The abattoir of the prairie (A rabbit drive, Huron, California, 1891)

San Isidro Cemetery is located in Sugar Land, Texas, fifteen miles southwes t of Houston. It was once the property of Sugar Land Industries, the corpor ation that produces Imperial Sugar. San Isidro's two and a half acres were initially surrounded by fields that grew cotton, feed for livestock and veg etable for marketing. On one side of the cemetery was Oyster Creek. There w as a wooden bridge crossing the creek. The bridge was used for approximatel y ninety years. Mexican laborers working for Sugar Land Industries brought their dead in carts and held vigil in a canopy near the entrance of the cem etery. This continued for fifty years until a nearby funeral home began pre paring and burying their dead. In the late 1960s the land surrounding San Isidro was sold to a suburban ho using development company. Large, opulent homes were built, some whose back yards edge up to the boundary of the cemetery. By 1980, San Isidro was sur rounded soon after the Texas Corps of Engineers condemned the bridge. San I sidro was trapped, there was no other entrance. Ensuing litigation regardin g access to the cemetery, actual ownership of the cemetery land and harassm ent of the members of the San Isidro Cemetery Association created a emotion al and legally conflicted narrative. This study follows the history of the cemetery, the containment of a cultur e that produced the backdrop for the socio-economic success of Sugar Land, the boundaries of the cemetery that appear static, yet, with closer observa tion may be permeable and malleable. Those surrounding the cemetery want to rid themselves of it as a reminder of the past, but interestingly enough, it is kept out of view , almost impossible to be found, a secret inner spac e to the community, hiding an exotic history Sugar Land has attempted to es cape and erase.