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1 topic to highlight: Humanity in the tragedy
Residents of Uvalde, and people from across Texas and beyond, are showing their support for this largely Latino city after the massacre that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Big
Picture: Uvalde, Texas is a small town that is overwhelmingly Latino, mostly Mexican-American.
Ninety percent of the school population at Robb Elementary School, where the killer opened fire, is Hispanic.
Details
: The Uvalde shooting has brought out the good in people, in the midst of tragedy.
Community members in the Uvalde town square for a vigil on May 24. Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images
Gladys CastillĂłn, the mother of a fourth grader, says she led groups of children being evacuated to another building, even when she wasn't sure if her daughter had made it out.
Her girl is now safe, CastillĂłn told Noticias Telemundo.
Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, where some of the students hid during the shooting because it is across the street from the elementary school, announced Wednesday that it is hosting the services free of charge.
Many people lined up to donate blood for the hospitalized people.
Others have started fundraising campaigns.
In San Antonio, businesses collect teddy bears for survivors.
Grief counselors have arrived to assist free of charge, and residents have left flowers and crosses in honor of the victims.
Local food trucks
offered free food to families outside the building where they were gathering for news.
El Remedio Taco Truck, from San Antonio, gave out birria and quesadillas to people outside the Uvalde civic center and at the nightly vigil.
In his own words
: “It is our responsibility and our priority to give back and be there for our community, just as they are there for us,” El Remedio co-owner Joshua Palacios told the San Antonio Express News.
“I'm sure the last thing on their minds is eating.
So we are going to be there,” she added.
2. Uvalde, a history of resistance
Few probably knew of Uvalde
before the attack, but this city has deep roots in the Mexican-American struggle for civil rights.
Big picture
: The massacre took place in a school district where one of the largest strikes in US civil rights history took place.
Uvalde has educated Latino journalists, historians, and intellectuals for generations.
Olga Muñoz RodrĂguez, a resident of Ugalde, raises a banner protesting school cuts in the 1970sVoces Oral History Center/University of Texas
Recount
: For decades, the residents of the town, named after the Spanish military commander Juan de Ugalde, lived between economic and ethnic-racial divisions.
In 1970 a small group of students of Mexican descent staged a strike to protest the district's refusal to renew the contract of Josué Garza, a Mexican-American teacher.
The students gave a non-Hispanic white school board a list of 14 demands, including hiring more Latino educators and organizing Chicano history courses.
The board refused to negotiate.
In response, the strike grew from about 200 students to 500 people.
It lasted six weeks and became one of the longest school protests in the country's history.
In his own words
: “We were tired of discrimination,” former student Sergio Porras said in a special historical digest from the University of Texas at Austin.
“We said, 'We've had enough of this.
Why don't we go on strike or just go out and march?
And so it began,” he explained.
The Intrigue
: Non-Hispanic leaders in Uvalde called in the Texas Rangers to help put down the protests.
Texas Rangers stood on buildings with rifles pointed at protesters as helicopters flew low.
The protest was eventually crushed and the students were suspended for a year.
Many left and finished school elsewhere.
Yes, but
: The mobilization in Uvalde coincided with the beginnings of the Chicano Movement, the protests for the rights of Latino populations in the US. Those who demonstrated in Uvalde ended up running for political office and little by little they came to lead the city they had sought to make it more equitable.
3. Echoes of past traumas, and how to move on
In El Paso, which in 2019 experienced a shooting at a Walmart supermarket motivated by hatred of Hispanics, what happened in Uvalde has revived the pain of the community.
Leaders of that Texas city talk about how Uvalde can get back to life and heal, step by step, after what happened.
Overview
: Although much smaller, the city of Uvalde is in many ways like El Paso.
More than 80% of the population is Latino, with very close and linked families, a lot of Catholic devotion and hardworking people.
[Black, Asian and Latino communities have faced mass shootings. Thus they seek to support each other]
In his own words
: El Paso County Judge Ricardo A. Samaniego is one of the leaders who helped that city recover after the 2019 shooting. Samaniego told Axios Latino that it was painful to see how in Uvalde they lived a situation so similar
Texas school shooting revives Parkland survivor's fears: 'Very terrible, very sad'
May 24, 202202:30
"It's like we built a healing garden in our village and we think something great is going to bloom out of it... but this happens and you feel like you didn't do anything because everything is happening again," he said.
The judge added that it is very important to talk about resurfacing trauma feelings.
"We can't keep it in our chest," he said.
Dee Margo, a former El Paso mayor who was running the city during the 2019 shooting, also had trouble holding back tears.
