9/27/2019
'I Cry All the Time.' A Century After 15 Mexican Men and Boys Were Massacred in Texas, Their Descendants Want Recognition
Breaking Newstags: Texas, Mexico, porvenir massacre, mexican revolution
...
In the dead of night on Jan. 28, 1918, a group of white Texas Rangers, U.S. military men and local ranchers burst into the homes of Mexican and Mexican American families in Porvenir, Texas, a small border town west of Marfa. They rounded up 15 men and boys — the youngest just 16 — and shot them to death. Juan Flores, then about 12 years old, watched his father, Longino Flores, be led away by the armed men. He later found his father’s body shot dead in the desert, barely recognizable.
The trauma haunted Flores for the rest of his life, until he finally spoke up at the age of 95 about what he witnessed as a child — but only after his daughter uncovered the family history while looking through county records.
After Flores finally spoke out, his family and the rest of the world had the chance to learn the details of the massacre from the only known living witness. Combining that knowledge with documents and excavation, academics were able to tell the story of the Porvenir Massacre, which was just one act in a decade of violence against Mexican Americans at a time tensions between Mexican “bandits” and white Texans was on the rise. The massacre, and its fallout for the affected families, is now the subject of a PBS documentary, Porvenir, Texas, which is streaming on PBS.org until Oct. 18.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of