Like most immigrants to the United States, Mexicans faced a great deal of discrimination. One of the most disturbing episodes of outright violence against Mexican immigrants occurred in Texas in 1917. In 1915, insurgents in Mexico wrote a manifesto that advocated reconquering the southwestern region of the United States and slaughtering all the Anglos in the region. Copies of the manifesto circulated north of the border and became known as the Plan of San Diego; it was named after a town in Texas in which the manifesto had been widely read. As a result of the manifesto and Americans' fear about it, there were many cross-border raids between Texas and Mexico in the years following.

Brite Ranch, 1918

On Christmas Day in 1917, Mexican extremists attacked the Brite Ranch in Presidio County in Texas. Several Mexicans and Anglos were killed. On January 28, the Texas Rangers, led by Captain Monroe Fox, captured about fifteen men of Mexican descent in the town of Porvenir, on the US side of the border. Fox ordered the men executed in cold blood. A grand jury was convened later that year in Presidio, but no action was taken against the Rangers. However, on June 4, 1918, Governor William P. Hobby disbanded Company B of the Texas Rangers, which had been led by Fox, and dismissed five rangers from service. About 140 Mexican Porvenir residents, terrified of being killed, abandoned their homes and fled to Mexico, and the Mexican community in the town basically disintegrated.

Iconic statue of a Texas Ranger in front of State Capitol in Austin, Texas

What events led to the Porvenir Massacre, and what events followed? Test your knowledge by ordering the following events: