The early 20th century marked a period of intense violence against ethnic Mexicans in Texas.
One of those events included the Porvenir massacre, which saw Texas Rangers, ranchers, and U.S. cavalry soldiers murder 15 men and boys ages 15 to 72 in the Texas border town of Porvenir.
It took over a century before the massacre was acknowledged through a historical marker in the abandoned village.
But the future of the historic site is now in question as federal construction crews began bulldozing parts of the desert as part of the effort to build border wall infrastructure in West Texas.
Historian Monica Muñoz Martinez, author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” said border wall construction could erase a significant and impactful portion of Texas history.
“History is not a static set of facts,” said Martinez. “Knowledge evolves; more records are found, new evidence emerges, and if the site itself is destroyed, it would halt that. It would also have this devastating impact of keeping descendants from the ability to travel to the site to commemorate, to mourn, to heal.”
Elsie Garcia is a descendant of Longino Flores, one of the victims of the Porvenir massacre. She has visited the historical site in Presidio County several times with her grandfather, who witnessed his father’s murder at Porvenir as a young boy.
Garia described taking a picture of her grandfather at the site.
“You can see that he’s smiling and we realized that Porvenir is a place that brings joy and hurt to my grandfather,” she said. “I think in that picture, for the first time in many years, he felt seen. I think the last time he felt that was when his father was alive.”
The descendants of Porvenir have launched a petition asking the federal government to halt construction on the historically and archaeologically sensitive site of Porvenir.
