Culture November 23, 2018

In the wee hours of January 28, 1918, the men of Texas Ranger Company B and a handful of local ranchers descended upon the tiny hamlet of Porvenir, hard against the boundary with Mexico. The police had come in search of alleged bandits who were hiding in the area, which, like much of the Texas border region, was roiled by the ongoing Mexican Revolution. The Rangers corralled fifteen men and boys, all ethnic Mexicans, marched them to a nearby bluff, and opened fire at close range. A US cavalryman who came upon the scene described the aftermath: “we smelled the