'Hate will never overcome love': El Paso Walmart shooting memorials keep memory alive
El Paso has not forgotten, and likely will never forget, the racially-motivated massacre, which also impacted the greater Mexican American community nationwide. The Walmart mass shooting is considered the deadliest U.S. domestic terror attack on Latinos in modern times.
Annual remembrances and permanent public memorials at three locations continue the sentiment of "El Paso Strong" years after the tragedy.
The outpouring of sadness, unity and resiliency was indisputable from the first temporary makeshift memorial overflowing with flowers, religious candles, teddy bears, artwork and notes of condolences and community solidarity in English and Spanish covering nearly a block behind the Walmart store.
The makeshift memorial — featuring the flags of U.S., Mexico and Texas — was a hub of grieving. It was lined with white crosses built by Illinois carpenter Greg Zanis, who was known as "The Cross Man" for delivering over 26,000 personalized crosses to the sites of mass shootings and disasters across the United States. Zanis died of bladder cancer in 2020.
Thousands of cell phone lights shone like stars at the public memorial ceremony on Aug. 14, 2019, attended by residents and dignitaries, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Chihuahua Gov. Javier Corral, at Southwest University Park in Downtown El Paso.
"We reassure that hate will never overcome love. Hate will not overcome who we are," El Paso Mayor Dee Margo said at the ceremony.
Nearly 5,000 residents attended the baseball stadium ceremony while another 400 watched a simulcast on the Ponder Park Little League baseball field at the park about a block north of the Walmart store before people left early as a dust storm blew into the city.
The "Grand Candela," a 30-foot tall candle-like memorial made of 22 individual gold-colored perforated aluminum arcs (the 23rd victim of the shooting died later), was dedicated on Nov. 23, 2019, in the south part of the Walmart parking lot at 7101 Gateway West Blvd.
The Healing Garden memorial at Ascarate Park was dedicated in 2021 on the second anniversary of the Walmart massacre in a ceremony including Mexico's top diplomat, Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta and comedian George Lopez.
The El Paso County memorial features plaques with the names of each of the 23 victims in an illuminated half circle, each with a beam of light rising into the night sky.
Ponder Park, located across Viscount Boulevard about a block north of the Walmart, has been the site of annual "El Paso Firme" processions against racism, remembrances and a memorial site since the attack.
"This was an attack against the heart of our community," Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights immigrant advocacy group said at a remembrance in 2023. "Let's not forget about it. It's racism, xenophobia and white supremacism."
In 2024, the permanent "August 3rd Memorial" by El Paso-based artist Albert "Tino" Ortega was unveiled on the anniversary. The granite memorial consists of seven pillars in a circle bearing the victims' names over a mandala design symbolizing harmony, interconnectivity and unity.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso Walmart shooting memorials keep love alive
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NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
100 days of Pope Leo XIV: Calm papacy that avoids polemics is coming into focus
VATICAN CITY — When Pope Leo XIV surprised tens of thousands of young people at a recent Holy Year celebration with an impromptu popemobile romp around St. Peter's Square, it almost seemed as if some of the informal spontaneity that characterized Pope Francis' 12-year papacy had returned to the Vatican. But the message Leo delivered that night was all his own: In seamless English, Spanish and Italian, Leo told the young people that they were the 'salt of the Earth, the light of the world.' He urged them to spread their hope, faith in Christ and their cries of peace wherever they go. As Robert Prevost marks his 100th day as Pope Leo this weekend, the contours of his pontificate have begun to come into relief, primarily where he shows continuity with Francis and where he signals change. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that after 12 sometimes turbulent years under Francis, a certain calm and reserve have returned to the papacy. Leo seems eager above all to avoid polemics or making the papacy about himself, and wants instead to focus on Christ and peace. That seems exactly what many Catholic faithful want, and may respond to what today's church needs. 'He's been very direct and forthright … but he's not doing spontaneous press hits,' said Kevin Hughes, chair of theology and religious studies at Leo's alma mater, Villanova University. Leo has a different style than Francis, and that has brought relief to many, Hughes said in a telephone interview. 