Summary Execution
Nearly 100 slain villistas were scattered along both sides of the border. In town, ten soldiers and eight civilians lay dead. Residents of Columbus and Deming called for blood.
The former newspaper editor wrote his sister that "Most of our local Mexicans have been made to leave and many of them have died very unnatural deaths since the battle. Our people are very bitter—all the Mexican Prisoners were taken out of camp and turned loose—our citizens were informed of what was to be done and shot them as they were turned loose."The stench of charred flesh taints the air.
**A word about images. I recognize that the photos from the Virgil R. Williamson, 20th Infantry, file (Richard Dean's personal archive in Columbus) are disturbing, to put it lightly. I chose to present them in collage form so that readers (hopefully) won't be accosted by the troubling photographs and can pass them over if they'd prefer to not spend time viewing them. I included the photo of "Mexican prisoners put to work" at the top so that it will be the thumbnail to accompany this post. Note that the prisoners were local to the Columbus area, and were suspected of having acted as Villa's spies. The disturbing images follow below:
Ohhhh, the 100 slain villistas echo in an eerie way the 100-word format.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it is about images being so disturbing in a way that we ride on through the words without stopping to "see" and be disturbed in the same way. Honestly, I'm glad writing works that way, at more of a distance. If I had to see all the graphic violence narrated in folktales and fairy tales, I'd have to find different genres to read. And that's not even real life... like these photographs.
Good point about the images in words not having the same type of impact as graphic photos. I hadn't reflected on this much until I read Connor Kenaston's recent article at Hybrid Pedagogy--"With Care and Context": https://hybridpedagogy.org/with-care-and-context/
DeleteYES. This is something I've struggled with in the normalizing of rape in mythological narratives (which is bad enough), and then all the artwork devoted to it (in part because so many artists were eager for any opportunity to show female nudes, and these stories provided that opportunity). Knowing what I do now, I would approach the use of that art very differently than I did...
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