One year later, El Paso reflects on the hate behind Walmart shooting
Roberto Jurado hid with his 88- year- old mother between toy machines at the entrance of the Cielo Vista Walmart.
Lying in broken glass, he listened as the sound of gunshots grew closer. Then them an with the AK- 47 was only 10 feet away.
“That day, I believe I stared death in the eyes,” Jurado, 53, said.
But the shooter left after his attention was drawn to a moving vehicle outside the store, and Jurado and his mother survived.
Jurado spent the next few hours helping victims in the Aug. 3 mass shooting and giving statements to police. Later that evening, he sat down, popped open a beer and flipped on the news: The gunman had allegedly driven more than 600 miles across the state from North Texas to target Hispanics in the border community.
The fear and adrenaline he felt throughout the day turned to anger. He'd been a target of the deadliest attack against Latinos in recent U.S. history.
“I think we all were, because of the color of our skin,” Jurado said.
Twenty- three people were killed in the shooting. Them an charged in the attack allegedly wrote a 2,356-word white supremacist rant before the shooting and posted it to the online message board 8chan, which carries a reputation for being a breeding ground for white supremacy.
The now 22- year- old from Allen, Texas, decried an “invasion” by immigrants to the United States in the post. He cited a 2011 French book by Renaud Camus called “The Great Replacement,” which promoted a conspiracy theory that the “white race” was being replaced by nonwhite, or non-European, people.
Those sort of racist ideas can emerge from changing demographics in a country where Hispanics accounted for more than half the nation's population growth from 2010 to 2019, according to the Pew Research Center.
“When you have a few people of color, the community is not seen so much as a threat,” said Maria Cristina Morales, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at El Paso. “But the more that the population grows – the population of Latinos grow for instance – the more fear that there's going to be a loss of power.”
El Paso congresswoman worried this day would come
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, was
holding a town hall in her hometown the day of the shooting. The freshman congress woman, less than a year into her first term, had just responded to a question about conditions for migrants at the southern border when the microphone was removed from her hand. After a few moments, Escobar announced there was an active shooter at Walmart.
In the days that followed, President Donald Trump visited El Paso. The trip was met with criticism by many in El Paso, including poli tical leaders who told him to stay away. Some victims and their families refused to meet with the president.
Trump has called immigrants“animals” and “rapists.” He once chuckled when an audience member at a Florida rally suggested shooting migrants.
A year later, Escobar admits an attack against Hispanics like the one experienced in her hometown was something she'd long feared.
“I had been worried for some time that something really awful was going to happen,” Escobar said. “I had felt unsettled between the really horrific language used by the president to describe immigrants, to the inhumane treatment of them.”
Asked about the criticism of t he president's language, are pres entat ive of the campaign said, “Democrats using a tragedy to score political points is beyond disgusting.”
“Our hearts go out to the victims who are being used by political opportunist ,” said Trump Victory spokeswoman Samantha Cotten. “This day is a day for reflection and healing.”
El Paso has been described as the testing ground for many of the Trump administration's immigration policies, including the widely condemned separation of families at the border.
The president received backlash–including from fellow Republican, El Paso Mayor Dee Margo – during the 2019 State of the Union address when he claimed El Paso was a dangerous city until a
fence was built along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“All of this plays a role in how people view immigrants and minorities,” Escobar said. “When you treat people like animals, then you strip them of their humanity, and I had really been carrying a fear for a long time that something bad was going to happen.”
`Aug. 3 was not circumstantial'
Wearing camouflage reminiscent of mi litary members and often armed, members of the United Constitutional Patriots, a militia group, patrolled a portion of the U.S .- Mexico border in New Mexico, about 20 minutes from El Paso, in the months before the El Paso shooting.
The civilian group received backlash f rom the ACLU of New Mexico, after sharing a video of members detaining more than 300 migrants who crossed the border illegally.
A spokesperson for the group has said videos shared prove there is a “crisis” at the southern border and that it wasn't something manufactured by Trump.
“Before the attack, there was a narrative, a very powerful narrative coming from the president of the United States,” Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, an immigration advocacy group, said. “And unfortunately, that narrative was about racism and xenophobia and white supremacy.”
The shooting at Walmart took place as a result of the merging of three systemic problems, said Garcia: gun access, white supremacy and the president' s anti- immigrant rhetoric.
“August 3r d was not circumstantial,” Garcia added. “It was something t hat happened because three evil systems came together.”
A year later, Garcia wishes he could say the Aug. 3 shooting prompted a closer look at racism and combating hate, but he cannot.
“Probably we are in a worse situation than before,” he added.