6 May 18 – 24, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents around the 10-year-old’s portrait. The paint- ing of Tess Marie Mata, also 10, shows her giving a peace sign and surrounded by im- ages pointing to her love of softball and the Houston Astros. The butterfly-intensive mural for Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia, 9, makes it clear she enjoyed Takis, Maruchan Instant Lunch noodles and basketball. On the back of the St. Henry De Osso Project building, Eva Mireles’ bright, flowery mural shows her beaming, with her arms held out, holding a Crossfit flag in one hand and a flag that reads “Always Strong” in the other. It’s fitting that a mural with the names of all who died in the attack is right next to hers — close to the kids, forever at her side now. When you walk around downtown, tak- ing in the murals, it’s nearly impossible to not immediately, reflexively smile at the first sight of each one. The faces looking back at you are flashing big smiles of their own, after all. And the colors. There’s hardly any black or gray to be seen. Instead, lively purple, yel- low, green, pink and red carries the weight. For Ortiz-Acosta, the bursts of color in the murals are vital to their overall purpose. “Not only are the colors in the murals based on the kids’ favorite colors, but those colors really bring the downtown area to life,” Ortiz-Acosta says. “The colors were important because they needed to pop, be- cause the whole idea of these murals are for the kids to be remembered forever. The mu- rals won’t let us forget.” The gallery owner is convinced the mu- rals will remind any in Uvalde who might ever possibly need reminding that these kids and teachers were once their neighbors. He also placed a sign reading “Uvalde es Amor” (“Uvalde is Love”) on his gallery’s front win- dow. But similar to others in the town who didn’t want to go on the record with their comments, Ortiz-Acosta has seen that some in Uvalde didn’t let the killings change their ways of thinking when November 2022 rolled around. “I do think the community was united for a while,” he says. “But things did shift, and I think some of the families of victims and some of the survivors began to think that “Uvalde Strong” from some people were hollow words, because, look at the election. The voting pattern here didn’t change at all, so that’s why some people around here con- sider those words hollow when it comes to who is displaying that sign. Actions speak louder than words.” In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott easily won reelection over Democratic can- didate Beto O’Rourke, carrying 60% of the vote in Uvalde County. That was 21 percent- age points more than O’Rourke received, af- ter spending much time following the shooting in Uvalde, promising gun law re- form if he was elected. It’s something Abbott has for years gone out of his way to say that he will not pursue as governor. T he Robb Elementary School cam- pus is now a dismal sight that’s nearly impossible to avoid for those living in the neighborhood. The former school acted as the heart of the community for decades. For many of the residents living in the neighborhood, the former school acted as the heart of the community for decades. Looking at it now, it resembles a colorless, barren, post-apocalyptic shelter more than it does a place where kids learned, played and laughed up until recently. On the morn- ing of May 24, 2022, parents had attended end-of-year celebrations for the students in- side the school, saying goodbye to their kids for the day just a couple of hours before the shooting. State trooper SUVs are usually sta- tioned at a couple of points around the school’s perimeter now. It’s a whiplash-in- ducing contrast to the pulse provided by the downtown murals. The building is set to be demolished soon, and plans to build a new school and a memorial park are in the works. Near the school’s main entrance, a large white sign with thick red letters reading “Robb Elementary, Together We Rise!” is at- tached to the brown brick building. To see it you have to look over the tall, black tarp- covered chain link fence. That sign is just around the corner from the side door that Salvador Ramos, who was killed by law offi- cers, busted through as he shot his way through the school’s parking lot. At the corner of Geraldine Street and Old Carrizo Road, the Robb Elementary brick sign now hosts rows of decorated crosses in front of it. Each is painted white with a maroon Texas and black letters spelling the names of each of the victims; many of the crosses have rosaries draped around them. A cross for Eva Mireles sits in the center of the front row. In the front yard across the street, a “Uvalde Strong” sign faces the cross-filled corner. Maggie Mireles visits her niece and brother-in-law, Ruben Ruiz, almost every weekend she says, and hasn’t liked a lot of what she has seen and heard around town during those visits. Ruiz, a former police- man for the Uvalde Consolidated Indepen- dent School District, found himself under scrutiny immediately after the shooting when he was spotted on surveillance video in the school hallway checking his phone before he was escorted out