Off a rugged dirt road near the U.S.- Mexico border, spindly ocotillo stems burst from the ground, vivid green against the vast sandy desert stretching toward the Sierra Vieja mountains.
Archeologist David Keller sidesteps cacti and thorny brush, carefully moving through the landscape.
“ So you see the rock bluff over there, see where the flowers are?” he asks, pointing to a small bouquet of plastic sunflowers – a memorial to the tragedy that took place there more than 100 years ago. “That was the rock bluff that they lined them up against and killed them.”
In 1918, 15 Hispanic men and boys from a village on the Rio Grande were murdered by a group of Texas Rangers, soldiers, and local ranchers. The tragedy would come to be known as the Porvenir Massacre.
About a decade ago, Keller led an archeological dig at the Porvenir massacre site, camping out with a small crew, sifting through the sediment, taking care not to disturb anything. The desert climate here has kept the site remarkably well-preserved through time.
By studying bullet fragments and cartridge casings, Keller and his team uncovered new details about the massacre that implicated the U.S. military in the killings.
The site has remained virtually untouched for decades, until now.
“ What we're looking at now is the actual Porvenir Massacre site,” Keller said. “And there's a huge bladed scar running right through it.”
What Keller calls a “scar” is a new road for the border wall being built by Barnard Construction, the firm awarded nearly 2 billion dollars to build a lengthy stretch of the wall.
Keller calls the damage a “slap in the face.”
“ It's a loss of ‘[an] irreplaceable cultural resource, a place in the landscape that's important to descendant communities,” he said. “It's just so disrespectful. You can't put this back together.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not answer questions about the construction’s impact on the Porvenir site, but in a statement, the agency said it sought input from the public on the border wall’s potential impacts to the environment and culture.
Local officials worry the damage is just beginning. Incoming Presidio County commissioner Susan Hays has been tracking the wall closely and talking with landowners in the project’s path.
She said the wall could wipe out the entire Porvenir site.
“That's gonna push them up against the bluff where the massacre took place and where there's absolutely probably still artifacts buried in the sand and has not been completely excavated and documented of what's there at the site or surrounding it,” Hays said.
Descendents of the massacre victims have worked for years to educate people about this often undertold piece of border history. Now, they say, the destruction of the site is a step backward.
Arlinda Valencia is the great granddaughter of Longino Flores, one of the men killed in the massacre.
“For more than a century, nobody knew about it,” she said. “Now that we have found it and we're actually doing some research on it, they're coming and bulldozing over it. To me, that's heartless.”
It wasn’t until 2006, at her father’s funeral, that Valencia learned the true story of what happened during the massacre. She said she was shocked.
“People can go out there and say, ‘Well, it's just a piece of desert.’ But it's not for us,” Valencia said. “For us, it's, it's our history that's there. We lost fathers and we lost husbands. They lost their entire community.”
Valencia said she’s all for border security, but she said the border wall plan – and the way it’s related to the state of the immigration debate in the U.S. these days – reminds her of the racist rhetoric used to justify the killings at Porvenir.
“It’s here. The same story,” she said. “They're not like us, therefore, let's get 'em. Let's send them back.”
Historian Monica Muñoz Martinez helped get the state of Texas to approve a historical marker commemorating the massacre in 2018. She said the site has taught researchers more about a turbulent era of life on the border.
The Porvenir Massacre took place during a period of anti-Mexican violence in Texas between 1910 and 1920 during which historians say hundreds of people of Mexican descent were killed by Texas law enforcement officials. The Mexican revolution was underway, and racial tensions were high.
“Regardless of whether somebody was a United States citizen or a Mexican national, people were being profiled as bandits or revolutionaries,” Martinez said. “It was a period in which law enforcement vigilantes enjoyed a culture of impunity.”
The people responsible for the killings at Porvenir claimed the massacre victims had been involved in a deadly raid at the nearby Brite Ranch. That claim was never proven. Investigations later revealed the 15 victims died unarmed.
In the aftermath of the massacre, survivors crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico to bury their dead family members. The remaining residents of Porvenir abandoned their homes, and the village was burned to the ground.
No one was ever prosecuted. More recently, descendents labored through a 7-year process to obtain death certificates for their slain relatives. 14 were approved a year ago.
Martinez says the work of trying to thoroughly document this history is one that descendants have been carrying for generations.
“ To demolish a site that provides an opportunity for healing, reflection, learning, is devastating,” she said. “It's another harm.”
Tom Alex, a former longtime archeologist at nearby Big Bend National Park says about 100 other historic sites are at risk from the border wall plan. Ruins, prehistoric sites, even graves could be destroyed by the construction.
Alex sees these places like churches.
“Now we're seeing people come in and rip apart the altar, steal the candlesticks, and trespass all over the place,” he said.
For the descendents of Porvenir, there’s more than the history of the tragedy at stake.
In Spanish, Porvenir means “future.” Historians say that even in a difficult time, families in this community were thriving. Making a life along the river.
So, descendents say, destroying this site also threatens to erase GOOD memories of Porvenir - passed down through generations.
Yolanda Mesa is another descendent of Longino Flores. She said when she makes the pilgrimage to the site, she recalls a video of her great uncle, Juan Flores, who survived the massacre, walking around Porvenir, remembering what life was like.
“He's pointing, and he's saying, you know, ‘Eutimio Gonzalez lived on that side of the pilón. Roman lived over there. There was all these houses right here. You know, the crops were close to the river. The horses…’ Like, he gives this whole layout of it,” she said. “And so when I'm there, I could kind of visualize what he is saying.”
The border wall near Porvenir remains temporarily halted due to a dust-up between contractors and a state agency.
Still, Mesa feels new urgency around visiting the site and is organizing a group trip out to Porvenir in October. She said descendents feel this might be their last chance to see it before it's destroyed.
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