'Even those who really loved Pope Francis always kind of held their breath a little bit: You didn't know what was going to come out next or what he was going to do,' Hughes said. An effort to avoid polemics Leo has certainly gone out of his way in his first 100 days to try to heal divisions that deepened during Francis' pontificate, offering messages of unity and avoiding controversy at almost every turn. Even his signature issue — confronting the promise and peril posed by artificial intelligence — is something that conservatives and progressives alike agree is important. Francis' emphasis on caring for the environment and migrants often alienated conservatives. Closer to home, Leo offered the Holy See bureaucracy a reassuring, conciliatory message after Francis' occasionally authoritarian style rubbed some in the Vatican the wrong way. 'Popes come and go, but the Curia remains,' Leo told Vatican officials soon after his May 8 election. Continuity with Francis is still undeniable Leo, though, has cemented Francis' environmental legacy by celebrating the first-ever ecologically inspired Mass. He has furthered that legacy by giving the go-ahead for the Vatican to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome into a vast solar farm that should generate enough electricity to meet Vatican City's needs and turn it into the world's first carbon-neutral state. He has fine-tuned financial transparency regulations that Francis initiated, tweaked some other decrees to give them consistency and logic, and confirmed Francis in deciding to declare one of the 19th century's most influential saints, John Henry Newman, a 'doctor' of the church. But he hasn't granted any sit-down, tell-all interviews or made headline-grabbing, off-the-cuff comments like his predecessor did. He hasn't made any major appointments, including to fill his old job, or taken any big trips. In marking the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki last week, he had a chance to match Francis' novel declaration that the mere possession of nuclear weapons was 'immoral.' But he didn't. Compared to President Donald Trump, the other American world leader who took office in 2025 with a flurry of Sharpie-penned executive decrees, Leo has eased into his new job slowly, deliberately and quietly, almost trying not to draw attention to himself. At 69, he seems to know that he has time on his side, and that after Francis' revolutionary papacy, the church might need a bit of a breather. One Vatican official who knows Leo said he expects his papacy will have the effect of a 'calming rain' on the church. Maria Isabel Ibarcena Cuarite, a Peruvian member of a Catholic charismatic group, said it was precisely Leo's quiet emphasis on church traditions, its sacraments and love of Christ, that drew her and upward of 1 million young people to Rome for a special Jubilee week this month. Ibarcena said Francis had confused young people like herself with his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and approval of blessings for same-sex couples. Such gestures went beyond what a pope was supposed to do and what the church taught, she thought. Leo, she said, has emphasized that marriage is a sacrament between men and woman. 'Francis was ambiguous, but he is firm,' she said. An Augustinian pope From his very first appearance on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Leo has insisted he is first and foremost a 'son of St. Augustine. ' It was a reference to the fifth century theological and devotional giant of early Christianity, St. Augustine of Hippo, who inspired the 13th century religious Augustinian order as a community of 'mendicant' friars. Like the other big mendicant orders of the early church — the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites — the Augustinians spread across Christian Europe over the centuries. Today, Augustinian spirituality is rooted in a deep interior life of prayer, living in community, and journeying together in search of truth in God. In nearly every speech or homily since his May 8 election, Leo has cited Augustine in one way or another. 'I see a kind of Augustinian flavor in the way that he's presenting all these things,' said Hughes, the theology professor who is an Augustine scholar. Leo joined the Augustinians after graduating from Augustinian-run Villanova, outside Philadelphia, and was twice elected its prior general. He has visited the Augustinian headquarters outside St. Peter's a few times since his election, and some wonder if he will invite some brothers to live with him in the Apostolic Palace to recreate the spirit of Augustinian community life there. A missionary pope in the image of Francis Leo is also very much a product of the Francis papacy. Francis named Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014 and then moved him to head one of the most important Vatican jobs in 2023 — vetting bishop nominations. In retrospect, it seems Francis had his eye on Prevost as a possible successor. Given Francis' stump speech before the 2013 conclave that elected him pope, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio essentially described Prevost in identifying the church's mission today: He said the church was 'called to go outside of itself and go to the peripheries, not just geographic but also the existential peripheries.' Prevost, who hails from Chicago, spent his adult life as a missionary in Peru, eventually becoming bishop of Chiclayo. 