Here you will submit your first draft of Essay 1. Your final draft of this paper will be submitted at a later date. The paper should be 800-1000 words (3 to 4  pages), double spaced, and 12 Pt. Font Times New Roman. Please include a title of your paper, name, and date.

This paper is based primarily on:

• Monica Munoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti Mexican Violence in Texas. Introduction pp. 1-29; 293-300. (In Module Week 3)

  William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, “When Americans Lynched Mexicans.” The New York Times, Feb 20, 2015. (In Module Week 3)
  Maurice Berger, “Lynchings in the West, Erased from History and Photos.” New York Times, Dec. 6, 2012. (In Module Week 3). 

   

Do not use outside online sources or texts!

Topic Prompt

According to Dr. Monica Munoz Martinez, “The larger tragedy of Florencio Garcia’s death, and the attempts by the state police to disavow his murder, lies in its utter ordinariness.”(Martinez, The Injustice, pg.6)  What is Martinez’s primary argument? What do you think she hopes her book will help people to understand about US/Mexican and Mexican -American relations on the borderlands? Referring to both the Martinez chapter and the New York Times articles, describe the reasons whi Garcia’s murder can be described as “ordinary?” Why does she describe Garcia’s murder as “ordinary”?  Who were the Texas Rangers and why were they founded? What role did vigilantism play in border areas during the mid nineteenth to early twentieth centuries? What sources (evidence) does Martinez use to support her argument?  Give an example of one of her sources and the way she uses the argument. Do you believe Martinez’s argument is convincing? Why or Why not?

Guidelines

• Consider the question. Read the assigned readings  carefully. Take notes as you read.
• Make sure that you answer fully each question in the essay prompt.
• Your opening paragraph introduce the main idea that you would like the reader to understand after having read your paper. The introduction also should introduce the reader to what you will cover in the essay. Think of the introduction as a road map for the reader.
• Many effective opening paragraphs include a thesis statement. 

A thesis statement

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

For help on writing a thesis statement, see:

• Indiana University’s Writing Guides (Links to an external site.)
• The Writing Center at University of North Carolina (Links to an external site.)

Gordon Rule Writing Course Guidelines:

AMH 2042 is a Gordon Rule Writing Course. Students demonstrate “college-level writing skills.” At FIU, college-level writing is defined as that which exhibits the following characteristics:

• It has clear purpose and thesis or controlling idea.
• The thesis is supported with adequate reasons and evidence.
• It shows sustained analysis and critical thought.
• It is organized clearly and logically.
• It shows knowledge of conventions of standard written English.
• It shows awareness of disciplinary conventions in regard to content, style, form, and delivery method.

Please Note: For the purposes of writing papers, the use of Wikipedia, answers.com, and other non-scholarly websites is prohibited. Papers should be based primarily on the reading assignments. You may also refer to scholarly books and articles secured via the online databases JSTOR and Project Muse.

Documenting Your Sources

Please use the

Chicago Manual Style Guide’s (Links to an external site.)

“notes and bibliography” system to cite your work. 

Footnote:

1. James A. Henretta et. al., America’s History Vol 2. Since 1865. 8th(Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 458
2. Henretta ed., America’s History, 459.

Bibliography

Roark, James L. et. al. The American Promise: A History of the United States 5th ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

How do I insert a footnote? (Links to an external site.)

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Monica Munoz Martinez. Introduction. The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2018), 1-29. 

Introduction ( )
Epilogue ( )
Notes ( )

The Injustice

Never

Leaves You

i\nti

–

wi exican Violence in Texas

Monica Munoz ~1artinez

–

Introduction

IT WAS AN OTHERWISE ordinary day in early April 1918, but Miguel Garcia,

a Mexican national living in Texas, was growing concerned. His son Flor-

encio, twenty-five years old, had not yet returned home from his job as a

cattle herder in Cameron County. Garcia started walking through town,

asking relatives, friends, neighbors, and eventually even the county attorney

and local law enforcement officers if they had seen Florencio. Days passed

without news . Then someone told Garcia that Texas Rangers had arrested

Florencio over a week earlier, on April 5,just south ofBrownsville. Garcia

knew that when ethnic Mexicans disappeared after being arrested, the pris-

oners’ remains were often found hidden in the groves of mesquite trees

in the rural Texas landscape. This grim news prompted Garcia to start

searching the brush in the countryside for his son’s remains .1

Miguel Garcia repeatedly asked for help from local authorities . Oscar C .

Dancy, the Cameron County attorney, remembered Garcia’s persistence:

“the old man, the father of the boy, was at my office. He was at my office

two or three times and my residence once.” 2 Weeks later, local residents

found human remains outside of Brownsville. “We found the bones of a

human being,” Dancy would later testify. “We found a pair of pants and a

jumper and as I recollect it, a shirt, black hair and a hat … a light Texas

2

THE INJU STI CE NEVER LEAV
Es You

I
. ,. he remembered, adding that there were bullet h

vboy Stct~on iat, “1 I l I oles
co\ . “Y.

0
perhaps three. · T 1e c ot 1111g matched th

I rough the J-1cket. w , ‘d d e de-
tl .

1
G ‘ a had previously prov1 e , and the invcstig .

scri cion M1gue arc1 , . . at1on
· P

I
b d , had been shot m the back three times. The rem .

suggested that t 1e o ) f h . a1ns
~.

1
f

I
th ,5 a skull with a tuft o air, and bones scattered consisted 011 Y O c O c ‘ , as

· l
1
.k ,1 by coyotes or buzzards. Garcia arrived at the s

far as 300 yan s. 1 c )’ . . cene
.fi d I shoes hat and clothing as belongmg to Florencio Th and 1dent1 1e t 1e • ‘ . . • e

11
. d ogrammed handkerchief out of the Jacket they had d’

father pu c a mo11 I . ‘ 4 is-

d alld verified that it was 11s sons. covere , .
According to witnesses who last saw Flo_ren~10, he had been _m the cus-

tody of three Texas Rangers (the s_tate. po1JCc) 111 ~he Brownsv_i Ile jail just
c. I • d earance An invest1gat10n by Mexican consuls rn Browns

be1ore 115 1sapp ‘ · –
ville revealed that the Rangers, accompanied by two civilians and a US
soldier, arrested Florencio at Las Tranquilas Ranch. The Rangers asked a

local rancher, Chas Champion, if they could borrow a lock and chain to

secure their prisoner to a tree while they slept. Considering this unneces-

sarily rough treatment, the rancher instead found a judge, who gave the

officers permission to place Florenc10 in jail overnight in the custody of

local police. 5

Pressure from Mexican consuls mounted. On May 24, 1918, Mexican

Inspector General Andres G. Carda in El Paso wrote to Texas governor
William P. Hobby asking for an investigation. According to the state po-

lice, the remains could not belong to Florencio because the bones had been
bleached white by the sun. These bones, they suggested, belonged to

someone killed months earlier. They also denied that the father had posi-

tively identified his son’s clothing. ln addition, the Rangers testified that
they had in fact arrested Florencio on April 5 but had released him that

same evening and did not place him in jail. They refuted witnesses who

saw him behind bars. Their prisoner, they suggested, had not suffered any
harm. The Rangers furthermore insisted that the truth was quite different:
local residents had spotted Florencio across the border in Mexico. 6 Never-
theless. Garcia remained convinced that Texas Rangers had murdered
his son.