of the building. As it was revealed later, Eva Mireles texted Ruiz, telling him she “had been shot and was dying.” He tried to go back into the school to rescue his wife, but he was re- moved from the property and disarmed, ac- cording to reports. Maggie Mireles says Ruiz still lives in Uvalde, but his life there is, for obvious reasons, completely different now. “He lost his high school sweetheart,” Mireles says. “He lost his wife, his one true love. They never did anything without each other. My sister was into Crossfit and run- ning and hiking and she always made him go along. My heart breaks for him because I know he’s not OK. He faced a lot of backlash, and he avoids the news, and I think it’s all taken a big toll on him, but he wouldn’t tell anyone about it.” Mireles knows there’s still plenty of pain being felt around town by others, too, but she hasn’t seen as much action flowing from the sorrow as she had hoped. She wants universal background checks for people buying guns, and she wants to see a ban on assault weapons. She’s been interviewed by national media out- lets and once had a chance to ask Gov. Abbott, face-to-face, to change his stance on gun laws in Texas. But many in Uvalde don’t want the same things she does, even now. She knows that changes in gun laws won’t bring her sister back and that the pain from Eva’s death will never go away. But the changes she’s fighting for can help make the world safer for everyone who is still here, she says. For now, she doesn’t think the signs all over town represent the truth in Uvalde, even if they might have for a little while. “At first it was like, yes, ‘Uvalde Strong,’ be- cause people were united,” she says. “Now it’s like, no, I don’t even use the hashtag for ‘Uvalde Strong’ at all, especially after what happened with the elections. Uvalde was not strong. It’s been important for the families of the victims to have really stuck together and to really understand each other.” A couple of blocks from where the crosses are kept, more signs dot the neigh- borhood. There are plenty of “Uvalde Strong” yard signs, but those aren’t the most eye-catching ones to be seen so close to Robb Elementary. A pair of yards positioned close to one an- other have signs that read “BAN ALL AS- SAULT RIFLES.” The signs are a stark white with red block lettering at the top and bottom, with the image of a black assault ri- fle in the middle of the sign with a red prohi- bition sign striking through it. It’s the sort of sign that, in so many other neighborhoods, would simply alert neighbors there’s a lib- eral in their midst. In Uvalde in 2023, it means more. And, Mireles says, because Uvalde has plenty of people, who “like to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” a sign begging for any guns to be outlawed is an explicit in- vitation to pick a side — to either be with someone or stand opposed to them. “The biggest lesson I have learned from becoming more vocal and more active is to see the amount of people that are just against you,” Mireles says. “Even family and friends and people you thought would al- ways back you up. Once I started showing that I am against assault rifles, for example, and I started fighting for stronger gun laws, I’ve noticed who really has my back and who really doesn’t.” O rtiz-Acosta is proud of the Uvalde Healing murals and has been happy to give tours to people curious about the project and about life in Uvalde since the worst day in its history. He hopes that in this case, art can bring about change. That is certainly one of the goals of the mu- rals, but more than anything else, the paint- ings, for what Ortiz-Acosta hopes is eternity, will be poignant signs that Uvalde once had 21 beautiful smiles that must never be forgotten. “The point of the murals is that we’ll be reminded every day,” he says. “We can’t ever forget. We won’t ever forget their names, their faces or what they liked to do. These murals are celebrations. These mu- rals will hopefully embed everyone we lost in our minds.” ▼ RACISM RACIAL EXTREMES IN COLLIN COUNTY HOW THE HISPANIC ALLEN SHOOTER WAS A NEO-NAZI AND ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST’. BY SIMONE CARTER T he 33-year-old Allen shooter bore Nazi tattoos and ranted on social me- dia about women, people of color and Jews. He also happened to be a Hispanic man named Mauricio Garcia. On May 6, Garcia killed eight people and injured several others at the Allen Premium Outlets mall before being fatally shot by a police officer at the scene. Since then, the Dallas resident’s racist posts have confused conservatives, some of whom are perplexed by the idea that a person with the last name “Garcia” could be a self-described “full blown [sic] white supremacist.” But recently published entries from Gar- cia’s journal reveal that he struggled to come to terms with his background. “I used to think of myself as Benny [Ro- driguez] from The Sandlot. An all American kid who just happens to be not white,” Gar- cia reportedly penned. “I’m just a Rich Polk/E! Entertainment/NBC Lizzo comforts Maggie Mireles, sister of slain Uvalde teacher Eva Mireles, during the People’s Choice awards in December 2022. Signs of Life from p4 >> p8