'He is the incarnation of the 'unity of difference,' because he comes from the center, but he lives in the peripheries,' said Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Cuda said during a recent conference hosted by Georgetown University that Leo encapsulated in 'word and gesture' the type of missionary church Francis promoted. That said, for all Leo owes to Bergoglio, the two didn't necessarily get along. Prevost has recounted that at one point when he was the Augustinian superior, the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires expressed interest in assigning an Augustinian priest to a specific job in his archdiocese. 'And I, as prior general, said 'I understand, Your Eminence, but he's got to do something else' and so I transferred him somewhere else,' Prevost told parishioners in his home state of Illinois in 2024. Prevost said he 'naively' thought the Francis wouldn't remember him after his 2013 election, and that regardless 'he'll never appoint me bishop' due to the disagreement. Bergoglio not only made him bishop, he laid the groundwork for Prevost to succeed him as pope, the first North American pope following the first South American.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
From no-deal to Putin's deal? A flummoxing summit, a Trump flip
Vladimir Putin was smiling. Donald Trump was not. When the leaders of Russia and the United States shook hands on stage after failing to reach a deal at their Alaska summit, President Trump had a look on his face that his four predecessors might have recognized after their own encounters with the former KGB agent who has defied the world in his determination to rebuild an empire. Trump looked tired, annoyed and worried, his path ahead so uncharted that he uncharacteristically refused to take a single question from the phalanx of reporters raising their hands in front of him. Putin, who had a small smile on his face, was relaxed enough to teasingly suggest they next meet in Moscow − speaking in English, so no one would miss the point. Hours after Air Force One landed back in Washington, though, Trump seemed revived, embracing a new and entirely different plan for peace. He jettisoned what until 24 hours earlier had been his first priority and a strategy supported by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO allies. "It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump said on the social-media platform Truth Social. Which was, by the way, the approach that Putin had wanted all along. Zelenskyy would meet with him at the White House on Aug. 18, Trump announced, to consider what happens next. The Ukrainian leader has consistently opposed peace talks without a ceasefire because it would give Russia a chance to press its battlefield advantage undeterred. The fear among Ukraine's supporters is a replay of the last time the Ukrainian leader was in the Oval Office, in February. He was berated by the president and Vice President JD Vance for insufficient gratitude toward the United States for its help and for standing in the way of a peace agreement with Russia. "Now it is really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done," Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News after the summit. Then a three-way meeting with Putin could follow. For Putin, a limousine lift and a red-carpet welcome There's no wonder why Putin looked pleased in Alaska. The summit was a windfall for him, ending his isolation from the West since the Ukraine invasion with a red-carpet welcome and a rare ride in the back seat of the armored presidential limousine, nicknamed "The Beast." The Russian leader could be seen through the window talking and laughing with the president. He looked delighted to be back on U.S. soil for the first time in a decade. Joined by two advisers each, they spoke for about three hours before skipping a planned luncheon and economic meeting, instead heading to a news-conference-without-questions. Afterwards, the two leaders took separate cars back to the airfield. The summit didn't achieve what Trump said beforehand he wanted most: A ceasefire. In their statements afterwards, the word "ceasefire" wasn't mentioned. Trump also had set a series of deadlines for Russia to agree to progress or face secondary sanctions. The most recent deadline passed on Aug. 8, the day they agreed to meet in Alaska. After the summit, he didn't mention the word "sanctions" either. By the next morning, after all, a "mere Ceasefire Agreement" was no longer the goal. A campaign promise, now 200 days overdue No major promise Trump made during the 2024 campaign has proved harder to deliver than his assurance that he could settle the grinding war in Ukraine in his first day in office, a confidence based largely on his relationship with Putin. But that was more than 200 days ago, and despite Trump's move from friendly entreaties to undefined threats of "very severe consequences," Russia's attacks on Ukraine's armed forces and its civilians have not abated. Despite the declaration "PURSUING PEACE" that was stamped on the blue backdrop behind the two men. "So there's no deal until there's a deal," Trump told the expectant audience, an unhappy admission from a self-described master negotiator who titled his first book "The Art of the Deal." The flummox that showed on Trump's face at the Aug. 15 news conference would have been familiar to Barack Obama, who sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to meet with the Russian foreign minister with a red "Reset" button as a visual aid for a new era of relations, only to watch Moscow illegally annex Crimea in 2014. Or Joe Biden when Putin ignored his warnings and invaded Ukraine in 2022. Or George W. Bush, when he watched events unfold after prematurely declaring after his first meeting with Putin in 2001 that he had "looked the man in the eye" and determined that he was "straightforward and trustworthy." Those are not the adjectives presidents have used about Putin since then. That said, Trump's tone toward Putin remained chummy − calling him "Vladimir" − even after the summit failed to reach the goals he had set beforehand. "We got along great," he told Fox News. "I always had a great relationship with President Putin."
6 hours ago
100 days of Pope Leo XIV: a calm papacy that avoids polemics is coming into focus
VATICAN CITY -- When Pope Leo XIV surprised tens of thousands of young people at a recent Holy Year celebration with an impromptu popemobile romp around St. Peter's Square, it almost seemed as if some of the informal spontaneity that characterized Pope Francis' 12-year papacy had returned to the Vatican. But the message Leo delivered that night was all his own: In seamless English, Spanish and Italian, Leo told the young people that they were the 'salt of the Earth, the light of the world.' He urged them to spread their hope, faith in Christ and their cries of peace wherever they go. As Robert Prevost marks his 100th day as Pope Leo this weekend, the contours of his pontificate have begun to come into relief, primarily where he shows continuity with Francis and where he signals change. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that after 12 sometimes turbulent years under Francis, a certain calm and reserve have returned to the papacy. Leo seems eager above all to avoid polemics or making the papacy about himself, and wants instead to focus on Christ and peace. That seems exactly what many Catholic faithful want, and may respond to what today's church needs. 'He's been very direct and forthright … but he's not doing spontaneous press hits,' said Kevin Hughes, chair of theology and religious studies at Leo's alma mater, Villanova University. Leo has a different style than Francis, and that has brought relief to many, Hughes said in a telephone interview. 'Even those who really loved Pope Francis always kind of held their breath a little bit: You didn't know what was going to come out next or what he was going to do,' Hughes said. Leo has certainly gone out of his way in his first 100 days to try to heal divisions that deepened during Francis' pontificate, offering messages of unity and avoiding controversy at almost every turn. Even his signature issue — confronting the promise and peril posed by artificial intelligence — is something that conservatives and progressives alike agree is important. Francis' emphasis on caring for the environment and migrants often alienated conservatives. Closer to home, Leo offered the Holy See bureaucracy a reassuring, conciliatory message after Francis' occasionally authoritarian style rubbed some in the Vatican the wrong way. 