By Nate Maki | Staff Writer
“Life and Death on the Border 1910-1920” is a museum exhibit that sheds light on the violent history of the Texas-Mexico border. Originally put together in Bullock, Texas, the exhibit is being recreated within Baylor’s Jesse H. Jones Library, where it will be showcased throughout the semester.
Dr. Felipe Hinojosa, history professor and John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America, sponsored the exhibit.
“This is an exhibit that shows us a truly turbulent moment in the history of the United States-Mexico borderlands,” Hinojosa said. “It shows us not only the tragedy of its history, but also the resiliency of its people. As a state, we have not done our duty in documenting and teaching those realities. This exhibit sheds light on that complex history, and it is public education at its best.”
The exhibit’s opening reception will take place Thursday starting at 3 p.m. with free refreshments provided shortly after. At 5 p.m., a panel of experts will present on the background, creation and promotion of the exhibit.
“I didn’t want this to be an exhibit that just comes out of nowhere,” Hinojosa said. “I wanted folks at Baylor and the broader Waco community to actually meet the scholars that made it happen.”
The Refusing to Forget project originally created the exhibit in 2016 at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, where it received the Leadership in History Award of Merit from the American Association of State and Local History. The award acknowledges standards of excellence in the collection, preservation and interpretation of state and local history.
Associate History Professor Dr. Maggie Elmore, specializing in borderlands, migration, religion, politics and Latino history, provides additional insight surrounding the type of activity that occurred during that time.
“The Texas Rangers committed numerous murders of innocent Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals living in South Texas,” Elmore said. “When people raised claims against them with federal officials, they didn’t get much traction, and so that history was never brought to the public eye.”
According to Elmore, the communities affected kept records of the events which were often hidden from public view, but sources can still be found in the archives documenting the murders committed by the Texas Rangers, which now make up the exhibit.
“The most well-known of the massacres happened in Porvenir,” Elmore said. “In the early 1910s, the Rangers suspected a bandit was hiding within this small community of families, who had no history of violence or criminality. They pulled every family out of their homes, and they rounded up 15 boys and men, tied them together, brought them to a cliff and brutally executed them with firearms.”
Following the events of the Porvenir massacre, over 140 residents abandoned the small town out of fear for their lives. The events are documented through a schoolteacher’s notebook which has been featured as part of the exhibit.
“We can’t undo the harm those people faced,” Elmore said. “But what we can do is acknowledge that it happened, and make sure it doesn’t happen again… Communities of color have always faced violence from law enforcement, and what this exhibit shows is that it’s not a new thing. What exhibits like this do is help us consider consequences before we engage in actions that are going to create generations of harm in America.”
