San Benito is historically significant because it was the site of thousands of extrajudicial executions and is the location of the State Historical Marker commemorating La Matanza of 1915. 

In the early 1900s, people of Mexican ancestry were demonized as criminals ("bandidos") and, if not killed outright by the Texas Rangers, were jailed in Harlingen, originally known as “Six-Shooter Junction” because the city served as the first southern headquarters of the Texas Rangers.

In that era, Rangers were supposed to take jailed prisoners to Brownsville, where the courts-at-law were located, to receive a fair trial to determine their guilt or innocence.  However, because the Rangers presumed the guilt of their Mexican-American prisoners, in an untold number of instances, the Rangers shot or lynched them in San Benito to avoid the long, arduous trek to Brownsville. 

While the Texas Rangers have been revered as an exemplary law enforcement force that made the State and the Rio Grande Valley a safe place to live, its dark side has been purposely ignored or swept under the rug.  Once upon a time, the Texas Rangers were Los Rinches - a state-sanctioned vigilante mob of white men that resorted to terrorism, oppression, and extrajudicial killings to help rob Mexican-Americans of their lands, resources, and rights under the Constitution.

Día de los Muertos is a holiday celebrated in Mexico as a day to honor and remember the dead.  La Caminata is a part of the Día de los Muertos observance because it honors and remembers the victims of La Matanza 1915 by symbolically retracing the steps of dead men walking as they were unjustly being taken to their place of execution. 

The historical marker is the altar where the floral wreath is placed as an ofrenda (offering) to the Matanza’s victims during a time that the souls of the dead are believed to return to visit the living.