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UVALDE: In the heart of this Texas city, where U.S. Highway 83 and U.S. Highway 90 are located, there is a courthouse, a town hall, a post office, and 21 white wooden crosses.
The intersection of two of the country’s longest roads gave the city the nickname “The Crossroads of America.” Now, it marks an American tragedy.
The crosses are a few meters high. They face each other in four directions from the pool and the fountain in the town square. The bouquets pile up at the foot of each. They stay together, day and night, receiving the afflicted loved ones and the distressed residents of Uvalde.
“Good time playing baseball with you,” said a handwritten note from a 10-year-old boy on the cross by José Flores. A baseball was lined up on his left arm. There was a bag of pretzel snacks covered in white caramel Flipz.
The blue hearts in the middle of each cross, one for each victim of Tuesday’s massacre, when a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, contain messages from dozens of loved ones.
“On our last time together we were happy,” Maranda Mathis, 11, said in a note.
The city of Uvalde, a predominantly Latin city of about 15,000 people west of San Antonio, has seen generations of families grow. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune A woman prays Friday at a memorial in honor of the 21 victims killed in a school shooting in Uvalde. Credit: Evan L’Roy for The Texas Tribune
Uvalde is a predominantly Latin city of about 15,000 people east of the border town of Eagle Pass and west of San Antonio, the second largest city in the state. The River Leona flows through the city, and live oaks dominate the landscape that serves as a gateway between two very different regions: South Texas and the state’s famous Hill Country.
Many residents say they are descendants of people who were here before Texas was an independent state or country.
“We’ve been here since it was Mexico and we stayed here when they became the United States,” Maricela Sanchez, 33, said of her ancestors.
Farms around the city produce onions, melons and more, an industry born of the many streams and rivers that flow through the county of Uvalde. Now it’s onion planting season, which is why the air smells a little spicy and sour on the roads outside the city, residents said.
And the very fresh water and lush landscape that underpins the farming industry make many South Texas residents frequent summer campers here. They hunt, swim, and sit under the bright, bright stars under a vast sky. It’s a blue-collar area where the average income is about $ 42,000. The population has not increased dramatically as many Texas cities and suburbs have done. However, young and old residents say that over the years new places have been created for shopping and eating along the main road.
“We didn’t have half the stuff when I was older,” said 28-year-old Maribelle Zamora.
It’s a good place to start a family, parents say. It’s a good place to grow up, high school students say. On a typical weekend, laughing teenagers roam the city for 5.47 square miles from the back of trucks. Uvalde is young: about 40% of households here have one or more children under the age of 18.
Kimberly Rodriguez, 33, said her family has now had at least six generations in Uvalde she knows, and probably more. When I was a teenager, I wanted to leave and go to a big city. Maybe San Antonio or maybe Austin. He has always loved Corpus Christi.
“As soon as I got pregnant, my mindset changed completely,” she said.
He heard stories about armed violence in larger cities.
“Then I thought, ‘It’s safe here.’ If it’s safe here for my kids, why would I leave? ‘ said Rodriguez. “My biggest fear was exposing my children to any kind of armed violence.”
Now, the unfathomable loss and immeasurable pain of so many families feels like an affront to a sense of familiarity and security for generations, residents said.
“These are not us,” said Fidencio Rivera, 72. “This is amazing for a small community like ours.”
The land of trees and honey
Uvalde was originally called Encina, or live oak in Spanish, because of the trees that still give shade to the residential streets, they rise from the middle of the roads and ask drivers to turn around to enter the Library car park. El Progreso Memorial.
Mendell Morgan, the 81-year-old city library director, has been with Uvalde since he was 4 years old. He said the layout of the library and its parking lot is “so cattywampus” because the man who gave the land for the library told them, “Don’t touch a single tree,” so they built around it. .
Encina was renamed 1856 when the county was organized; the new namesake was for the governor of Coahuila of 1778 Juan de Ugalde (the white settlers mistakenly knew him as Uvalde).
In the 1800s on the western border, skirmishes between the army, settlers, and natives were common, as white settlers attempted to take land for agriculture and livestock. Eventually, a railroad brought more settlers and more colonization.
The city was incorporated in 1888. Historically, its economy was based on agriculture and livestock. In 1905, it was honored at the World’s Fair as the “world capital of honey.” It is known for its soft, light-colored huajillo honey, made from a desert shrub native to southwest Texas and northern Mexico.
Virginia Davis, an 88-year-old archivist at the city library, said Uvalde residents are proud of her story.
A live oak tree grows in the middle of the street near the El Progreso Memorial Library in Uvalde. Credit: Lauren Witte / The Texas Tribune Virginia Davis, archive, and Mendell Morgan, director of the El Progreso Memorial Library, show the newspapers collected with headlines from the day of the recent mass shooting in Uvalde on Friday. Credit: Evan L’Roy for The Texas Tribune
“And they try to keep it intact,” he said as he gestured to several books on local history in the library. Davis moved here in 1948.
She and other Uvalde residents lived through periods of racial segregation that lasted through the 1960s. When Davis was a child in Uvalde, the city was divided by railroad. Latino residents generally lived on the west side and whites on the east, Davis said.
Morgan, who is white, agreed.
“You had your place in society, and everyone knew what your place was, and you stayed,” said Morgan, who moved to Uvalde in 1944.
There is a strong conservative inclination among many Uvalde residents. At the GOP governing primary in March, Uvalde’s fourth-term mayor, Don McLaughlin, backed Don Huffines, a candidate running for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
Neighbors boast of family values and the faith of the people. There are several churches, and most of them are religious, residents said. Most people living in Uvalde also have guns, residents say. Davis carries a .22 caliber revolver when he leaves home. The library’s modest $ 412,000 budget is funded in part through “the fun shoot,” a community fundraiser in which residents will shoot at a gun camp. The library raises thousands of dollars this way, Davis said.
The gunman, an 18-year-old Latin resident of Uvalde, bought two AR platform rifles just days after reaching legal age to do so. In a few days, he would shoot his grandmother in the face, smash his truck, and walk armed to Robb Elementary in the middle of one of the last days of school before the summer break.
A family village
Today, young people in Uvalde, like students in many American cities, grew up practicing the morbidly familiar exercise of blockades throughout their lives to prepare for an active shooter. But for 17-year-old Jeyden Gonzales, the blocking exercises seemed like they were for situations that happened elsewhere, not in Uvalde. It’s a family village, he said. Meet your friends’ brothers, aunts, uncles and all your neighbors.
“[The lockdown drills] it would take five minutes, and we really didn’t know how to stand still and all that stuff, “Gonzales said.” There was no thought in my mind to be scared like this. “
It was a …