In light of such discrepancies, how do we go about unearthing the his-
tory of violence on the US-Mexico border? If we relied on the Ranger
investigation, we would not learn much more. But Florencio. born in Tam-
aulipas, Mexico, was a Mexican national living and working in Texas.

Analya Meneses

INTRODUCTION
3
Without immigration quotas or limits on migration from Mexico, Mexican
nationals and American c1t1zcns moved easily back and forth across the
border. The death of a Mexican national 1n Texas prompted the local
Mexican consuls to investigate his death. Their investigation found that
Florencia’s arrest had been based on unfounded suspicions. Letters from
businessmen 111 the region defended Florencio’s reputation as a diligent la-
borer. According to Oscar Dancy, locals remembered him as an “abso-
lutely straight, square Mexican boy, above the average laborer or peon.” 7
Was Florencio Garcia a threat and a thief or a dutiful laborer?
To these officials, Mexican and American alike, Florencio Garcia was
not a friend, relative, or a neighbor. His death was a diplomatic inconve-
nience. As one diplomat said, the death threatened both relations between
the United States and Mexico and the potential for even more farming in
the region. In April in south Texas, lots of crops needed tending. If word
spread that Mexican laborers were being continually mistreated, workers
might flee for other opportunities in the South or the West. Without field
hands, the farming economy would be devastated. For Mexican officials,
and some Americans, Garcia’s story was the latest in a long series of abu-
sive policing by the Texas Rangers. These state police officers had a habit
of disturbing the delicate equilibrium oflabor and race relations. That equi-
librium needed to be reestablished by diplomats and political leaders, who
worried about potential economic losses. The records show that officials
recognized the systemic impact of Florencio Garcia’s death but reveal no
sense that they mourned it.
For the relatives and friends of Florencio, on the other hand, his loss
was something else entirely. His loss was personal. Furthermore, it signaled
the unjust death of yet another ethnic Mexican without recourse from the
judicial system, the state administration, or the Mexican consul. Florencio’s
death was just one short chapter in a long history of racial violence in the
borderlands.
On May 27, 1918, the Cameron County acting coroner, Henry J. Kirk,
confirmed the family’s claims when he filed a death certificate for Flor-
encio Garcia. Since the recovered body revealed little, the coroner had to
modify the certificate. Its generic language reads: “I hereby certify that I at-
tended deceased from ___ 191_, to ___ 191_, that I last saw h_
I. 191 and that the death occurred on the date stated above a 1ve on ___ _,
at __ m.” Kirk drew a line through most of this section, and instead

Analya Meneses

4
THE INJUSTICE NEVER LEAVES YOU
followed the statement ” I hereby certify that I” with handwritten words .
The modified form continued, “found the identified remains and that
death occurred 011 unknown date.” Where the cert ificate asked for the cause
of death, Kirk wrote “u nknown. ” 8 The certificate also included important
information :ibout Florencio Garda and his family . Florencio was born 011
April JO, 1885 and he was married, although there was no space on the
form to include his spo use’s name. The reco rd identified him as the son of
Miguel Garcia and Teburcia Velasquez, both of Tamaulipas. It noted that
his remains were buried on May 26, 1918, in Brown svi lle. Miguel Garcia
had identified the remains and helped ensure that accurate information
would be on file in the official death registry for the state of Texas.
The Garcia family must have been unsettled by Kirk ‘s decision not to list
a cause of death on the certificate, despite investigators who described what
appeared to be three bullet holes in the back of Florencia’s jacket. Kirk’s
decision, however, did not prevent the family from filing civil charges.
Now with a certificate to prove Florencio was indeed dead, and not alive
and well in Mexico as the state police suggested, Texas Rangers George W .
Sadler , John Sittre , and Alfred P. Locke were arrested just days after the
Garcia family buried their son. The officers filed a bond of $3,000 each
and were remanded to the custody of the captain of their company,
Charles F. Stevens.9 The charges were brought before the same Henry J.
Kirk who acted as both county coroner and justice of the peace. Kirk
convened a grand jury that consisted entirely of Anglo residents with the
exception of one local ethnic Mexican . After reviewing the ev idence ,
the grand jury decided not to indict the Texas Rangers. Oscar Dancy later
remembered that by 1918 grand juries in the region were “almost solidly
Americans, mostly newcomers.” The newcomers were Anglo Americans
who had migrated from southern states. Their arrival expanded Jim Crow
laws, the systemic segregation laws targeting African Am ericans, to the
US-Mexico border. Targeted by ”Juan Crow” laws, as historians now pop-
ularly refer to them , ethnic Mexicans found themselves increasin gly seg-
regated from Anglos in schools, churches, and restaurants and discouraged
from voting or serving onjurie s.10
The grand jury’s decision gave the state police continued license to char-
acterize th e life of Florencio Garcia as they saw fit. In 1919, when Captain
Stevens testified to the incident before a committee inve stigatin g abuses
by the state police, he ignor ed the certificate of death and again asserted

