📢 Axios Latino is the newsletter that summarizes every Tuesday and Thursday the key news for Latino communities in the hemisphere. You can subscribe by clicking here.
1. The Spotlight: How Uvalde Is Remembering the Victims
Throughout Uvalde there are several reminders of and tributes to the 21 fatalities of the shooting at the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, which in part show the tenacity a year after the people who lived through the worst.
- Outside Robb Elementary School, site of the attack, there is a cross for each of the victims with their name and tributes such as flowers and rosaries.
- In a fountain in the center of the city there is also a series of notes written by friends and relatives of the victims in remembrance of them, in English and Spanish.
- Along with those notes and crosses are details that account for the childhood of most of the victims. Next to Maite RodrĂguez's is a stuffed shark. Next to Annabell Rodriguez's are bubble wands; for Amerie there are bags of Sour Patch Kids and Airheads candy.
- Still hanging this week from the cross of Eva Mireles, one of the two teachers killed in the attack, was a balloon that was put there on Mother's Day.
There are other tributes to the 19 minors and two teachers who died on May 24, 2022. Of the most notable are colorful murals that capture each one.
- They are the result of the Healing Uvalde project devised by local artist Abel Ortiz.
Murals honoring Jailah Nicole Silguero, Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, Jayce Carmelo, and Nevaeh Alyssa BravoCourtesy of Abel Ortiz
- Ortiz tells Axios reporter Megan Stringer that having a permanent memorial following a traumatic event can help a community move forward. But for that the monument or tribute must be designed so that it is not more painful to see for those affected, adds Ortiz, who is also an art professor at Southwest Texas Junior College.
- So the idea, with the consent of the victims' families, was to capture the 21 people with details that their loved ones remembered about them.
- Amerie Jo Garza's mural, for example, shows her dressed in her favorite color, lavender, and surrounded by what she loved most in life: Chik-Fil-A nuggets, art pieces and a vanilla milk drink from Starbucks.
In her own words, "That's how they're still kids in a way," says Alina De Leon, who worked as an assistant artist on Amerie's mural. "They still had a lot of life ahead of them and what we wanted was to maintain that image of them, of people who are still full of life."
2. Family requests fall on deaf ears
In the year since the Uvalde shooting, the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature has largely ignored calls for stricter gun laws from victims' relatives-turned-activists.
Overview: Families drove two and a half hours back and forth to the Texas Capitol last summer, fall and the current legislative session to urge more restrictions on obtaining guns.
- But because the issue often stirs partisan passions, those calls didn't bear fruit among Republican assemblymen. Instead, they took steps to bolster school safety such as providing for teachers to have guns or more mental health services.
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Count: In the current legislative session, which ends Monday, May 29, a bill was initially advanced to raise the minimum age to purchase certain semiautomatic rifles, which would have gone from 18 to 21. The issue was a priority for Uvalde's families.
- Two Republicans initially joined Democratic assemblymen to push the bill through the floor after it passed committee. It coincided with the vote that there was another shooting, this one at a shopping center in Allen, Texas. However, in the end the rest of the Republican caucus blocked the debate on the project and it stalled in the plenary.
Uvalde organizes several tribute events one year after the massacre
May 22, 202302:09
Yes, but: Activists who promote greater control over the sale or carrying of weapons say the tentative advance shows possibilities for future changes within the Legislature.
- Texas Gun Sense Executive Director Nicole Golden tells Axios reporter Nicole Cobler that it was a "historic achievement" that the bill was voted on in committee, because it's the first time in recent Texas history that gun control measures advance even a little.
The other perspective: "We strongly believe that anyone who can exercise the fundamental right to vote or who is considered of age to be drafted into the armed forces should also enjoy all the protections guaranteed by our Constitution," the Texas Federation of Young Republicans said of the proposal to raise the age of sale.
3. More flexible gun laws
State legislatures across the U.S. have passed more laws expanding access to firearms than measures restricting it since the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde a year ago, according to an analysis by Axios Latino based on data provided by the Giffords Center.
In numbers: More than 1,700 gun-related bills have been introduced since the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24, 2022. Ninety-three of those bills were enacted and signed into law.
- Of these, 56 per cent were to expand access to firearms or to benefit the arms industry; with measures such as allowing weapons to be manufactured in that state or companies to be protected from possible lawsuits.
