and a terrible revenge
descended upon the people of
Porvenir, who had nothing to
do with any of these raids.
Shortly after midnight on
January 28, 1918, 40 U.S.
cavalry troopers of Troop G,
Eighth Cavalry, commanded
by Captain Henry H.
Anderson, along with as many
as ten Texas Rangers and a
number of ranchers, sur-
rounded Porvenir in the dark-
ness of a freezing cold night.
Some of the ranchers wore
bandanna masks to disguise
their identities as they awak-
ened the townspeople of
Porvenir and ordered every-
one outside while someone
built a fire. The Rangers start-
ed separating the men from
the women.
They selected 15 men and
boys with ages ranging from
16 to 72 and marched them
off into the darkness. Not long
after, many gunshots rang out
in the darkness as the 15 vic-
tims were shot to death with-
out ceremony. The sound of
gunfire produced instant pan-
demonium in the village as
the survivors realized that
something dreadful had taken
place. Fearing the worst, no
one dared to venture out into
the darkness to see what had
happened.
Sometime before dawn,
13-year-old Juan Flores made
his way to schoolmaster Harry
Warren’s house north of
Porvenir to report the shoot-
ing. Young Flores was lucky to
be alive. Someone had
grabbed him the night before
and shoved him into the
group to be killed. But a
rancher said the Flores boy
was too young and somehow
got Juan released before the
massacre took place.
The following morning,
Juan accompanied school-
master Warren to a location
south of Porvenir, where they
came across a pile of bodies
guarded by the soldiers. It was
a ghastly scene. According to
Juan Flores, the dead appar-
ently had been tied together
and shot so many times they
appeared to have been pur-
posely mutilated. Juan saw his
father’s body. Longino Flores
was almost unrecognizable to
his son, as part of the man’s
head had been blown away.
At some point that morn-
ing an old woman crossed the
Rio Grande from Pilares driv-
ing a cart. The soldiers and
some others helped her load
the bodies on to the cart and
she took them to Mexico,
where they were buried in a
mass grave in the Pilares
churchyard. The survivors
fled Porvenir, some going to
Mexico, others to elsewhere.
A few days after the massacre,
a contingent of troopers from
Camp Evetts came to
Porvenir and knocked down
and burned the abandoned
jacales the people of Porvenir
once called home. The village
ceased to exist.
Texas Ranger Captain
Monroe Fox, commander of
Ranger Company B in Marfa,
attempted to whitewash the
massacre, waiting three weeks
before he even filed a report of
the event. The captain
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continued on page 18
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17
Dan and Dianna Burbach,
Managers
Second Quarter 2016