Like most Americans, I’m sickened when I hear about another mass shooting. Since the massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, it’s become more real whenever I enter Northgate Market, a super Mexican grocery store between Culver City and Venice, California, a store noticeably less crowded since the ICE raids started.
The shooter at a El Paso Walmart killed 23 people, young and old, mostly Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. He admitted, outright, he drove hours from his home to kill Mexicans and immigrants. On his website, he wrote, “This attack is in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Obviously he doesn't know history. Texas was always majority Mexican until the White settlers invaded after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In the earliest Texas census, Mexicans were considered "White," confusing, so no one knew the exact number of Mexicans in the state.Even today, the majority is split just about 40-40 percent, between Mexican/Latino and White.
After the El Paso shooting, many of my Facebook “friends,” third and fourth generation Mexican, were posting they were shaken and saddened by the tragic event, uncomfortable to use the word "racist." For me, it was a wakeup call. The violence is now closer to home, reminding me how some of our radicalized fellow Americans have placed Mexicans/Latinos in their crosshairs.
I suppose it isn't anything new. In 1848, the U.S. government forced Mexico to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding more than 50% of its territory to Washington, agreeing to the Rio Grande as southern border, and accepting $15,000,000 in compensation, in what Ulysses S. Grant dubbed, “One of the most unjust [wars] ever waged by a stronger against the weaker country.” It’s the war Henry David Thoreou protested when he refused to pay taxes and was thrown into jail.
White “settlers” came west, in droves, some bringing their slaves, many bringing a White Supremacist “slave mentality.” Though slavery had been outlawed in Texas, "racism" had not. The settlers, usually supported by law enforcement, usurped Mexican lands, jailed and executed anyone who complained or defended themselves and their families, and introduced “Juan Crow,” essentially treating Tejanos as de facto slaves.
If Tejanos retaliated or organized insurrections, like in 1915, when it was rumored that Mexican, Chinese, and African Americans started the “Liberating Army for Races and Peoples,” possibly a ruse for highway robbery, the raiders killed three White Americans, under something called El Plan de San Diego, to kill all White males over sixteen and take back the Southwest, a notion one judge called, "more lunacy than insurgency.” The small group did send fear through settlers as they ripped up railroad tracks, telegraph lines, and burned bridges.
The U.S. Army intervened and sent in 4,000 troops, supported by the Texas Rangers. Vigilante "settler" groups spawned and took the law into their own hands. In a matter of days, they executed 300, mostly Texas Mexicans, guilty or not, lynching and burning, what people in south Texas referred to as La Matanza, a time of terror. Accoring to historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, in her book
Bad Mexicans, Race, & Empire in the Borderlands, scholars estimated, in the subsequent years, as many as 5,000 Mexicans were killed, probably more, their corpses tossed into the deserts and the Rio Grande. It's an uncomfortable history, and one rarely told.
On Facebook, many blamed Donald Trump’s rants against immigrants as the catalyst that drove the shooter to execute so many innocent people in the El Paso Walmart. Others argued, “words don’t commit murder, people do,” so, to hold Trump responsible is playing politics.
“Friends” began posting their reactions, some obscene and offensive, eventually deteriorating into conservatives bashing liberals and vice-versa, some friends not sounding very friendly, others down right indignant. Lost in the fray were the deaths of innocent people, the suffering of the families, and the threat to all Americans everywhere.
Of course, gun control became the issue, a large percentage of Americans supporting a ban on assault weapons and laws to begin universal background checks when purchasing a weapon; some who said there were already enough laws in place to assure “crazies” can’t purchase guns but the other side arguing the existing laws don’t go far enough, the same political cliches dished out by politicians and television pundits, who offered “prayers” instead of sensible gun “laws.”
Some “friends” claimed the main problem was a Godlessness in America, too many single families, and lack of old-school, traditional values, like respect for each other, prayer in the schools. Then came the memes showing how violent music, movies, and video games were the culprit, brainwashing our kids. Of course, few people actually created the memes. Most were copied and pasted from other websites, those that fit their political ideologies.
Conservative politicians took to the air waves and immediately latched on to mental illness as a cause, which inflamed television analysts who work with the mentally ill, arguing it’s an insult to people suffering from mental illnesses to blame them for mass shootings. Most mentally ill people, they said, quoting statistics, aren’t murderers, less than 3%. Liberal politicians, on the other hand, drove home the Trump-as-chief-instigator-line and used examples of his language to support their positions.
I saw one FB response where a woman describing her liberal “friends” (Democrats) as being unreasonable, angry, out-of-control, and obscene. I thought this strange since some conservative responses I’d read also sounded much the same. I took a closer look at the posts. The person was right. How did I not see it? Maybe, we see what we want to see. There were angry posts on both sides. No particular ideology had a monopoly on crass, deplorable verbiage. Though, I admit, the majority of responses were measured and respectful, if not always supported by evidence.
Since the El Paso Walmart massacre, now in Trump’s second term, we’ve had a lot of shootings at schools, two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, some assaults on churches and temples, all the shootings baffling. If past experience over mass killings holds true, nothing, will change. While politicians on the “left” spout Trump’s presidency is a threat to democracy, the president has ramped up his anti-immigrant rants, even as hundreds of thousands of immigrants, across the country, work hard at jobs most Americans won’t do. How did they go from "essential workers," to criminals so fast? If Alex Jones can get away with making his base believe Sandy Hook was a publicity stunt, what chance do we have to stop these senseless killings based on propaganda about an invasion by a particular people or religious group?
What is unnerving to me is how what I consider “senseless killings” makes perfect sense to somebody else, especially those who believe what their messiahs tell them, not unlike the followers of Jim Jones who drank poison Kool Aid at his request. Some people believe “Whites” (I’m not really sure what “white” means), are losing control of the country, and “nonwhite” people are invading and taking control,” like the El Paso shooter believed, propaganda pushed by Trump advisor Steven Miller. However, people, like Miller, never mention the fact that, by any measure, the majority of people in positions of power and influence are White, male, Christian, and heterosexual.
None of that is the point, or, at least, it shouldn’t be. What matters is that we are Americans, regardless of ethnicity and religion. Many of us, our fathers, and grandfathers, have worn the uniform and fought for this country and worked to make it the best country. We hold on to the promise of success. We'll continue to work hard. We shouldn’t have to worry about someone coming into a grocery store and shooting up the place, just because another person pushing propaganda told him to do it.