'Popes come and go, but the Curia remains,' Leo told Vatican officials soon after his May 8 election. Leo, though, has cemented Francis' environmental legacy by celebrating the first-ever ecologically inspired Mass. He has furthered that legacy by giving the go-ahead for the Vatican to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome into a vast solar farm that should generate enough electricity to meet Vatican City's needs and turn it into the world's first carbon-neutral state. He has fine-tuned financial transparency regulations that Francis initiated, tweaked some other decrees to give them consistency and logic, and confirmed Francis in deciding to declare one of the 19th century's most influential saints, John Henry Newman, a 'doctor' of the church. But he hasn't granted any sit-down, tell-all interviews or made headline-grabbing, off-the-cuff comments like his predecessor did. He hasn't made any major appointments, including to fill his old job, or taken any big trips. In marking the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki last week, he had a chance to match Francis' novel declaration that the mere possession of nuclear weapons was 'immoral.' But he didn't. Compared to President Donald Trump, the other American world leader who took office in 2025 with a flurry of Sharpie-penned executive decrees, Leo has eased into his new job slowly, deliberately and quietly, almost trying not to draw attention to himself. At 69, he seems to know that he has time on his side, and that after Francis' revolutionary papacy, the church might need a bit of a breather. One Vatican official who knows Leo said he expects his papacy will have the effect of a 'calming rain' on the church. Maria Isabel Ibarcena Cuarite, a Peruvian member of a Catholic charismatic group, said it was precisely Leo's quiet emphasis on church traditions, its sacraments and love of Christ, that drew her and upward of 1 million young people to Rome for a special Jubilee week this month. Ibarcena said Francis had confused young people like herself with his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and approval of blessings for same-sex couples. Such gestures went beyond what a pope was supposed to do and what the church taught, she thought. Leo, she said, has emphasized that marriage is a sacrament between men and woman. 'Francis was ambiguous, but he is firm,' she said. From his very first appearance on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Leo has insisted he is first and foremost a 'son of St. Augustine. ' It was a reference to the fifth century theological and devotional giant of early Christianity, St. Augustine of Hippo, who inspired the 13th century religious Augustinian order as a community of 'mendicant' friars. Like the other big mendicant orders of the early church — the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites — the Augustinians spread across Christian Europe over the centuries. Today, Augustinian spirituality is rooted in a deep interior life of prayer, living in community, and journeying together in search of truth in God. In nearly every speech or homily since his May 8 election, Leo has cited Augustine in one way or another. 'I see a kind of Augustinian flavor in the way that he's presenting all these things,' said Hughes, the theology professor who is an Augustine scholar. Leo joined the Augustinians after graduating from Augustinian-run Villanova, outside Philadelphia, and was twice elected its prior general. He has visited the Augustinian headquarters outside St. Peter's a few times since his election, and some wonder if he will invite some brothers to live with him in the Apostolic Palace to recreate the spirit of Augustinian community life there. Leo is also very much a product of the Francis papacy. Francis named Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014 and then moved him to head one of the most important Vatican jobs in 2023 — vetting bishop nominations. In retrospect, it seems Francis had his eye on Prevost as a possible successor. Given Francis' stump speech before the 2013 conclave that elected him pope, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio essentially described Prevost in identifying the church's mission today: He said the church was "called to go outside of itself and go to the peripheries, not just geographic but also the existential peripheries.' Prevost, who hails from Chicago, spent his adult life as a missionary in Peru, eventually becoming bishop of Chiclayo. 'He is the incarnation of the 'unity of difference,' because he comes from the center, but he lives in the peripheries,' said Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Cuda said during a recent conference hosted by Georgetown University that Leo encapsulated in 'word and gesture' the type of missionary church Francis promoted. That said, for all Leo owes to Bergoglio, the two didn't necessarily get along. Prevost has recounted that at one point when he was the Augustinian superior, the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires expressed interest in assigning an Augustinian priest to a specific job in his archdiocese. 'And I, as prior general, said 'I understand, Your Eminence, but he's got to do something else' and so I transferred him somewhere else,' Prevost told parishioners in his home state of Illinois in 2024. Prevost said he 'naively' thought the Francis wouldn't remember him after his 2013 election, and that regardless 'he'll never appoint me bishop' due to the disagreement. Bergoglio not only made him bishop, he laid the groundwork for Prevost to succeed him as pope, the first North American pope following the first South American.
