The Pharr Riot

Alfonso Loredo Flores was 20 and had gone to Ramos Hair Styling Center for a haircut. When he stepped outside to see the disturbance, a bullet struck him in the head, and he died the next day. Deputy Sheriff Robert C. Johnson was indicted for negligent homicide in March 1971. Refusing to Forget reports that a Texas Ranger inquiry judged a ricocheting police bullet the probable cause. In February 1973 a jury found Johnson not guilty. Flores's widow, Lidia, gave an oral history in 2018, and UTRGV keeps the Alfonso Flores Collection of photographs and legal papers.

What the plaque says

The Pharr Riot On Feb. 6, 1971, a small group gathered outside the Pharr Police Department to protest incidents of discrimination and brutality. The crowd grew to hundreds and the day turned violent as tensions with law enforcement escalated. During the chaos that became known as The Pharr Riot, a law enforcement officer shot and killed bystander Alfonso Loredo Flores. For several weeks, Union y Fuerza and other groups picketed city hall and boycotted businesses. Events in Pharr received national media attention. In the aftermath, the city's mayor, commissioners, and chief of police resigned. In June 1972, citizens elected their first Mexican American mayor. These important events in Texas' Chicano movement advanced civil rights and political engagement. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 7.3 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 8.6 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• La Lomita Chapel — 9.6 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 12 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

More markers nearby

• City of Pharr — 0.4 mi
• First Pharr School — 0.5 mi
• San Juan Townsite — 1.6 mi
• Tom Mayfield — 1.8 mi