In Memoriam: Juan Bonilla Flores

Born: June 25, 1905

Died: March 25, 2007

Many assume that only African-Americans were greatly victimized by lynching as tragic American phenomenon. Juan Bonilla Flores, a kind, gentle and wise man late of Odessa, but once of his cherished Porvenir, Texas – would have proved the lie to such thinking.

He was only a boy a few months shy of thirteen when his entire childhood was wrenched away during a single horror-filled night in January, 1918. U.S. Cavalry soldiers came to his village in that terrible moment of history, and local white ranchers, and Texas Rangers. All were complicit or were perpetrators in the mass lynching that came to be known as The Porvenir Massacre and claimed the lives of fifteen men and teenaged boys, including Longino Flores, Juan Bonilla’s beloved father. The poor villagers of Porvenir were tejanos -- Mexicans living in Texas but trying to be Americans. 

Throughout his long life, Mr. Flores was haunted by memories of his father and the others murdered by so many gunshots that their mutilated bodies were virtually unrecognizable. But until he reached his nineties, most details of what had happened were barely uttered, and the snippets he did reveal in his nightmares were considered dark fantasies by his children and descendants.

Finally, it was time to tell the truth, no matter how painful.

I met him once he’d reached age 97, in 2002.  By then, he’d “come out” to his children and descendants as the last survivor of Porvenir’s tragedy. I was touched by his sense of humor and civility, but mostly by his courage.  He agreed to be interviewed for American Lynching: A Documentary Feature and to share his horrific story with the world while my film crew and I learned how the long ago events in Porvenir had in fact impacted the entire Flores family in simple but incalculable ways.

I will miss this gentle human being greatly. Most of all, I lament the bitter truth that we could not complete our production before he died this year at age 101.

Gode Davis