I wondered why I’d never learned about this massacre, this (I called under my breath) lynching (as though to call it so were mere speculation and not fact). Of course, my not knowing was the point of the mass killing and leveling of the town. Leave no evidence, no trace, and in that absence, anything can be drawn. A gun. A pretty metaphor.

The Book of America is one of secrets inasmuch as shame of one’s heritage in hatred makes ineffectual any attempts at reconciliation between the past and the present.

“Why can’t we just leave the past in the past?”

But in service to whom? Or what?

In the photograph shared by Arlinda Valencia, her great-grandfather, Longino Flores, is arced by women, one of whom is her grandmother, Juana Bonilla, and children. He sits beside another relative, Rosendo Mesa, who is Valencia’s grandfather. Their ranges of brown exhaust the monochrome.

Macedonio Huertas (30), Tiburcio Jaques (50), Ambrosio Hernández (21)

The Advanced English Dictionary defines the noun usage of frontier as

1. “a wilderness at the edge of a settled area of a country”

2. “an international boundary or the area (often fortified) immediately inside the boundary”

3. “an undeveloped field of study; a topic inviting research and development”