An expedition of activists sets out to tour the historic site with contractors
Porvenir (Victor Kulagin video)
It was bitterly cold that January night in 1918, somewhere in the low twenties, as 15 men and teen boys were pulled from their dusty village homes and marched across a remote section of the Chihuahuan Desert in Far West Texas.
The landscape surrounding the village of Porvenir was and still is both stark and enchanting. The shrubby mesquite and creosote that manage to eke out an existence don’t provide much green, except in wide swaths along the Rio Grande, just a mile or so from the townsite. But the curved, sometimes smooth towers of rock formations surrounding it imbue a sense of being on another planet with their unearthly shapes. And amidst that landscape is a bit of an oddity — a small line of darkened rocks that formed a cliff of sorts, maybe 15 feet high, sitting all alone along a relatively flat, dusty run of the land.
It was there that a contingent of vigilante ranchers, Texas Rangers and U.S. Calvary lined up their captives against that wall and opened fire on them in the early hours of the dark morning. “They murdered them, shot them to death,” says David Keller, an archaeologist standing before the wall on a very different day, August 5, with a midday sun bearing down on the site with heat soaring to about 105 degrees. He’s dressed as usual for his lengthy career doing historical and field work in the Big Bend, in a beige long-sleeved shirt and a ragged hat to shield him from the sun. “So, what we found on the ground in doing the investigation was basically a victim line, firing line situation.”
The hundred-plus surviving residents of Porvenir buried the bodies in a mass grave on the Mexican side of the border and then fled their tiny village, which lies about 50 miles northwest of Marfa as the crow flies — although getting there is a grueling hour-and-a-half drive down a barely-maintained Presidio County road.
There’s also a new addition near the site — a freshly graded road cut through the scrub — constructed by border wall contractors. Maps have shown that the wall is destined to run somewhere along the massacre site.
Keller said the story of Porvenir was essentially a cold-case murder scene for some 100 years. The facts around the incident, while still murky, had been investigated at the time with some slaps-on-the-wrists (and even an eventual promotion for one Ranger) levied on the Ranger company.
After writer and historian Glenn Justice showed Keller the site more than a decade ago and outlined the details he knew, Keller joined him and former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson to marshal an archaeological dig at the site in 2015.
Keller stands in the intense sun, with no shade offered by the small cliff, and agrees to do a quick summary of his findings to a small group of anti-border-wall activists. Behind him is a small bouquet of plastic sunflowers springing from the cliff and other small mementos from descendants honoring those massacred.
“Right about there, a little closer to the cliff where the flowers are, we did a one-by-two unit [dig] right where there had been a concentration of discoveries of little metal fragments that turned out to be jacket fragments from bullets, and then bullet fragments,” he explains. And so, it really clearly conformed to a victim line, firing line scenario. The big ‘aha’ and why it made international news is because the majority of the artifacts we found were military, and the military is not supposed to be shooting U.S. citizens.”
The Porvenir story has since been told in numerous news articles and documentaries, and a historical marker on the main highway miles away notes the tragedy to passers by, but it’s clear that many Americans and even Texans are unaware it happened. Though a direct connection has been disputed by some, a raid about a month before on the enormous Brite Ranch nearby that killed three people, combined with increased Mexican bandit activity, led to the night of vengeance — or what some say was mainly fueled by racism against the Mexican Americans and Mexican residents of Porvenir.
“The massacre site?”
Charlie Angell sits with the small group of border-wall activists in an all-terrain vehicle ready to make the rough drive over the rocky, rain-scarred and now sandy Chispa Road. He’s waiting, impatiently, for the arrival of representatives from Barnard Construction, which has the contract for wall construction in that sector.
The representatives had agreed to meet with the group, try to answer any questions they had and take a tour with them on Chispa Road to Porvenir. When two Barnard workers arrive, a friendly greeting and conversation ensue. The contractors stand a bit sheepishly, dressed in work uniforms with safety reflectors across the fabric. One says he’s from Montana, the other Idaho. In the background is their fenced-in staging area near Lobo, just south of Highway 90 west of Valentine. Stacks of steel bollards intended for the wall line the compound, which also serves as offices, while another chunk of land nearby has been cleared to house 500 workers in an RV man camp.
