'You can feel the fear right now': Uvalde school shooting sends shocks rippling across Mexico
UVALDE, Texas — Esmeralda Bravo picked up photo prints of her 10-year-old granddaughter from a photo studio in Uvalde, Texas, on Friday afternoon. Nevaeh Bravo was one of 19 children and two teachers killed in Tuesday’s shooting -- the deadliest in the U.S. this year.
She shook with anger as she described how the family spent agonizingly long hours waiting for an update on the killing that Tuesday, not realizing the two girls had been killed almost immediately.
“We were going crazy looking for them and all the time their bodies were in the classroom,” Bravo said. “They were such sweet children.”
The 64-year-old lost both a granddaughter and grandniece in the massacre, she said. The family has already raised over $75,000 to cover Nevaeh’s funeral expenses. But not everyone will be able to attend her memorial service: one of Neveah’s grandfathers won’t be able to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S.
“He can’t come because he doesn’t have his papers,” Bravo said.
Over half of Uvalde, a community of about 16,000, speaks a language other than English at home. Four out of five residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census. The town is only an hour's drive away from the southern border. Robb Elementary, where the shooting took place, greets its students in two languages on its front lawn sign: “Welcome” and “Bienvenidos.”
The shockwaves of the massacre, the second-deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history, are reverberating across the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Directly across the border from Uvalde lies the Mexican city of Piedras Negras, in the state of Coahuila. The city’s archbishop said deep ties run between the two communities.
“A lot of people in Piedras Negras have lived in Uvalde,” Alonso Gerardo Garza Treviño said. “And people in Uvalde used to live in Piedras Negras, which is the largest city in México that’s close to Uvalde.”
Rojelio Torres, 10, was another victim of Tuesday's massacre. His dad, Federico, who comes from Piedras Negras, expressed frustration that an 18-year-old could buy a rifle in the United States.
"You can't sell them a beer, but you can sell them a gun, ammunition," he told a Mexican news station.
Rojelio and his fourth grade classmates were only three days away from summer break, and he planned to spend it swimming at a local river, his grandmother, Evadulia Fernandez, said.
Over 2,000 mass school shootings have taken place in the U.S. dating back to 1970, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Garza Treviño said fears that something similar could happen in his own country have permeated the border.
“There’s hardly any discussion about anything else everywhere I’ve gone,” Garza Treviño said. “You can feel the fear right now, especially among parents who have kids in schools.”
Thursday, Coahuila’s secretary of education, Francisco Saracho Navarro, announced he would permanently reimplement a backpack search program to screen for weapons at school, multiple Mexican news outlets reported.
“We’re going to strengthen these measures and protocols, and most importantly, prepare ourselves for next school year,” Saracho Navarro told Tele Satillo.
Similar programs across Mexico have been met with controversy in the past. Mexico's National Commission of Human Rights found in 2019 that one such program in Mexico City was a "violation of educational human rights," claiming it criminalized Mexican children. The Mexican Supreme Court has also found other "Safe Backpack" programs to be unconstitutional in previous years.
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Following Tuesday’s mass shooting, Garza Treviño called his American counterpart, San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller. Together, the two led mass Wednesday night at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde.
During the mass, García-Siller gathered all the children to the front of the church and addressed them. He spoke in English at first.
"They were the hope of all of us in the church," he said.
Then, the archbishop gestured the sign of the cross and "peace," instructing the children to do the same.
"I start signing because then, all of us were connected," he said. "That gave the thought of how we can connect with people. We need to be creative and find new ways to connect."
“The connections, first of all, are in the people. I know they’re close by because of the border, but it is because of the people,” García-Siller said. “All of the celebrations we have had have been bilingual, bicultural – because we are.”
August will mark the three-year anniversary of another mass shooting along the U.S.-México border that left 22 people dead and another 25 wounded in El Paso, Texas, many of them Latinos. Eight of the victims who died were Mexican citizens. For many, the El Paso shooting was a grim reminder that the concept of the American dream can be just that — a dream.
Martín Vazquez and his wife, Silvia, watched the passing traffic in their food truck under the hot Texas sun Friday afternoon, waiting for customers to line up.
Silvia Vazquez sweated through her baseball cap in the 95-degree heat as she took orders of Jalisco-style street tacos.
The husband and wife said their family members back home in the Mexican state of Jalisco called to check on them after the shooting. They were worried, Silvia Vazquez said.
“You see what happens in other towns, but you never think it would happen in yours,” Martín Vazquez said. “The whole town is grieving, wherever you go.”
Throughout the community, he said, “there’s silence, there’s sadness.”
The taco truck owner has lived in Uvalde for 20 years. He returned to the U.S. from visiting family in Mexico the same day 21 people in his community were killed, many of them familiar faces at his taco truck.
“Everybody always says ‘In Mexico, it’s dangerous,’” Vazquez said. “But no, because sometimes there’s more danger here in the United States — because you can leave your house and not know if you’re going to come back.”
Contributing: Trevor Hughes, Paste BN