Analya Meneses

1NTRODUCTI ON
!.
l(rtll lf’CI “”‘”‘
•Ute In1rm1tioc.H1 1.i1t of C..ua, of bu1h-St1l1 1hr Di11nt Ca’i11in1 Dutll.
or, f• duth1 ltON Vlol1nt….C.u, .. . S11t1 (I) Muu ol hJur,; tad (2) •h11\H
Ac.dduul . lwlddal, or HomlcldaL
11 LINOTK OP RUIDINCI: (11’0< Ko1pltah, la11h•tl0M, Tnn1i,n11, o, •~unt RuJd1nl1.) Al place la tht / • of du1h- .. - 1n..- - - l'll01.----da.. Statt - ----:rra- -- .. .._~._ Wlltrc ... tliJUM tonlnctcd, if 094: II ,,u •• r dnthl- --- --- - -- -- --- - Fo«11ar or ua\W rcdda-nu _ If PLACI OP ,■URIAL OR IIIMOVAL DATI OP,., IIIIIIAL , ~ ~ ~--M, _ u,8'.. ~ 1-ADDRI -, ~e_fi,; .. ~ ~,; 5 Death certificates for victims of anti-Mexican violence at the hands of police are hard to find. In the case of the murder of Florencio Garcia in 1918, the acting coroner for Cameron County had to modify the certificate to indicate that the date of his death was "unknown." Later investigations showed that he died in the custody of Texas Rangers. Florencio Ga rcia, May 1918, certificate number 19810, Bureau of Vital Statistics, State Registrar Office, Austin. that Garcia never met harm at Ranger hands. He testified under oath that Garcia had last been seen living in Mexico. 11 Stevens's testimony attempted to erase the murder as well as the pain suffered by the surviving Garcia relatives. It also threatened to erase their efforts to seek justice in the after- math of Garcia's murder . Stevens swiftly disavowed the murder and pre- served the reputation of the state police. Garcia's family pushed the Texas courts and police in multiple ways, imploring them to act on behalf of their son, to find his remains, to record 6 THE INJUSTICE NEVER LEAVES y Ou d P rosecute the assailants in vo lved in his mu d his death, an to r er. His l . . b ther and his unnam ed spouse, as well as Oscar Dan e C parents, 11s ro ' . Y, has . A t 1io Valiente and Leopoldo Espmosa, were imp Champion, n o1 ' . . acted by . d his disappearance. They relayed to mvest1gators the d . Jus arrest an . . . etails I . they saw him alive and provided an opportunity c of the a t ume ' . . tor the . d' . 1 tern to prosecute those involved m his murder. They left t JU 10a sys . races from 1918 in the historical record. B~t with _ t~e concl_usion of the abuse . t' u·on in 1919 Florencio and his surviving family disappear f inves 1ga • . . rom h d And Y et this trace however mcomplete , 1s essenti al The s II t e recor . ' · rna incomplete traces revealing the collective concern for his life helped ensur; that today there are documents that challenge the pol_ic~ account s. They provide an alternative story to the one where Florencio 1s a criminal and his family's grief is unfounded. The larger tragedy of Florencio Garcia's death, and the attempts by the state police to disavow his murder, lies in its utt er ordinariness. Searching the Texas landscape for the remains of a loved one was an awful-an d awfully familiar-ritua l, repeated countle ss time s before . By 1918, the murder of ethnic Mexicans had become commonplace on the Texas- Mexico border, a violence systematically justified by vigilantes and state authorities alike. Historians estimate that between 1848 and 1928 in Texas alone, 232 ethnic Mexicans were lynched by vigilante groups of three or more people. These tabulations only tell part of the story.12 Despite popular assumptions that vigilantism in th e nineteenth century occurred primarily in regions where law enforcem ent institutions lacked structure and social influence, vigilantism was in fact practiced in places where criminal justice systems were well established. Violence that super- seded judicial procedures regularly articulated popular distrust of the justice system or local frustration with the bureaucracy of crimina l prosecution. Lynch mobs commonly took prisoners from jail even though courts would likely have sentenced them to execution. These vigilante actions, how- ever, were tacitly sanctioned by the judicial system w henever local grand juries failed to indict or prosecute assailants who parti cipated in mob vio- lence.13 Moreover, law enforcement officers facilitated the conditions for making prisoners vulnerable to mob violence and even parti cipated in lynchings. Vigilante violence on the border had a state-bui lding function. It both directed the public to act with force to sustain hierarchies of race Analya Meneses Analya Meneses Analya Meneses INTRODUCTION 7 .ind class and complemented the brutal methods oflaw enforcement Ill this ' dH pcno . In addit1011 to these acts by mobs, state and local police commmed extralegal acts of v10lcnce that are often overlooked in lynching statistics. When includ111g acts of extralegal violence at the hands of Texas Rangers and local police, the numbers of victims of racia l violence in Texas soars. Extralegal violence at the hands of law enforcement has for too long been shielded in a cloak of legal authority. The decade between 1910 and 1920 was a particu larly brutal period, when ethnic Mexicans were criminalized and harshly policed by an intersecting regime of vigilantes, state police, local police, and army soldiers. During these years of vitriol and aggression, law enforcement officers, soldiers, and vigilantes claimed the lives of hundreds more ethnic Mexicans, citizens of the United States and Mexico alike. Estimates of the number of dead range from as few as 300 to as many as several thousand. State racial terror and vigilantism were linked. In particular, police abuse and collusion with vigilante mobs, followed by state cover-ups, set a pat- tern for sanctioned abuse. The frequency, and normalcy, of anti-Mexican violence seeped far beyond Texas and encouraged a public passivity toward violent policing that has had long-standing consequences for peop le living near the border. The violence on the Texas-Mexico border took many forms. Ethnic Mexicans were intimidated, tortured, and killed by hanging, shooting, burning, and beating . Nearly all the known victims were adult men, though a few women and children suffered the same vicious wrath. What this violence nearly always shared was location: death often occurred in the isolation of the rural Texas landscape. The thick mesquite brush and the dark of night frequently cloaked these acts from public view. 15 These events were also linked in a broadly felt injustice. Assailants rarely faced arrest and grand juries regularly failed to indict the accused for wrongdoing. For members oflaw enforcement, a culture of impunity prevailed. Terror and intimidation permeated the region. For each victim that died, there were others who witnessed the violence. People organized their daily routines to avoid conflict with law enforcement officers or known agita- tors of vigilante violence. Children witnessed parents being beaten, or worse, and cousins saw their kin being shot. Many of the dead would not 8 THE INJUSTICE NEVER LEAVES You be recovered or given a proper burial. Assailants threatened witnesses and prevented them from tending to the bodies of loved ones. Still, relatives and friends earched , and protested the ongoing murders, for months and years and decades . Some would store the sites in their memories, to share them years later. Journalists described the violent scenes as they were unveiled in the day- light or exposed in unexpected encounters with corpses hanging from telephone poles or the limbs of mesquite trees. People spotted decapitated bodies floating down the Rio Grande. 