Encore Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023 at 8 p.m. on KPBS 2 / No longer available in the PBS App
Discover the true story behind the 1918 massacre of 15 Mexican men in this tiny border town. 100 years later, VOCES "Porvenir, Texas" asks what led to the events of that fateful night and reveals the tensions that still remain along the border a century later.
During the early 1900s attorneys, land promoters and developers enticed Anglo newcomers to stake land claims and fence off land along the Texas-Mexico border. As land values and property taxes rose, many Mexican-American farmers lost their land through murder, theft or swindling, forcing them to become laborers because they had no other way to make a living.
With people lacking basic infrastructure in West Texas, the isolated region was very much perceived as the Wild West. When Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1936, it set the stage for a clash between Mexican and Anglo cultures. A decade later, Mexico lost half of its territory in the Mexican-American War, sowing the seeds of a racial war as Mexicans became Americans overnight.
An El Paso woman learned a horrible secret about her family: Her great-grandfather had been massacred, along with 14 other men and boys, on Jan. 28, 1918. When Arlinda Valencia learned who was to blame for the terrible act, she realized more needed to be done to expose the dark past of a legendary law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers.
Credits: Director/Producer: Andrew Shapter/Christina Fernandez. Latino Public Broadcasting.
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