Texas Obscurities by E.R. Bills

Author:E.R. Bills [Bills, E.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-04-27T22:00:00+00:00

PORVENIR MASSACRE

Porvenir, a small town in the northwestern-most corner of Presidio County, is no longer on most Texas maps. Located in a desolate no-man’s land between the Vieja Mountains and the Rio Grande, it never got very big, but size and isolated geography weren’t the only factors that led to its disappearance. Porvenir’s demise was also helped along by the Texas Rangers.

In 1913, Porvenir—which means “the future” in Spanish—sprang up near the banks of the Rio Grande, some twenty-three miles southwest of Valentine. The area was rugged and inhospitable, but the citizens of the town were extending an irrigation channel from the Rio and the community had high hopes or, as the nomenclature of the town indicated, a future. Within a few years, approximately 150 folks called Porvenir home, and the community had its own cotton gin and a few businesses.

On Christmas Day 1917, however, everything changed. Bandits raided the Brite Ranch near Marfa (in northeast Presidio County), stealing horses, robbing the ranch store and killing a few ranch hands. Local American cavalrymen under the command of Colonel George T. Langhorne chased the bandits back into Mexico, reportedly killing eighteen before they scattered into the foothills of the Occidental Sierra Madres.

Preliminary reports of the raid ranged from the usual to the outright fantastical. The United States was already involved in World War I, and some newspapers, including the December 28 edition of the Dallas Morning News, reported that the Brite assault might actually have been a siege conducted by the Germans. But none of the Kaiser’s troops were ever killed, captured or seen for sure, so the search for the culprits reverted to the usual suspects, i.e., Mexicans (or Hispanics in general).

Texas-Mexico relations along the border had been strained since the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa’s 1916 raids on Glenn Springs (in the Big Bend area) and Columbus, New Mexico. But Texans were also apprehensive about rogue outliers in the military of Mexican president Venustiano Carranza and marauders affiliated with a Mexican Robin Hood–like bandit known as Chico Cano. Ranchers in the area had had enough, and they vigorously expressed their dissatisfaction to Texas Ranger captain J.M. Fox, of Marfa. The aggrieved parties and Fox believed that the bandit problem in Presidio County could be traced to Porvenir and that the small community served as either a hideout or a way station for troublemakers.

On January 23, 1918, Captain Fox; local ranchers John Pool, Buck Pool, Raymond Fitzgerald and Tom Snyder; and Texas Ranger Company B visited Porvenir. They encircled the town and conducted a search for stolen articles from the Brite Ranch. They encountered no resistance, but the Ranger posse discovered some toiletries, sandals and other incidentals that may have come from the Brite Ranch store. The Rangers were unable to determine whether the items were procured legally or illegally, but they decided to disarm the entire town anyway.

The Porvenir disarmament amounted to one pistol (found in the home of the cotton gin owner, the only Anglo citizen in the community) and one Winchester rifle.

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