16 Such encounters with the dead surely provoked a range of reactions, from horror to anger to a righteous sense of justice served . But for friends, neighbors , or family of the dead, and for allies in the struggle against injustice, finding the remains was also part of a much longer process of grieving and of remembrance. This book is about the long legacies of violence. It returns to a period of terror acknowledged by historians of the border but forgotten in public memory. Politicians, historians, the media, and historical commissions of the early twentieth century all inscribed a celebratory version of events in newspapers, books, lesson plans, museums, and monuments. This ver- sion of history was a key ingredient in their nation building. It hid state crimes and disavowed the loss and trauma experienced by residents. His- torical institutions neglected to keep accurate records of racially motivated killings and in this way bolstered efforts to erase this period of terror from state history. Records that do exist often labeled the dead as criminals. The fryustice Never Leaves You reveals how the keepers of history convinced the broader United States that this period should be remembered instead as a time of progress . The architects of official history, however, did not account for the other ways history is made. They did not consider the witnesses and survivors of violence who would pass memories from one generation to another. 17 They underestimated residents who had their own claim in the border region and refused to be intimidated, residents who would share their stories with their children, residents who would leave personal records documenting the terror that shaped daily life. The Injustice Never Leaves You is their story. ln addition to the recovery of a history of state violence in the borderlands, it reveals valiant acts of preservation and remembrance conducted by people INTRODU CTION 9 who lived in a world shaped by violence but who refused to be consumed by it. The efforts of such people, of course, exist outside of official history, ju~t like the murdered human beings they sought to remember. There are no indexes that name all the dead and catalog the circumstances of their murders; all such efforts to remember are partial and unofficial, existing in the margins. There are, however, signal cases that provide insight into the conditions that allowed this vast violence against Mexicans to flourish. In the pages that follow , we will examine a public lynching of a Mexican national by an Anglo mob in central Texas in 1910; a double murder of two Texas landowners by a Texas Ranger and a local posse in south Texas in 1915; and a massacre organized by Texas Rangers, local ranchers , and US soldiers in west Texas in 1918. Separated by time, location, and outcome, these cases give a glimpse into the far-reaching practices of anti-Mexican violence. They show that neither class, citizenship, nor social influence protected ethnic Mexicans in this decade. Studied together, these cases expose the linked practices of racial violence that created a long-lasting, pervasive atmosphere of terror. Mobs lynched ethnic Mexicans with impu- nity, state and local police colluded with vigilantes, and the militarization of the border fed anti-Mexican sentiment, making racial violence all the more lethal. This book documents both a ferocious period of terror and also the various techniques grieving relatives and their communities employed to hold vigilantes, police, and governments accountable. Living amidst terror, communities utilized multiple strategies for survival. People still challenged the criminalization of ethnic Mexicans and sought justice for the dead. Residents took up arms and engaged in public protest, witnesses faced assailants in court, journalists documented and criticized violent events in editorials, local politicians petitioned for change, and Mexican diplomats pressed for investigations and arrests. Recounting these myriad acts dis- rupts the typical narrative: that violence is followed by reconciliation, that the dead were likely criminals anyway, that the mere passage of time can heal wounds .18 This book also highlights the long efforts to reckon with loss and shows that mourning can be a practice of resistance, passed from generation to generation, continuing even a century later. Recovering the names of the dead and the names of those who brought them harm is a crucial and 10 TII E INJ US TI C E N EVER LEAVE S y OlJ • . ti , struggk against st,1tc vio lence. Such endurin on •0111g dfort in 11: . ' ~ . g efforts _g , )SttlOll lO popular memory. tcc;t1fy to the value f , oJtcn 111 direct oppc . • 0 con_ I c: II vtth the p,isl. The families who have reckon d ncccmg ti ur 11 u Y \ e Wnh I , 1 ·bor a lc\soll we all shou ld heed . We must reckon w ·th rim , 10 encc lJ 1 1 the (; I ti ~ •out hcr n border of our country was created-and policed act t 1:H i c ' . - . 1 d oc valiantly and th ,1t we have cont111uaJly suppressed h' v1oknt y, :111 11 • ' t 1s accllr ,tc past ft 1s a past that bleeds mto the present, a suppres . truer, more • · · s1on chat contrnu es to shape our future . FORGING BORDERS WITH VIOLENCE Thi s history of violence takes shap e around the contested creation of the US-Mexico border and efforts for eco n om ic contro l by new Anglo set- tlers. In 1821, Mexico gained its ind ependence from Spain. But within forty years of independence, a tangled series of conflicts-the Texas Revolution (1836) and the US-Mexico War (1846- 1848)-rcsulted in the United States acquirin g half of Mexico's territory. As a result, the political border of the region now known as Texas was conti nu ally shiftin g. Native American na- tion s, especially th e Coma n ch e, co ntinu ed to contest outside governance- Spanish, Mexican , Texan, and ultimately American-in the region. Anglo migration into the region ens ur ed th at settlers had to contend with Native Americans and Mexicans, two gro up s that stru gg led throughout the nine- teenth centur y to maintain their place in the region as the colonial powers shifted. The se constru cted and chan gi n g boundaries required constant enforce- ment across the centur y. In 1823 Stephen F. Austin, an early Anglo settler who lived in the regio n soo n to be Texas, organized a small group of men, called rangers, to protect settl ers and their property. After Texas claimed indep endence from M ex ico in 1836, the m en worked to ensure that Anglo settlers flourished in the new Republic of Texas. That flourishing, however, came at th e expe nse of gro up s identified as enem ies of the new settlement as well as tho se group s wan ted for labor . The Texas Rangers were descr ib ed as a "fightin g force" created by Anglo sett lers co fight in the ongoing war for racial supremacy, battling Mexican land owners and indi geno u s natio n s, includin g the Tonkawas, Lip an Apache, Waco, Karankawa, Kiowa, and Comanche. The Te xas Rangers targeted both th e " Indi an warrior" and th e Mexican vaq11ero as enemies of white supr emacy. 19 INTRODUCTION 11 The Rangers also did their part to help preserve a slave-based agriculture by violently policing enslaved African men and women. During the state's Jong history of chattel slavery, the Rangers tracked and punished enslaved people crying to cross the Rio Grande into Mexico to freedom. Once across che border, the men, women, and children were out of reach of those at- tempting to claim them as property, who were not allowed to follow them into Mexico . Of course, Rangers frequently broke the neutrality laws that forbade their trips across the border. They also terrorized ethnic Mexicans accused of harboring runaway slaves. One Texas Ranger described them as ''b lack as niggers ... and ten times as treacherous ."20 [n the early nineteenth century, Texas Rangers blurred the lines be- tween enforcing state laws, practicing vigilantism, and inciting racial terror. Historians now view the Texas Rangers as the first prominent Western vigilantes to be endowed with legal authority. 21 The most fre- quent complaints of Texas Rangers abusing their power came through what some referred to as la fey de fi~ga, or the law of flight or escape. Under this morbid legal regime, Rangers released prisoners and ordered them co run. Officers then proceeded to shoot the prisoner while in flight, later filing reports that they killed the prisoner to prevent escape or because the prisoner resisted arrest. 22 As early as 1870, a newspaper editor from west Texas reported disgust at the frequency with which Texas Rangers used the expressions "ki ll ed while attempting to escape" and "k illed while resisting arrest." The editoria l alleged that these expressions had dire resonances "that are fast coming to have a melancholy and ter- rible significance to the people of Western Texas. They furnish the brief epitaph to the scores who have fallen and are falling victims to the igno- rance, the arrogance, or the brutality of those charged with the execution of the ]aw."23 The US military also actively policed ethnic Mexicans. They collaborated with Rangers to suppress uprisings that challenged American rule in the region . Ethnic Mexican landowners identified as people of the region and not of Mexi co or the United States. They embraced nineteenth-century liberal ideologies that held individual freedom and liberty as core princi- ples. As historian Elliot Young exp lains, "For border people, freedom spe- cifically meant preventing central-government interference in a region that had been relatively isolated and semiautonomous for its entire history. The centralist versus federalist struggles in Mexico that ultimately resulted in Analya Meneses 12 THE INJU STI CE NEVER LEAVE S You Tcxa, independence 111 1836 were part of this long history of fighting for ,, , .. autonomy. Some Mc-xic.1ns remted federal encroac hm ent by merely continuing to Jive as they had before the region shifted hands. Others, prompted by threats to their land ownership and economtc influence, resorted to armed remtancc. A decade after the United States claimed half of Mexico's territory through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848,Juan Nepomu- ceno Cort111a took up arms and rebe lled against the new nation and new Anglo settler~ recruited to south Texas after the state was annexed into the Umtcd States. In the summer of 1859 Cortina defended a Mexican m11c/1ero from a public beattng by shooting Brownsville cit y m arshal Robert Shears. In November 1859, Cort ina delivered a proclamation accusingjudges and attorneys of expropriating land from Mexican lando wners and practicing anti-Mexican v10lence. The son of a wealthy landowning family, Cor ti na led an estimated 600 men in a battle against the Texas Rangers and the US Army. He described Anglo settlers as "vampire guises of men" who robbed property and hunted and murdered Mexican men "like wi ld beasts." 25 De- spite being defeated, Cor tina wo uld in spire a genre of border ballads sung by ethnic Mexicans to honor those w ho stood up to discrimination, co lo- nization, and violence. 26 Ten years after Corti na's re volt, ethnic M ex ican lando wners suffered losses as Anglo colonization was fortified with t echno logical advances. In 1874, lllino1s farmer J. F. Glidden patented his invent10n of barbed wire, which became a favored tool for defining private property and guaranteed the successful colonization of the western Unit~d States.27 By fencing in the rural landscape in the 1870s, Anglo ranchers created barriers to rivers and streams, blocked previously unfettered grazing patterns for cows and goats, and summarily stifled ideals of open land use and communal access practJCed by rancheros for numerous generations. The changes in property ownership and ranching paved the way for Texas land to be subdi vided and sold for commercial farming. It took little more than a decade for ranch lands in Texas to be fenced in entirely. Ethnic Mexicans in the Southwest found themselves assigned as manual agric ultur al labor in this new economy, giving rise to the popular Mexican saying "co11 el ala111bre vi,io el liambre"- with the barbed wire came hunger. 28 Alongside technological innovations, new American property laws and taxation ignored ranchero property rights under the 1848 Treaty of Gua- INTRODUCTION 13 dalupe Hidalgo. This culminated in a sweeping reorganization of Anglo- Mexican relations in Texas. 29 Taxation, court-ordered surveys of land boundaries, and challenges to the validity of Spanish land grants kept Mex- ican landowners depleting their cash to pay legal fees. When landowners came up short on paying taxes or private debts, county sheriffs and county courts would coordinate auctions at which thousands of acres could be purchased for less than a penny an acre. In 1877 the Hidalgo County sheriff sold 3,000 acres for $15.00 and the following year sold another 4 000 acres for $17.15. Texas laws targeted Mexican property owners in ' the state. 30 The shifts in economic influence led to increased racial tensions and to resistance. In September 1891, Catarina Erasmo Garza led a group of hun- dreds of border residents back and forth across the Rio Grande in a revolt against both Mexico and the United States encroaching on a population that had enjoyed living, mostly unimpeded, on the margins of national power. Riding into battle with the motto fibres fro11terizos (free border people) stitched on their hatbands, the Garzistas were a multiclass move- ment that included wealthy merchants and landowners, lower-middle-class professionals, poor farmers, and landless ranchers. Mexican nationals and Texas-Mexicans, as well as a few Anglos, Italians, and residents from interracial marriages between Ang los and Mexicans, filled out the ranks of the rebellion . 31 The geographical distance from the central governments made appre- hending revolutionaries on the far reaches of US and Mexican soil tactically and strategically difficult. 32 Efforts by the Mexican and US governments to incorporate the borderlands required infrastructure that would connect the regions to markets, transportation, and communication systems. In 1891 two rail lines finally connected Laredo, Texas, to northern tracks. The Texas-Mexico track ran from the port city of Corpus Christi co Laredo. The International and Great Northern Railroad linked Corpus Christi to San Antonio, which then connected to tracks that led north, east, and west. These railroads opened Laredo to the markets in centrally located San Antonio and allowed goods to be transported across the country. It would be another decade before a rail line from Mexico City to the northern Mexican border would open up international commerce, but even so, in the late nineteenth century, the railways and telegraph lines that crossed the US-Mexico border were becoming crucial elements in government attempts 1-l TIIF. INJUSTICE NEVER LEAVES You to enfoice c.ontrol over the pcopll ll\ 111g 111 the border regions. These I lt ·1- 1ctrtt,.ttti·• ' were counlcEpilogue

ONE WEEK IN OCTOBER 20 10, I spent day after day sitting at the long table

inside the special collections reading room in the James C . Jernigan Li-

brary of the Texas A&M University-Kingsville campus. The library lobby

was full of alumni who had returned for reunion weekend. Draped in the

school colors, blue and yellow, the alumni enthusiasm and celebrations

were an odd juxtaposition to the grim records I was reviewing. The staff

of the South Texas Archives graciously brought to me box after box from

unknown rooms. Files included letters, maps of south Texas, nearly 100

photographs and postcards, and seventeen oral histories with local resi-

dents, conducted by students from the university for class credit. On my

last day in the collections, an archivist asked whether any of the oral his-

tories I had listened to were particularly helpful. One oral history, labeled

“Anonymous no. 237,” had caught my attention. The archivist responded

that she did not know about the interview but quickly discouraged me

from giving much credence to the content . If interviewees decided not to
make their name public at the time of interview, in her opinion, there was

a high probability that the recorded stories might have been fabricated.

T
h
e anonymity of this interview she felt rendered it unreliable.

‘ ‘

294 TH E I NJ UST ICE NEV
ER LEAVEs y

Ou
The interview is a forty-one-minute-long testimonial in S .

. . . h pan1sh I b
· ns with the voice of the 111terv1ewer, w o also remain · t e-

gt . . s unnallled• ,,
Partial fulfillment for Texas Histor y 413, the followmg intervie · In

k Th
. . . . Wof asi

six-year-old man was ta en. ts mterv1ew concerns his vie >:ty_
. ws and opi .

Of the Texas Rangers here in the early 1900s.” After this stat
1110ns

ement •
· d’ · h · · , Wtth worn but still comman mg voice, t e interviewee begins: a

Los [sic] voy a platicar 1111a historia de los rinches de 11ovecie1tto qtti,
tee q11e yo

alca1tce a ver de la edad de 1111eve a,ios. Perseg11fa11 a Tomas Garza d M· .
_ . . . . e 1ss1on,

Tejas ftijo de Dona Vtrgmra Garza. Los r111ches los alca11zaro1t en 11 1 , • 11 ttgar qlle
le deda11 Peladitas. Lo agarraron los r111cl1es, lo amarraro11 a 1111 lllesq, .1 11 econ
cade,ra, )’ le eclzaro11 ci11c11e11ta galo11es de gasoli11a, y vivo lo q11e111aro,z. Eso
l,ada11 los ri11cltes e11 11ovecientos quince.

I’m going to tell you a history of the ri11cl1es in 1915 that I saw when
1

was nine years old. They were following Tomas Garza of Mission

Texas son of Dona Virginia Garza. The ri11cl1es found him in an a’ , , rea
known as Peladitas. The ri11cl1es grabbed him, tied him to a mesquite

tree with a chain, and then they poured fifty gallons of gasoline on h’ 1m,
and they burned him alive. That is what the rinches did in 1915.’

Over the next forty-one minutes, the man continues almost without

pause. He describes brutal law enforcement methods, discrimination, seg-

regation in south Texas, and example after example of acts of racial vio-

lence. In the words of the interviewee, state agents and local residents did

not hesitate to “kill Mexicans like rabbits.” The intervi ewee made his goal

clear from the beginning. He wanted to give an account of a series of mur-

ders he witnessed or learned about: “Eso hadan los rinches e11 novecientos

quince. I That is what the rinches did in 1915.” Sitting in front of a tape re-

corder, he testified to the history of racial violence as he lived it and

remembered it. He gave the names of victim s along with the names or

titles of Texas Rangers, local law enforcement officers, and area ranchers

who participated in these extralegal executions. This was an act of anam-

nesis, a praxis against forgetting .
The anonymous oral history, conducted in the early 1970s, is one of

many examples of the will that has made this book possible: an individual,

long forgotten by history, who insists on recording his own truth; a will

that insists on documenting what has been disavowed; a will that hopes

future generations will reckon with the past. In this act of vernacular

295

king the witness was carefu l to nan1 h y,1na ‘ e t e dead
histor . bers left in the aftermath, and to ‘ to name the

•ty 1nell1 name the .
(~

1111 • d brutal murder . The anonymo us inter . assailants who
11n1tte viewee thus l fl

c011 . bs-names, dates and locations-to aid e ta trail of
adcru1n . people like

bre hers hoping to recover erased histories. me, future
cseJrc f l . l h . b r atment o t 11s ora istory y a local arch· •

the tre ivist serves as .
Jationship between historical narra tives a reminder

fthe re , memory arch·
0 The truth of what happ ened can be suppressed b ‘ IVes, and
Power. . ( . . y overt racism b . ntional actions or inactions) of a police capta· , Y
the inte . in , or a county jud

ce senator. But hmory can also be disavowed b ge,
or a sta . y small, ordinar

d
. advertent detail s; by an offhand com ment from . . Y,

an in . . . f an archivist that
d rmines the credibility o a memory ; by an archivist h . un e . . . . . w o Withholds
Id rs from v1S1tors searching for evidence of their family h’ . fo e . . 1stones or guides

rchers away from testimonials that seem officially tro bl
resea u esome; by a

h. torian who chooses to focus on one story as opposed to oth h 1s ers, w o as-
n1es that titled and long- celebr ated employees of the state a d su . . . re goo and

h t Unnamed others are not. It is m this vast gamut of choi·ces f . t a , o actions
and inactions, of the conscious effort and the unconscious assumption, that
histories ofloss are disavowed .

Decades after the killings , when justice continued to feel out of reach

remembering the names of the dead proved an important means of grievin~

injustice. In describing these events, residents like the anonymous inter-

viewee rejected the dehumanizing historie s that ignored or celebrated vio-

lence. In the climate of ongoing racial ten sions in Texas in the 1970s, a

climate that encouraged him to remain anonymous, the interviewee must

have known that the time for a public reckoning had not yet arrived. None-

theless, he also knew that accounts should be preserved, in anticipation of

days ahead with more possibilities. To dismiss the content of the interview

is to foreclose those possibilities. 2 Passing histories along to future genera-

tions creates an opportunity and an anticipation of future efforts to reckon

with histories of violence .

As this book has shown, people whose lives were interrupted by the trag-

edies they learned from relatives answered the call for a public reckoning

with this history. Benita and Evaristo Albarado , R omana Bienek, Linda

Davis, Norma Longoria Rodriguez , Kirb y Warnock, and others preserved
these histories and throu gh vernacular history-making made them public.

Their efforts inspir ed others, m yself included, to hold to account state

Analya Meneses

a
296
THE INJU STICE NEVER L
EAVt s You
• • I.T chc stories they tell about histories of
. itutions Ill rev1s111::, . . Vtolen
inst . . d I wdful of state historical markers are only th b ce. One exh161t an a 1, . e eg1n
. , ‘th chis history of v10lence. As we have seen h –
· .,. ofreckonlllg ” 1 , t ere a
mng . . vhose names still need to be recovered. 3 re
!so many v1ct11ns ,
a . the strong impulse to remember the dead, we sh
1 I 11 recognizing ou d also
. f •ncended consequences of efforts to memorialize 0 be caut10us o um . . . · n the
d I
consequences of not reckonmg with histories of .
1 one han ‘ ne . . . . . Vto ent
I. • are profound. As V1ck1 RulZ wisely reminds us “H· border po tong, . . . • tstor-
.
1
y shapes affinities ofbelongmg and claims of citizenship .. ~ Th ica memor , . . • e
f:
.1 to confront violent policing practices in the 19 lOs allowed a sy a1 ures stem
f
. 1 to go unchecked in the twentieth century. The failure t 0 no ence o re-
member this history enables its perpetuation. On the other hand, public
projects on histories of violence may lead some to ~o-nceptualize racial and
ethnic violence as matters only of the past. Recogmzmg the significance of
a violent historical period, writing about chat history, and memorializing
victims is not enough. Current efforts to reckon with histories of state
violence are occurring in the midst of ongoing practices of police brutality
both along the border and across the country. Remembering the past, then,
is also about knowing the present.
In 1924 politicians and state agents who created the conditions for a
widespread period of anti-Mexican violence went on to become the ar-
chitects of the US Border Patrol and incarceration systems in the United
States. Current federal and state policing regimes have deep roots in the
violence of the borderlands-the regime of terror practiced a century ago
on the Texas-Mexico border is crucial to ongoing conversations about po-
lice brutality and the carceral state. The history reminds us of the dangers
of criminalization and unchecked racial profiling and police abuse.
More than 2.3 million people are incarcerated in American federal and
state prisons, juvenile correctional facilities, local jails, Indian Country jails,
ci, ·il commitment centers, military prisons, and prisons in US territories.
Seveney-one percent of federal prison inmates are Black or Latinx. Since
2009, congressional appropriation laws have included language that sets a
quota to maintain 34.000 immigration detention beds on a daily basis. US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the only law enforcement
agency ubject to a statutory quota. In 2015 the United States spent nearly
2 billion a year on immigration detention centers and relied on private
prison companies to manage these facilities. In 2017 approximately-H,OOO

,…
297
·ontined \I\ \\1\\\Hgr.1ti 11 detcntion .5 We lrC \”
,k ” ·t>rt’ c . • , iv1ng in the midst
pCL
1f , . )f cont.11nment. l3r .111 tevcmon reflect 1 . ~tn1(turt.:~ L • s t 1,1t mass im-
til h \s “htteretl the 11.1t1on.1\ \.1nd cape with cue \
. ,1111\ent • . . . , era monuments
pfl’L I• ” “‘d excl’SS\\’ C punishment .111d r.wagcd comi .
. •ck t:~~ • • 1lllntt1e wnh
L,t rt: ,i, ·s wi\hngncss to c ndemn ,rnd d, card the 111 1 . hoi: t: t:~ ‘ 0st vu nerab\e
olll •~ ,
\
,T ll~-
111\0I ::- t” \ U M . . i rtion to con memcnt, t 1c – cx1co border conti b
\n ,ll 01 . nues to e a
. o\icing. lndeed, the U Border Patrol 1s the nation’ sec d 1 h,,•e tor P , . on argest
. t· f(C .iti:er the New York Pohce Department. ince 2000 B d
ohce o · . . or er
P
I
a1icers h.we made nc.nl ‘ t\ elve million apprehen ions L t. .
p,,tro 011 . • a mx pop-
. ,ccounted for nearly all, a taggermg 92 percent of the
111.,uon • . • se appre-
. . nd reports of abu e, 1111 conduct, and corruption are on th • 7 hen. 10m. . e nse .
. ills for an exp,mded Border Patrol m the twenty-first century have
had d,,ngerou result . When the Border Patrol expanded dramatically be-
tween ~006 and 2009 (adding ,000 new agent), the number of em-
plo ·ee arre ted fo~ miscon~uct (civil right violation or off-duty crimes
uch a dome tic violence) mcrea ed by 44 percent during the three-year
pan. The American lmmigration Council reported that more than 100
emplo ·ee were arre ted or charged with corruption, including taking
bribe to muggle drugs or people, and many more have been charged with
mi u e of force, criminal m.i conduct, abuse of migrants, and violating con-
titutional right . According to U Cu toms and Border Protection re-
porting. border agent killed fifty-one people between 2005 and 2015. Five
of thee killing involved police firing hot across the border.
As we reflect on the centennial of the 1919 state investigation into Te. …. as
Ranger , worri ome trends of police abu e continue, and the requirements
and over ight for border enforcement officer are tarting to thin. ln 2014
the United ation High Cammi ioner for Refugees called for manda-
tory training for US border enforcement authorities in “fundamental
principle of nondi criminatory treatment” and “on the basic norm
and principle of international human right and refugee law.”9 lnstead, in
2017 the Department of Homeland ecurity moved to ea e training and
enrollment requirements for Border Patrol agent , even as it sought to in-
crea e their numbers b hiring 15,000 new Border Patrol and ICE agent .10
The cill to rapidly e::–.-pand the number of agent failed to con ider the proYen
ri ks, hi torically and more recent\ ,, of ha ing officers on a police force
with0ut the proper requirement . De pite the le on learned, Homeland

Analya Meneses

..—
THE INJUSTICE NEVER
29 LEAVts
rou
.il • • 111 mgge ted w,1ivrng J required polygraph test ( ecunrv ouic ‘ ~ . • . requ1r
B der orruptw11 Act of 2010), removrng langua ed by rhe Anti- or . ‘ge profic,
. Border Patrol entry exam , and removing one of ency
re r- from . . two ph ,
. . .. for officers. Given the rate of policmg on the borde }s1ca/
t1rne re~r~ r, refor,n·
l
. ti·ces i an important struggle to engage. Transform. . 1ng
po ice prJc . . . . . . . 1ng iin,n
. l’cie and endrng the cnm111alizat10n of 1mm1grants i h 1•
granon po 1 5 t e longer
rruggle ,1head. .
P 1. · g rraregies and incarcerat10n, unfortunately, are mere/ o 1c111 Y one p
f h
b utal US security efforts. Strategies like Operation Gateke arr
o t e r . . . . eper, for
. le inaugurated 111 1994, strategica lly rncreased policing al
examp , . . . ong the
US-Mexico border in Califorrna, New Mex1co, and Texas in order to
funnel would-be migrants and refugee~ to the most dangerous area of the
border, the Sonoran Desert, thus deternng them from crossing. Using the
desert as deterrent did not work. These efforts did not curb migration but
instead had dire humanitarian consequences. According to US Border
Patrol statistics, over the past eighteen years, nearly 7,000 people have died
of hypothermia, drowning, heat exhaustion, or dehydration attempting to
cross into the United States.11 Anthropologist Jason De Leon describes the
federal plan simply as “a killing machine that simultaneously uses and hides
behind rhe viciousness of the Sonoran Desert. The Border Patrol disguises
rhe impact of its current enforcement policy by mobilizing a combination
of sterilized discourse, redirected blame, and ‘natural’ environmental pro-
cesses rhat erase evidence of what happens in the most remote parts of
southern Arizona.”12
The fact that hundreds die crossing into the United States every year,
and that this is not considered a national crisis, speaks to the dismissal of
immigrant life by US Americans on a daily basis. The US-Mexico border
is again littered with bodies, transformed into what De Leon describes as
“a land of open graves.” Families and friends are returning to the border-
lands to search the landscape for the remains of loved ones. Anthropolo-
gists and immigrant rights groups are helping to document and identify
the dead. And the graves are not limited to Arizona.
In south Texas, too, groves of mesquite trees are again concealing dead
bodies. Brooks County, for example, is described as a “death vaJley” for
immigrants 13 s· 2009 h · d · rnce , t e remains of more than 550 undocumente
migrants have been discovered in the county alone. In 2014 a group of ar-
cheologists from o · Id • U · peration ent1fication, a project at Texas State iuver-

I I , , . 299 . c i·••nsit’ /\tlt lrl)pt) ng\ ‘ cmc:r, found l 111 .
. • ~ 1 l) ~ ‘ .l~s 111111 k ~,n. I bt)rtkr dwcl-.point in P.1lfoni,1s in Bro k (‘ 1,1r t•d gr,1,°l’ llt•~ I
t1tl,1tll • • • () s O\lnt \Y r , rt,t•
• j ,, .is h,1rrow1ng. Snmt· ot tht’ bodic~ , , . y, w h,tt tht’\I 1 ·11,·t’ftl • . Vnc Jllst t . I , l 1\-
l I thc:r~ “t’l’t’ pl.\cc:d Ill tr,bh h,1g~ sho111, l osscl lllto thl’ .
,du t’ () • • . • ‘ . lllg ),1g, or h I pit,
. 1 id thl’ b()tll’S ot scwr,11 d1!krt’11t bodi” 1 ‘
0
l Y b,tgs, s0111• b.t~~ 1• t:s , t tur11e i (
1 igt·tltS h.td colkctcd the rcm.iins of uni 1 . . c out th.it l3ordcr p,1tro •, . . c cntthl’d p,
1
,
,ting to cross 11Ho thl’ United St.1tcs Af
1
(Opt: \\ho dit•d
,ittctni , . · · tcr t icy fou d
1
I Z trdlv burn~d the dc.id.
14 The olibri c, . n ttl’ni, tht•y
h.tp t.l • • . . ,l:lltl’r for Hu1n,1n
. •iv 1dvoc,K\’ oq~.1n1:z,1t1on workmg to end . Rights I\ ,1 f,1n11 . . , nugr.,m dcuh o I
~i · •ico border. Fountkr .rnd forensic anthropolog· t O. · . n t tt’ US 1, o, . . . is t. Robin R., k
. II ibor,iting wtth fa m t!tes and forensic scienti t cine c 11
to . , . . . s to collect inissin
. is reports, help 1dent1fy the de.id, and return th· , . . ” g per-
soi. . is e rcm,11ns to f.in1’1′
I Okiiw for their loved ones. · When immigrants ~ , . . ‘
1 ics
o r, • ‘ .. re cnnunaliz ·d
ide the scapegoats of elected offic1als, the borderla d . c and
,n, . . C l’b , . II . ‘n s rcn1atn a place of
violent pohcrng. o I n 1s co ectmg a twenty-first-cc t
n ury red record
When I learned about these anthropologists discovc · ·
nng mass graves and
attempting to recover the names of the dead I thought aboi t 1 1 , , • , ‘ • 1 t le car y work
of Ida B. Well -Barnett, Jovita Idar, and Frank Pierce cre’t’
• ” mg records of
death and calling for social justice. When I contemplated ti f: .
1
.
‘ ‘ ‘ IC am, !CS
waiting to hear from loved ones after they crossed into the u,11·t d S e t.Hcs,
I remembered Miguel Garcia in 1918 searching groves of mesquite trees in
south Texas for the remains of his son Florencio. When r learned that in
2010 Jesus Mesa Jr., a U Border Patrol officer, shot his gun across the US-
Mexico border killing fifteen-year – old Sergio Hernandez, I thought about
Concepcion Garcia in 19 I 9, shot and killed by a US soldier while crossing
the Rio Grande, returning to Mexico from school in Texas. When I heard
that in 2017 the US Supreme Court denied Hernandez’s parents legal
standing to sue Mesa for using lethal force, I thought about the descen-
dants of the 1918 Porvenir mas acre, waiting for decades to have their claims
decided by the US-Mexico General Claims Commission of 1923, only to
learn in 1941 that the commission would not hear the case.
When l consider how long it will take for families, advocates, and com-
munities to recover from the injustices they are witne sing today, I dunk
about Norma Longoria Rodriguez, Benita and Evaristo Alb.1r.1do, andju,rn
Flores Jr., who still carry sentiments of loss 100 ye.1rs after their rd.ltl\’ CS
were murdered by the state police. Recounting these myriad ,icts d,m,pts
popular assumptions that violence is followed by reconcili.ition, th’H the

300
THE INJU STI CE NEVE
R LEAVES
You
dead were likely criminals anyway, that the mere passage of ti
• £”. • • • rne can h
ounds Answering calls 1or JUSt1ce requires remembering h ea!
w . . . t e nam
the departed, acknowledging the hves lost, and confrontin . es of
. 11· £”. d d g disavow
histories of v101ence. In ca mg 1or re ress, escendants are in the ed
of other social luminaries like Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mob! company
1 1 d M
ey, Jenn·
Gutierrez, las Madres de a P aza e ayo, the Safe Women St 1cet
. . . rong Nat·
project, Mothers Against Pohce Brutality, Justicia Para N 10ns
uestras 1-f·
and the Missing Migrant Project. Uas,
These calls serve as a reminder: reckoning with the past · .
. . . is intertw.
with current efforts for social JUSt1ce and transformation £”. fi lned ‘tor reedo
full humanity. We live in a world that needs to be reconst d
111
and mete . The
people understand the long consequences of violence th . more
. . . • e more like!
will be to intervene against-to denounce outright-th · 1 Y We e v10 ence and d
that continues today. eath