The Son

The Garcia house is a recurring motif that points to Violence as the Catalyst of History. It stands as a monument to the massacre in which the McCulloughs slaughtered the Garcia family in misguided and misapplied vengeance. The murders cement the McCulloughs as a family to be feared. Sometime after the massacre, Eli sets the Garcia house ablaze—not because of its symbolic value, but only because of the strategic advantage it affords their ranch. This affirms that the wanton violence against the Garcias was never about justice for Glenn’s injury, but about the threat the Garcias and other prominent families pose to the McCulloughs.

For future generations, the story of the Garcia house is reshaped to fit the mythology that favors the McCulloughs. Jeannie uses the house to play pretend, symbolically repurposing it for her entertainment despite the violence it represents. It is commonly acknowledged in Ulises’s time that the McCulloughs killed the Garcias, but when the historian shows Ulises the photograph of the Texas Rangers standing among the dead Garcia bodies, the evidence legitimizes their brutal actions as something sanctioned by the state. The McCulloughs’ version of the story thus becomes the official history, even as Peter’s diaries speak against it.