{"id":13078,"date":"2023-08-05T16:03:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T16:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13078"},"modified":"2023-08-05T16:03:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T16:03:26","slug":"when-hate-came-to-el-paso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13078","title":{"rendered":"When Hate Came to El Paso"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The worst massacre aimed at Latinos in American history happened in my hometown, to my people.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Richard Parker<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The\nolder man next to me on the metal bench, dressed so dignified in his peach\ndress shirt, dark pants and dress shoes, touches me gently on the elbow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis Saturday late afternoon, and we are both in front of MacArthur Middle\nSchool, where the flags already droop in the desert heat, approaching 100\ndegrees, at half-mast. Police officers, Red Cross workers and firefighters of\nall kinds come and go. This little school is where the living come to look for\nthe missing and the dead after a white male from the Dallas suburbs named\nPatrick Crusius, 21, allegedly came to my hometown to commit the largest\nmassacre of Hispanics in American history. The handwritten sign over the\nschoolhouse door says it all: \u201cLooking for Family and Friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind\nhis glasses, tears welled up in the eyes of my bench mate, Charles Almanzan,\n70. Wordlessly, he shows me his phone: There is a picture of two small\nchildren, a girl of 2 and a boy of 5. The little boy is in the hospital. The\nlittle girl is still missing, the subject of a frantic search by Mr. Almanzan\u2019s\nbrother-in-law. Their mother, Jordan Kay Jamrowski Anchondo, at just 25, is\ndead, killed by Mr. Crusius, along with at least 19 others, at a Walmart not\nfar from downtown El Paso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nyou want to know what a mass shooting is like in your hometown, it\u2019s like this:\ntext alerts on your phone, a frantic woman on local television begging people\nto bring water to waiting families, 200 people lining up to give blood in the\nblistering heat, helicopters thundering overhead, the dead left lying inside\nthe crime scene called \u201chorrific\u201d by the police chief. Those waiting on word of\ndead and lost stand calm and dignified as strangers pull up with truckloads of\nthat bottled water. It\u2019s also like this: a stab in the heart not to your hometown,\nbut to your people, in my case Latinos. Mr. Crusius specifically came here to\nmy town, to kill my people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh\nGod, oh God, oh God, oh God,\u201d my little sister, Janet, also the child of an\nAmerican father and a Mexican mother, says to me. \u201cOh God, oh God, oh God, oh\nGod.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nread the manifesto believed to be by Mr. Crusius, though not confirmed by the\npolice, who traveled over 600 miles to kill and wound men, women, old people\nand children. Cell phone video posted online by victims betrays the dreaded\nelapse of time as they die: ten shots fired from an AK-47, not in rapid\nsuccession but in cunning staccato. First a shot. Then a long pause. Then one\nafter another after another. And then there is the shout in Spanish: \u201cAy, no!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh,\nno!\u201d the man screams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis\nattack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,\u201d the manifesto reads,\nbefore eerily and coolly describing the killer\u2019s preferences of weapons and\nammunition, politics, economics and racist philosophy. His idea is\ndevastatingly simple: Killing Hispanics will stop immigrants from coming and\ndrive citizens to leave. \u201cI am simply defending my country from cultural and\nethnic replacement brought on by invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse, Latinos arrived in Texas from Mexico in 1690, when it was all New\nSpain. My people settled the harsh brush country of south Texas, fought\nComanches and Apaches and brought Christianity to America. My mother\u2019s uncle, a\nMexican citizen, fought in the Navy in World War II and perished. My Mexican\ngrandfather came to Texas as an orphan, lived in Laredo and returned to Mexico.\nMy Arkansan father, a soldier, met my mother in Monterrey and we settled way\nout here in the deserts of West Texas in 1970. We invaded nothing; we were\nalready here long before Mr. Crusius was even conceived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nhe is just another passing figure in the moment of modern American violence\nthat we all are living through: the predictable weakness of Republican\npoliticians in the face of the gun lobby amid the ready availability of weapons\nof war. The other day, I perused a pawnshop, bought a fine fly rod but noticed\nthat the only guns in vast supply were AR-15s, the kissing cousin of our\nfavored weapon of war, the M-16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most\nsignificantly though, the El Paso massacre \u2014 and that\u2019s what it is, it is not a\nmass shooting but a premeditated massacre \u2014 was the inevitable byproduct of the\nTrump era\u2019s anti-immigrant, and anti-Latino invective, which with its\npervasive, vile racism has poisoned our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

El\nPaso-Juarez is a big, bustling desert city of over two million, straddling the\nUnited States and Mexico. My hometown has virtually zero modern history of\nethnic strife; El Paso alone is over 80 percent Hispanic. We switch from\nEnglish to Spanish without skipping a beat and we are fine with that. But the\nTrump era is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nhas brought us walls, internment camps and children in cages. The massacre is\nthe outcome I have feared for years now, and I can\u2019t help but feel that its\ngenesis lies with the president of the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nput all of this into perspective, there have been other massacres of Latinos in\nAmerican history. The worst was the notorious Porvenir massacre, 101 years ago,\nin what is now a vanished border town. Texas Rangers descended on the town in\nthe early morning hours of Jan. 28, 1918, led off 15 Hispanic men and boys and\nexecuted them. The remaining inhabitants did exactly what Saturday\u2019s shooter\nwanted: They fled to Chihuahua. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back\nat MacArthur Middle School, Mr. Almanzan tucks away his phone. A Jehovah\u2019s Witness,\nhe had been out knocking on doors when the horror struck. Many asked him how\nGod would allow this, and he gently responds by showing me Job 34:10, which in\npart reads: \u201cFar be it from God, that he should do wickedness.\u201d No, we both\nagreed, switching from English to Spanish. God did not do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did. In allowing those weapons of war on our streets. In giving credence to sociopathic racists, only one of whom will be in jail tonight. In poisoning our body politic with the occupant of the White House. On the horizon, storm clouds build over the desert mesas to weep upon this desert city. And still the people keep coming, desperately bringing water to those here, quietly searching for the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Parker is the author of \u201cLone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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The worst massacre aimed at Latinos in American history happened in my hometown, to my people. by Richard Parker The older man next to me on the metal bench, dressed so dignified in his peach […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82],"class_list":{"0":"post-13078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13080,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions\/13080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}