Stunned El Paso, at last, becomes angry
EL PASO — Beneath the merciless desert sun, a shrine rises in the most unlikely of locations: a broiling parking lot where a monument of homemade crosses, flowers and notes to the dead is crowned by a Walmart sign, soaring into the barren sky.
At this site, my hometown joined the the tearful list of American cities touched by the evil of mass shootings. But what happened here on Saturday, when 21-year old Patrick Crusius came from a Dallas suburb with an AK-47, was also the greatest massacre of Latinos, my people, in American history. And so, the white crosses are covered with wishes in English and the names of the dead in Spanish.
Now there are 22 crosses. On the right, amidst the flowers and plastic hearts are two I know of: Jordan and Andre Anchondo. A young couple in their twenties, they had been married two weeks. Both died — for their ethnicity — shielding their tiny children from massacre. If I will remember anything from this crushing tragedy it will be their name: Anchondo. I want you to remember that name, too. A plastic heart is pinned to each of their crosses. He was 24. She was 25.
Throughout its history, El Paso has been in but never of Texas. We lived in another time zone on the high desert. With our sister city, El Paso-Juarez is no dusty outpost but a bustling city of more than 2 million thriving on a connection to Mexico and the American West. Our speech lacks the drawl of Texas but has the clipped cadence of Mexican Spanish. And for most of its history as part of Texas, El Paso has always been an afterthought in Austin, Dallas and Houston. We are not El Pasoans. We are
Frankly, have liked it this way. We do our own thing out here in the desert, with our side hustles, and prefer to be left alone. Yet we have steadily foreshadowed a changing Lone Star State and a new America, which is no longer predominantly white or Anglo. Already this city is over 80 percent Latino, just as Latinos have become the largest ethnic group in Texas. That’s why Crusius picked my hometown.
But something here has changed. don’t want to just fade away now. They are hurt, frightened, wounded — literally wounded. But beneath they are also seething; this wasn’t random but purposeful hatred of Latinos, with the complicity of an American president who has stirred that toxic soup for three years. And I think at this moment in the American horror story of hate, will not just disappear into history — but prove to be a forceful turning point. If white hate is the unstoppable force, El Paso symbolizes the immovable object: Latino America, 60 million strong and counting.
In the midday heat, Lupe Montellano is among the mothers and daughters, nurses and soldiers, office workers and cops who have slipped away from work for a few minutes to be with overflowing mountain of flowers, hand-written notes and sorrow that sprouts here, on this asphalt field of suffering.
“The feeling that I’ve had since Saturday has just lingered,” Montellano, a slight, soft-spoken woman, tells me. “It’s sadness, disgust and .... ”
Her voice cracks. The tears well for a minute, but she holds them back.
“It’s just, I’m mad,” she confesses. “I’m mad about how things have been going ever since Trump took over.”
The president of the United States turned this city into his personal whipping boy. He defiantly came to a Hispanic city to launch his 2020 reelection bid in January all while claiming a wall made my hometown safer; it didn’t. It was already safe. He claimed the wall was almost finished; it’s not. Not one foot of Trump’s wall has been laid down. That is Obama’s fence out there in the desert, ugly as that is.
And yes, I can draw a straight line from the president of the United States to these 22 crosses, shimmering in the sun. He has used the word “invasion” in conjunction with Latino immigrants some 60 times; just like Crusiuis, the alleged killer, did in a manifesto the police now attribute to him. Trump’s campaign has launched over 2,000 online advertisements using the word “invasion.” To Trump, Latinos are an “infestation” of “animals” of which Mexicans are “rapists.”
He has turned the desert upon which I gaze into ground zero of official terror: holding pens crowded with filthy, unshowered men who tie nooses out of desperation, cages of dirty and sick children, conditions that would be treated elsewhere as crimes against humanity. It is impossible asa and a Latino of Mexican descent — though I look like a don’t let my last name fool you — not to take all of this is a deeply personal and political threat, which has resulted in mass murder.
It’s impossible not to recall what El Paso was like in my past — and just a few days ago. The place where I first learned of the Anchondos was a school upon whose dusty football field I had once played as a boy 40 years ago. The city that I stare upon from the scene of the massacre stretches across a broad desert into Mexico. It was over there that we ate dinners on Saturdays when my sister and I were little. Where we went to the dog track. Where, as a foolish teenager, I prowled the bars.
El Paso was happy left to its devices. It didn’t want to get dragged into some fight over immigrants. It did most certainly not want to be in the cross hairs of a fumbling president and the national uproar over assault weapons. But that was before Saturday, and now all three have collided here, of all places. I am asked by a television reporter what I expect next. I reply that while we all like to think that places where mass murder takes place will pick up the pieces, recover and rebuild shattered lives.
But that’s bull.
Instead, the body count rises. Montellano has just learned that a co-worker’s husband was killed; she attended their wedding, she recalls. Now all she’s left with is a bundle of fear, anger and anxiety. This kind of brush with death makes the human mind whir with anxiety about the future — especially when your people were targeted for the color of their skin, which you share.
“That’s exactly how I feel,” she says. “I want to get it out. This is home and I’ve never had to live with fear.”
The reality is that these scars hurt, and they linger. When a terrorist, egged on by the president, rips 22 lives from their fabric, the people left behind are scarred. I have seen it many times, even up close. They are left to stumble through a nightmarish dreamscape where a loved one was just right there. That friend was just on the phone. And now, they’re gone.
And then the survivors are left to imagine — and reimagine — the horrific way they just died: scared to death, facing bullets, shielding tiny children. The victim’s cellphone videos record it perfectly: the killer’s stealthy use of time and bullets against unarmed people, the screams of terror just before he opens up again.
So yes, there is no simple, neat happy ending to this tragedy. All that will remain is those scars. But scars carry resilience. State legislators from El Paso, led by Democrat Cesar Blanco, want gun control, and they want it now. The sheriff, Richard Wiles, has said, “I want representatives who will stand up against racism, who will stand up and support the diversity of our nation and our state.”
I believe that in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott — who has done nothing about guns despite three mass shootings in Texas on his watch — will feel the pressure. So will Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has blamed video games for what happened here. Frankly, laments about video games and mental illness are the Republican Party’s new “thoughts and prayers.” Pathetically weak and cravenly useless.
In contrast, the scars will never vanish — but they will lead to a gritty determination. Something here has got to give, either the unstoppable force or the immovable object. And I don’t think my people, and Latinos, are going anywhere. I walk over to the Anchondos’ crosses; the newlyweds had just moved into a house together, and were about the same age as my own kids.
They were at Walmart to shop for a housewarming party. But in those terrible final moments, Jordan fell on her baby boy to shield him from the bullets. The baby lived.
I lean in to read the words inscribed on the red plastic heart pinned to her cross. It is identical to Andre’s. The words are from Pslams 34: 18: “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
My hometown’s spirit is, indeed, crushed. Make no mistake. But carry the name of the Anchondos forward. Because the Lord, in the form of grim determination, has arrived.