Domingo Garcia, a prominent Texas attorney, former state lawmaker and former national president of one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, traveled to Porvenir this week as opposition continues to federal border wall construction in the Big Bend region.
For Garcia, the trip is both political and deeply personal.
Garcia said on social media that he landed in Van Horn before traveling to Porvenir, where he grew up and where members of his family have lived for generations. He said his cousin Yolanda Alvarado has become a leading local activist opposing construction of a border wall in Porvenir and elsewhere in the Big Bend.
Garcia is a longtime figure in Texas politics and Latino civil rights advocacy.
A Dallas attorney, Garcia served on the Dallas City Council from 1991 to 1995 and became the city’s first Latino mayor pro tem. He later served three terms in the Texas House of Representatives, from 1997 to 2003.
While in the Legislature, Garcia co-authored House Bill 1403, the landmark 2001 legislation commonly known as the Texas Dream Act. The law made Texas the first state in the nation to allow certain undocumented students who graduated from Texas high schools to qualify for in-state college tuition.
Garcia also emerged as a major voice in the national immigration debate. In 2006, he helped organize a massive immigration reform march through downtown Dallas that drew hundreds of thousands of participants.
His civil rights work eventually took him to the leadership of the League of United Latin American Citizens, better known as LULAC.
Garcia was elected national president of LULAC at the organization’s national convention in Phoenix in 2018. He led the organization through 2024, frequently appearing nationally on issues involving immigration, voting rights, discrimination and Latino political representation.
Founded in Texas in 1929, LULAC is one of the country’s oldest and best-known Latino civil rights organizations.
Garcia also has longstanding ties to Democratic politics. He was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1988 and has sought several other offices during his political career, including Congress.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Texas, a law degree from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law and a master’s degree in international relations from El Colegio de México.
But Garcia’s connection to Porvenir predates his political career.
His family history is intertwined with the history of the tiny Presidio County community and the 1918 Porvenir massacre, when Texas Rangers and local ranchers removed 15 Mexican American men and boys from the village and killed them.
Garcia has identified Chico Cano, the man Texas Rangers were seeking when they descended on Porvenir, as his great-grandfather. Garcia has said stories about the Rangers, the massacre and its aftermath were passed down through his family.
More than a century later, another dispute involving federal authority, private land and the border has brought Garcia back to Porvenir.
His cousin, Yolanda Alvarado, a fifth-generation area rancher, has emerged as a prominent local opponent of the Trump administration’s border construction plans. She has worked with the No Big Bend Wall movement and has spoken publicly about federal efforts to gain access to private property for surveys and potential construction.
The federal government’s border plans have generated opposition from ranchers, conservationists, business owners and elected officials concerned about private property, wildlife, tourism and the landscape of the Big Bend.
For Garcia and Alvarado, however, the debate also carries the weight of family history.
Garcia’s return to Porvenir connects one of Texas’ most prominent Latino civil rights advocates with a new fight unfolding in the same remote border community where his family’s history has been shaped for generations.
