On a muggy September morning, Henry Martinez Jr. brushed a thin layer of dust from his uncle’s tombstone, kneeling to reposition a bundle of red silk flowers knocked askew by the wind. Eladio Martinez, Henry’s uncle, was buried at the small cemetery in West Dallas in 1945 after being killed in World War II. His late aunt and grandmother lay in a row beside his uncle. “All the family is buried here and it brings back a lot of memories,” Henry Jr. says. “The old times and fun times.”
Henry Martinez Jr, 64, has spent countless hours here at Campo Santo de Cemento Grande. It’s the cemetery of the former Southwestern States Portland Cement company, founded in 1909, in what was once an independent city outside of Dallas known as Eagle Ford.
Here, Anglos and immigrant Mexican workers lived in segregated villages. Campo Santo is the final resting place of many of the Mexican laborers who helped build the city of Dallas in the early 1900s.
