Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border

In 2014, a collective of historians began to develop a public history project in anticipation of the centennial of state sanctioned anti-Mexican violence in South Texas known as La Matanza. That organizing produced the Refusing to Forget project, made up of public history exhibits, new historical markers, academic research and lectures, digital engagement, and curricular lesson plans. Since then, Refusing to Forget has continued to grow and gain recognition as an example of an influential, multi-dimensional, scholarly public history program. In that vein, it's fitting for an edited volume from and about the project to be similarly expansive and diverse in its presentation. Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border, edited by Sonia Hernández and John Morán González, ranges from broadly contextualizing racial violence across the Americas, to detailing Texas Ranger terrorism and the Canales investigation, to exploring the possibilities of public history and the Refusing to Forget project's contribution.Reverberations of Racial Violence breaks with expectations of scholarly edited volumes by beginning and ending with poetry. In the opening piece, Diana Noreen Rivera imagines the fear her ancestors experienced as passed down from her father. "But, I will sing of your survival/ -Imagining-/in poetic gospel/to serve the resurrection of your memory." The poem sets the stakes for the project, beyond documentation, to recovery and repair. The rich volume also contains fourteen chapters exploring multiple dimensions of the project, as well as an epilogue by John Philip Santos.The first group of chapters broadly cover La Matanza and the Canales investigation into Texas Ranger abuses. Three founders of the Refusing to Forget project—Trinidad Gonzales, Benjamin Heber Johnson, and Monica Muñoz Martínez—narrate the creation of the collective and its focus on bringing scholarly analysis to public history in Texas through historical markers, museum exhibits, and media interventions. Andrew R. Graybill and Walter L. Buenger present two historical overviews of Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to give context to these events. Both chapters develop a nuanced analysis of the intersection of race, violence, and memory during these formative years in the state. The final two chapters in the section situate La Matanza within the broader history of state sanctioned, extralegal violence across North America. William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb bring their broader analysis of Mexican American lynchings to the investigation while Gema Kloppe-Santamaría compares the coverage and perception of violence from the perspective of Mexican politics and press.Chapters in the second section of the volume place the organizing and ethnic politics around anti-Mexican violence in the context of Chicano/a history. Philis M. Barragán and Carlos K. Blanton examine segregated education in South Texas, focusing on the linguistic and intellectual stereotypes enforced in school policies that affected ethnic Mexican children. Gabriela González expands the civil rights discussion to include Jovita Idar and the Idar family's activism through their press in Laredo. Two separate chapters develop a critical biography of J. T. Canales in this political context. Richard Ribb provides a detailed legislative account of Canales and the hearings while Cynthia E. Orozco places him in the broader movement landscape. Both accounts identify progress Canales achieved along with the limits of his ideology and approach.In final section of the volume, scholars and descendants engage the history of this violence at the level of public memory and identity. Filmmaker Kirby F. Warnock recounts his experience excavating family stories around violence in South Texas, while James A. Sandos connects his discovery of archival materials from the Canales hearings with the political context where these stories were received. Christopher Carmona and Margret Koch deploy their respective chapters in an analysis of the challenges for public history in confronting past trauma and violence. Katherine Hite's chapter takes a more theoretical approach that integrates the larger concern of the previous four chapters, namely how to commemorate painful memories. Poet Nati Román's words captures a central tenet of the Refusing to Forget project writing, "And you wait for us to remember/ Relearn/ Rediscover/ Reclaim our rightful place in/ History."