6. The “Time of Blood“
In a campaign led by the Rangers and joined by vigilantes and local law enforcement, thousands of Mexican-Americans were murdered, and thousands more fled across the border into Mexico. The violence peaked between August, 1915, to June, 1916. That period came to be named Hora de Sangre (“Time of Blood”). As a contemporary recalled: “all the Rangers had to was get a suspicion on somebody, any little thing, and they would take ’em out and shoot ’em down“. Hundreds of Mexicans were indiscriminately murdered in South Texas, which triggered a flight to Mexico so severe that ranchers and farmers complained that all their field hands had left. Even Mexican-American landowners fled, some with such urgency that they abandoned thousands of cattle behind.
