Matachín was best known as the place where Chinese workers, hopelessly lost to “melancholia,” had committed suicide en masse. Matar is Spanish for “to kill,” it was explained; chino, the word for “Chinese.” The fact that matachín is also a perfectly good Spanish word meaning “butcher” or “hired assassin,” and that the place had been called that long before the railroad came through, did not seem to matter.
how many times have i heard the story , now I learn it is not true