- The rest of the bills passed, 44%, restrict access to firearms or are in support of victims or potential victims of gun-related cases, according to the review by Russell and Axios reporter Erin Davis.
- At the federal level, the Joe Biden administration approved a bipartisan measure that expands background checks so that those under 21 can buy guns and provides funding for greater school safety and mental health in schools.
Giffords Center and Axios Research. Graphic: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals
Up close: In 17 states, they enacted only laws to make the carrying or sale of weapons more flexible. In 14 of them, control of both legislative chambers and the governorship are in the hands of Republicans.
- In the other three (Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina) the legislative caucuses are controlled by the Republican Party but the governors are Democrats.
Beyond: Several of the laws enacted expanding access to guns are "financial privacy" measures, according to the Axios Latino review. These prohibit gun retailers from using specific codes on receipts when a purchase is made with credit cards. That is, they make it more difficult to track the sale.
In his own words: "It's a mistake. It's costing lives. It really is that simple," Rudy Espinoza Murray of the advocacy group California Moms Demand Action said of the data that there are more laws in favor of the gun industry.
- "We're not trying to restrict responsible gun owners from accessing guns. What we're trying to do is make sure guns don't end up in the wrong hands," he added.
- Espinoza Murray added that families of victims of gun violence suffer even more when proposals for greater gun control are not approved. "But we tell them you have to keep going," he said.
The other perspective: The National Rifle Association did not respond to a request for comment.
3. Uvalde's mental health needs
A year after the tragedy, as feelings of trauma intensify again for some people, Uvalde's families need more mental health support.
What's going on: About 2,000 Uvalde residents have sought mental health support at the Ecumencial Center since the shooting. The organization saw an increase of about 20 percent in the number of people seeking its services as this week's anniversary approached, the center's executive director, Mary Beth Frisk, tells Axios reporter Madalyn Mendoza.
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images
- Ecumencial Center and Family Service, two San Antonio-based nonprofits, have hired additional counselors or have additional staff on standby to ensure services this week.
- Alejandra Castro, director of rural services for Family Service, says many members of the Uvalde community have not only experienced anxiety and trauma, but are dealing with financial stress. Several of the survivors' parents missed work for a while to help their children.
Big picture: Jessica Gomez, executive director of the Momentous Institute and a Dallas-based licensed psychologist, says mental health providers are increasingly encountering people with trauma and chronic stress due to violence in their communities. Treatment for each person varies, according to Gomez, and that's a challenge considering the shortage of mental health professionals.
- "For some people it can be talk therapy, but for others it can be music therapy, art therapy, movement, so we have to adapt to how the person processes the trauma, because we know that the trauma is trapped in the body, it needs to find a way out," Gomez says.
- The trauma of a mass shooting can be exacerbated around the date of the incident, he adds.
- "My biggest concern right now, and what I hear only from the school and mental health programs we do at Momentous Institute, is the chronic stress that people experience. Just when we think we're recovering from one thing, there's another," Gomez says.
5. A journey to give relief
This weeka group of children who survived the Uvalde shooting will seek to have their minds set on another topic: preparations for a trip to Disneyland paid for in part with funds raised online.
Five children who survived the massacre in Uvalde do not want to go to school on the anniversary day
April 14, 202302:02
Details: The parents of Kendall Olivarez, Miah Cerrillo, Gilbert Mata and AJ Martinez, all survivors of one of the two elementary classrooms where the worst of the shooting occurred, created a GoFundMe in April to pay for the trip from Texas to California.
- "We want to think about the future, not the past," AJ said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo about why the children asked for the trip.
- Two of them have not returned to face-to-face classes because they remain fearful. Martinez, Mata and Cerrillo still have bullet fragments in their wounds from that day.
In his own words: "They don't want to remember that bad time they went through, they want to have something joyful," Miguel Angel Cerrillo, Miah's father, told Noticias Telemundo in April.
Thanks for reading! We returned on Thursday.
If you want to share your experiences or send us suggestions and comments, send an email to axioslatino@axios.com.
Do you want to read any of the previous editions?
What are Biden's plans to win back Latino voters?
How Latin American leaders bet on lithium, the so-called 'white gold'
White supremacist groups would seek to attract more Latinos, according to specialists