Much of the discussion centers around the swath of land Barnard clearcutted off of Chispa Road without permission from the state, which led to Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham issuing a scathing press release and reprimand demanding they cease all work until it is cleared with the General Land Office. (The land in question was being leased by an individual for grazing and hunting, and that individual did not have the right to allow contractors to clear-cut the land.)
Angell begins tracing different areas he’s interested in visiting with the men, and as he draws his finger along a map, he notes where the clear-cut, 1.4 mile swath lies and how it runs up toward the “massacre site.” A puzzled look forms on the contractor standing next to him. “The massacre site?” he asks. “I guess I’m not understanding.”
“Let me grab some information,” Angell replies and as he hands them archaeological reports and maps, he also recounts the basics of the story. The contractors have never heard of Porvenir.
One of the men then announces that, unfortunately, Barnard workers are not allowed to go farther than the Presidio County line after the dustup with the General Land Office. The Barnard office is at the start of Chispa Road in Jeff Davis County.
“You mean you can’t go down a public road?” Angell asks, clearly disappointed, since accompanying them would be Keller, the archaeologist, who could provide insight on the research at Porvenir and the potential for damaging one of the most important historical sites in the Big Bend, or even walling off entry to descendants of the massacre from the site. The contractors say they just aren’t allowed right now until CBP clears things up with the state.
The conversation eventually leads to a mutual agreement — the activists, working with local archaeologists, will provide information on important sites to the two men, who will then pass it along to an archaeological team hired by Barnard to evaluate. It may even be possible for that team to tour with the activists. One of the men notes that CBP is open to alterations in the planned alignment of the wall to avoid significant archaeological sites and cemeteries.
Bibiana Gutierrez speaks up from the shade of the ATV to stress that it would be extremely beneficial “if we could have some of us monitoring work near these sites.”
The fact that regular citizens finally make contact and exchange mobile phone numbers with contractors — a rarity in the past six months — enlivens the spirits of the group, but inevitably, the meeting ends with awkward exchanges.
“I hate coming into a community and having to, you know, be a part of something like this and trying to explain,” one of the men says. “But like I said, at the end of the day, we’re a contractor hired to do a job. Barnard’s a very respectful company, and we pride ourselves on that … and I’m hoping we can work with the community as best we can. I just hope that you guys don’t hold it against us, but ….”
“We gotta hold it against somebody,” Angell responds.
What’s next for Porvenir?
Days after the excruciatingly hot and dusty Wednesday road trip, Keller reflected on the meeting and the potential for information exchanges with Barnard. He had reached out to one of the contractors and sent him comments he had submitted to CBP, noting the importance of preserving Porvenir.
The fact that Porvenir wasn’t on Barnard’s radar and that it had graded a new road near the massacre site indicates to him that they didn’t take his three pages of comments to CBP on the site seriously.
Keller says he’s also concerned that even if a Barnard team of archaeologists gets engaged in looking at the dozens of sites in the area, the results might mean little toward protecting them. “If they don’t have extensive experience in this region, they’re pretty much worthless,” he says. “They can walk right over features and artifacts and not even see them and not understand their significance …. Typically it takes a good month or more of constant field work to even kind of get an understanding of the place. And, and my question is, when they do find something, does it even make a f——- difference? I can’t imagine it does. I really can’t.”
“There could be nothing but destruction”
Arlinda Valencia’s great-grandfather Longino Flores was murdered in Porvenir that cold night. Valencia, 74 of El Paso, says she still wants to know more about the massacre. “Even though we have found out a lot about what happened, there’s still the question of why.”
Valencia says a wall through the site could destroy the possibility of learning more. “It means that a whole century-old case is going to be demolished … to me it’s a live crime scene. They are still trying to find answers. And it’s important to us because it’s our history.”
Valencia says descendants do consider the massacre site a memorial, although she acknowledges the difficulty of visiting the site. “It’s so far out there,” she says. “It’s hard to get out there, but we do have trips that are planned. I think we have one for October, but by then it could be gone. Relatives of the 15 still want to go out there, and there are many who haven’t been out there yet. And now, if they try, it could be nothing but destruction.”
“It’s sacred land,” she adds. “Lives were taken there. You wouldn’t take a bulldozer to Gettysburg. History matters.”
