report is to present it to district attorneys in the four counties and attempt to get recognition that they occurred.
He also hopes the report will serve as a tool for genealogists and historians to use to find more information about the murdered and help families find closure.
“These are individuals, these are fathers, these are brothers, these were sons, these were grandfathers, he said. “We're talking about families, not just individuals who were killed.”
View the published report below:
