Border wall project threatens Porvenir massacre site, El Pasoan warns

Arlinda Valencia is fighting to preserve the Porvenir massacre site along U.S. Highway 90 between Marfa and Van Horn, which faces destruction as the Trump administration expands border wall construction across the region, according to KVIA.

Valencia's great-grandfather, Longino Flores, was one of 15 people killed by Texas Rangers in Porvenir on January 28, 1918. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Rangers—joined by ranchmen and soldiers from the Eighth U.S. Cavalry—took 15 unarmed men and boys into custody at night and executed them without due process.

The killings followed a Rangers search of homes on January 24. After that initial raid, three men were arrested and released after two days. Days later came the mass execution. Investigations by the Mexican government, the military, and the U.S. State Department confirmed the men died while in Rangers' custody, not in a shootout. The Rangers and ranchmen had described residents as thieves, spies, and murderers, though they were actually landowners and farmers.

"They decided the villagers were the ones that were always helping the bandits and so forth but they didn't understand that they helped everybody," Valencia said, according to KVIA. "They were kind people and they gave water to anyone who came by. They didn't get involved in politics, they didn't know anything about politics they just wanted to live their life."

After the massacre, families fled to Mexico. The Texas State Historical Association installed an official marker at the site in 2018, marking a century since the killings.

Now Valencia is collecting signatures to halt the border wall project, warning that construction will destroy the historical site and any artifacts. "It's going to make Porvenir disappear off the face of the earth, we will never get it back," she said. "If they bulldoze through there all the artifacts that have been found, all the artifacts that we would like to find, it's going to be gone."

The wall project is part of the Trump administration's over $7 billion investment in border infrastructure and also affects Big Bend National Park. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott visited the area and announced a pause on construction activity in the national park while he conducts a personal evaluation, according to KVIA.