"It shocks me to think about that August 3. I've been told I probably have PTSD [post-traumatic stress syndrome] and maybe I do," he told Axios.
Like El Paso or Parkland, Florida, which saw a school shooting in 2018
— not to mention countless other cities that have suffered similar massacres in recent years — Uvalde will never forget what it suffered.
But those who have gone through the same thing indicate that little by little a way will be found to remember the victims while the community manages to rebuild its life, even if it is different from before.
Tragedy cannot define our community or our region.
I've said it will be a part of our history forever, but the job is to make it a less prominent part than everything else we can accomplish together."
dee margo, former mayor of el paso
4. In memory of those we lost: let us not forget their names
They loved to sing and dance,
play video games, baseball and softball.
They were a son on the student honor roll;
a grandson learning to play soccer;
a daughter who enjoyed being with her family;
teachers with a big heart...
Children between 8 and 10 years old, almost all of them Hispanic: the faces of the victims of the Texas school shooting
May 25, 202201:11
Among the
victims of the attack on Robb Elementary
who have been identified are:
Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares
, age 10.
Her father, Jacinto Cazares, said the little girl "had a big heart" and was "full of love."
Annabell Guadalupe RodrĂguez
, age 10, was Cazares's second cousin.
They were in the same classroom.
Nevaeh Alyssa Bravo
, a fourth grader.
Eliahana Cruz Torres
, 10, had been very emotional in the days before the attack because she was about to play an important softball game.
José Flores Jr.
was “always full of energy,” his father said.
Makenna Lee Elrod
, 10, "was beautiful, funny, smart and amazing," according to her aunt Allison McCollough.
Uziyah Garcia
was 9 years old.
He loved learning soccer moves, according to his grandfather, Manny Renfro.
Eliahna GarcĂa
, 10, was an outgoing girl who really liked her family.
Amerie Jo Garza
, 10, was "full of life, a joker, always smiling," according to her father.
Xavier LĂłpez
, 10, was eagerly awaiting the summer.
He had just been named to the honor roll because of his grades.
Jayce Carmelo Luevanos
, 10, was remembered as someone who loved to make people laugh.
Jailah Nicole Silguero
, Luevanos's cousin, enjoyed dancing very much, the 11-year-old's grandmother, Linda Gonzales, told the Daily Beast.
Tess Marie Mata
was a fourth grader whose family said she had an "infectious laugh."
Alithia Ramirez
, 10, was very artistic and loved to draw, her father, Ryan Ramirez, told NBC.
Lexi Rubio
, 10, recently received a good citizen award at Robb Elementary School, her parents told CNN.
Layla Salazar
, 10, liked to dance to TikTok videos and was passionate about swimming, her father, Vincent Salazar, told The Washington Post.
Rojelio Torres
, 10, was a "hard-working person," his aunt Precious Perez said, according to the AP news agency.
Irma Garcia
taught at Robb Elementary School for 23 years.
This mother of four loved to barbecue with her husband.
Eva Mireles
, 44, a teacher like Garcia, was remembered as "a beautiful person and a dedicated teacher" who had worked at the school for 17 years.
5. In other news: What is at stake this Sunday in Colombia
A leftist could become
president of Colombia for the first time in more than a century.
News Momentum
: Gustavo Petro is leading the polls ahead of Sunday's election in one of Latin America's largest economies.
Petro has a 17-point lead over conservative Federico "Fico" Gutierrez, closely followed by populist Rodolfo Hernandez, a businessman who has drawn comparisons to former President Donald Trump.
However, Petro is unlikely to get the 51% of votes needed to win outright this Sunday given the number of candidates.
In that case, there will most likely be a second round, to be held on June 19.
The Big Picture
: Colombia is one of the largest economies in Latin America, and whoever is elected president will face several storms of socioeconomic unrest, attempts at tax reform, the continued exile of Venezuelans, and violence that has continued in certain parts of the country despite to the peace agreements signed with the FARC in 2016.
A wall with paintings representing Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, Colombian presidential formula, in CaliRaúl Arboleda/AFP / via Getty Images
Petro has in fact been criticized because before being a legislator and mayor of Bogotá he was part of a now-defunct guerrilla group, the M-19.
His opponents claim that this makes him unsuitable for fighting armed groups such as the FARC dissidents that have not laid down their arms and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Petro has suggested resuming peace negotiations with the ELN.
His platform with Francia Márquez, who is the first Afro-Colombian vice-presidential candidate, also focuses on fighting corruption, making university tuition more affordable, and giving more state support to farmers so that fewer of them feel forced to grow leaves. coke to survive
Thanks for reading us;
we return next week.
Do you want to see any of the previous editions?
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