continued from page 17
claimed his men had gone to Porvenir
in search of bandits and when they
arrived, came under fire from the
brush. They shot back and the next
morning found fifteen dead bodies.
Captain Anderson of Troop G Eighth
Cavalry reported that his men came
upon the bodies the morning after the
massacre and had no idea how they
had been killed. A few, very few, news-
paper articles of the massacre ever went
to press, but in June 1918 Governor
William B. Hobby fired five of the
18
Cenizo
rangers who had been at Porvenir and
disbanded Company B. Some
Company B rangers simply resigned.
Captain Fox also resigned citing politi-
cal pressure, but no criminal actions
resulted.
Historian Glenn Justice started
researching the story of the massacre in
the late 1980s and presented a paper
about it about it to the West Texas
Historical Association before publish-
ing a book in 1992, Revolution On The
Rio Grande, that included a chapter on
the massacre. His research took him as
far as the National Archives in
Washington, D. C. and Suitland,
Second Quarter 2016
Todd Elrod behind a scrim of sifting sand while screening for artifacts.
Maryland, where the author used the
Freedom Of Information act to obtain
vital, previously-classified army docu-
ments concerning the massacre.
Slowly, paper evidence having to do
with the massacre grew to the point
that it left little to no doubt that the
killing at Porvenir had actually taken
place. Only one vexing question
remained: who actually did the killing
of the fifteen that tragic night?
Then in the spring of 2002, Justice
learned of a Porvenir survivor still liv-
ing. His name was Juan Flores. At the
time Mr. Flores was 97 years old but
still in good health and his mind sharp
for a person of his age. Remarkably, he
did not even tell his family about the
massacre until his last years. Mr. Flores
suffered from terrible nightmares about
the massacre that his family did not
understand. Finally, he decided to tell
the story of what he had witnessed that
awful night.
In November 2002, Mr. Flores
made a journey to the Porvenir mas-
sacre site and revealed to those present
the exact location where the killings
took place. Remarkably, some car-
tridge casings still lay on the ground,
and metal detectors indicated the pres-
ence of many more at the site. Justice