Prince Harry, Meghan surprise sister of Uvalde shooting victim
Members of the royal family spent their weekend in Texas, making appearances at South by Southwest, area restaurants and even a birthday party.
A day after the Duchess of Sussex participated in a SXSW panel, the former Meghan Markle and Prince Harry made a surprise visit to a birthday party. Claudia Martinez lost her sister, Irma Garcia, in the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. According to CNN, Garcia had been a schoolteacher for 23 years when she was fatally shot alongside 20 other victims.
Just two days after the horrific shooting, Irma’s husband, Joe Garcia, died of a heart attack.
This wasn’t the first time the family had met the royal couple, Irma’s nephew John Martinez told CNN.
“It was such a beautiful experience, they’re so nice and compassionate, very down to earth, humble people,” Martinez told CNN via text message. “It was kind of by surprise, she had called my mom one random day and dropped the news on us not too long ago that she was coming to visit the kids and of course we got so excited.”
The duchess also surprised Claudia Martinez with a cake. Harry and Meghan joined in singing “Happy Birthday” while the duchess presented the cake, a magical moment captured in a video by John Martinez.
Midafternoon on International Women’s Day, Harry and Meghan stopped for a bite to eat at one of the most famous woman-owned restaurants in Texas on their way out of Austin.
Ali Clem and her late wife, LeAnn Mueller, opened La Barbecue on East Cesar Chavez Street in East Austin in 2012. The couple greeted Clem with big hugs when they stepped from their vehicle before surprising customers and taking photos on the patio around 3 p.m.
“We had a couple laughs and then talked about where our brisket came from and a little about the cooking process,” Clem told the American-Statesman. “We also talked about how competitive the barbecue world was specifically in Austin and a little about the barbecue community here in Austin and Texas.”
SXSW 2024 panel: International Women’s Day
At the annual SXSW festival, powerful women led a panel on International Women’s Day. The Duchess of Sussex was joined by NBC’s “Today” show coanchor Katie Couric, actress Brooke Shields and sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen for a panel moderated by The 19th News Editor-at-Large Errin Haines to discuss the tribulations that girls and women face in social media, pop culture, film and television, in the lead-up to the 96th Academy Awards.
In the panel, titled “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead on and off the Screen,” the five successful women emphasized a collective responsibility for creating change.
“We have a responsibility, and all of this systemic change has to happen at the same time as a cultural change is happening,” the duchess said about the dangers of social media.
Her nonprofit organization, the Archewell Foundation, which she founded alongside her husband, sponsored a report on cultural portrayals of motherhood in television. The report found that most portrayals of mothers on television show them as young, white and thin.
“What’s happening in the digital space in certain sectors of the media, we have forgotten about our humanity . ... And I understand that a lot of money is being made there. But even if it’s making dollars, it doesn’t make sense,” the duchess said. “At the end of the day, all people, but women especially, want to feel seen and want to feel heard.”