Baylor Grad’s Documentary about Texas Rangers and Killings of Tejanos in 1915 to be Shown Nov. 6 at Baylor

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Contact: Terry Goodrich, (254) 710-3321
WACO, (Oct. 30, 2014) — "Border Bandits," a documentary that tells the first-person story of a 19-year-old cowboy who saw Texas Rangers shoot two unarmed Mexican-Americans in the back following a 1915 raid by Mexican banditos on a Texas ranch, will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, at Marrs McLean Science Building, Room 101, on Baylor University campus.
The film was written, directed and produced by Baylor graduate Kirby Warnock of Dallas, the grandson of the cowboy who said he witnessed the killings of the men, who were U.S. citizens. The event will be hosted by the department of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.
"Border Bandits" features the actual voice of the late Roland Warnock, who sat down with his grandson in 1973 and dictated the story to him on a reel-to-reel tape recorder for Baylor University's Institute for Oral History.
Roland Warnock, who worked on Guadalupe Ranch in the Rio Grande Valley near present-day Edinburg, Texas, said in his oral history that he saw Rangers from Company D shoot the men at nearby McAllen Ranch and leave their bodies by the side of the road. Warnock told his grandson he buried them.
"The effects of these killings are being felt in south Texas nearly a century later," Kirby Warnock said.
The younger Warnock kept the tapes of his grandfather's account and digitized them some 30 years later. The documentary features old black-and-white footage of the elder Warnock on horseback and doing rope tricks. It includes vintage photos of Rangers and of bodies piled on the ground, as well as interviews with the son of one of the men killed and the grandson of the other. Re-enactors portrayed the events, with filming done at Old City Park in Dallas and Warnock's family ranch near Fort Stockton, Texas.
The Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas Online says that the "regular Rangers," along with hundreds of special Rangers appointed by Texas governors, killed approximately 5,000 Tejanos (Mexican-Americans) and Mexicans between 1914 and 1919, "a source of scandal and embarrassment." And a Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum article — "A Brief History of the Texas Rangers" — notes that anywhere from 300 to 3,000 Tejanos or Mexicans were killed in South Texas by Rangers, vigilantes and citizens.
Some were simply "outraged posses inspired by the lawlessness of the Rangers," Warnock said.
In a trailer for the documentary, he noted that the elite Texas Rangers have a "glorious past and present-day accomplishments" and have been a unifying symbol for many Texans. Furthermore, safeguards have been put in place by state legislators and the Rangers themselves to prevent such atrocities.
But the events mark a dark chapter in the state's history, and "it's important we set the record straight," Warnock said. "The time has come to acknowledge our faults and move on."
The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Kirby Warnock, moderated by Michael Parrish, Ph.D., Linden G. Bowers Professor of American History in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.
The event is free and open to the public. Marrs McLean Science Building is at 1214 S. Fourth St.
To view the trailer, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAQhD4Iazjw For more information, call 254-710-3261 or visit
www.facebook.com/events/1483727171911324
Warnock graduated from Baylor in 1974 with a B.A. in history. His first film production was "Return To Giant." In it, he told the story of the filming of the classic Texas film "Giant" of 1956 — which starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean — during the cast and crew's two-month stay in the tiny West Texas town of Marfa.

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