More than 600 miles and a time zone away from El Paso, Hispanics in the Dallas area continued their Sunday routines after 22 people died in an attack that has been blamed on anti-immigrant rage.
But the massacre was never far from their minds.
When Cristal Gonzalez heard about the mass shooting, she immediately texted her friends from El Paso who live near the Walmart where the shooting occurred. They were safe but spent hours in a lockdown.
“What have Hispanics done to you to make you want to kill them?” Gonzalez asked while she shared a meal of pozole Sunday with her family at Bargin City Bazaar in west Oak Cliff.
“Why so much hate for us?” echoed Rebeca Gonzalez, Cristal Gonzalez’s mother.
They have an answer of their own.
“It’s a result of the hate speech used widely across this country,” Cristal Gonzalez said.
For them and other area Hispanics, the gunman's determination to harm immigrants came as no surprise. The "Hispanic invasion" described in the online manifesto attributed to the gunman seemed like an echo of President Donald Trump's rhetoric.
“These people are children, they’re parents who have come to this country to better themselves," Cristal Gonzalez said of immigrants. "The intentions ... when they come here is not to make the lives of other people miserable; it's to make their lives better."
While shopping with her son’s family at Bargin City Bazaar, Socorro Rodriguez thought about the families who had been at the El Paso Walmart before the shooting.
“Even if it doesn’t affect directly, it still hurts,” said Rodriguez, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who was visiting Dallas from her home in New Mexico.
As she watched her family shopping in a nearby clothing booth, Rodriguez repeatedly remarked on the attack: “It’s not fair.”
“Immigrant or not, Hispanics aren’t to blame,” she said. “It’s not fair for anyone to die that way, regardless of their background. We’re all humans.”
Worry at Dallas churches
At St. Cecilia Catholic Church in north Oak Cliff, there was no mention of the massacre Sunday during afternoon Mass, but it still weighed on Maria Velazquez’s mind.
“I woke up and was thankful to God that my family and I are all safe,” the Cedar Hill resident said. “It makes you question going out to places with lots of people.”
Her sister, Ana Velazquez, said the gunman's ties to North Texas are worrisome.
“It’s really concerning because this area has an increasing Hispanic population,” she said. “Also, President Trump has brought negative attention to Hispanics, and you still see a disparity in acceptance. You often see that hate, especially on social media, towards the Hispanic population.”
Estela Sanchez, another Cedar Hill resident at St. Cecilia’s Sunday Mass, also described the attack “as part of the president’s racism.”
“People already have that hate in them, but Trump’s comments provoke even more hate,” she said.
On Twitter, the president posted after the massacre that he stood with "everyone in this country to condemn today's hateful act."
"There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people," he wrote.
For Eduardo Marinero and his family, going to Sunday's Spanish Mass at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in downtown Dallas felt like a gamble. They talked about the shooting on the way to the church.
“You just aren’t sure anymore of what’s going to stop someone from coming here and shooting a place filled up with 1,000 people like this,” the 26-year-old said. “There’s only so much police can do.”
By the time they walked out of church, Marinero and his sister, Rosa, had read the anti-immigrant manifesto authorities believe the gunman posted online before his attack.
Rosa Marinero, who graduated from the University of North Texas in December, said it was tough to read.
The siblings were born in the U.S., but their parents are Salvadoran immigrants who left their homeland 37 years ago.
Part of the manifesto attacks first-generation Americans, who “get college degrees and fill higher-paying skilled positions.”
“I couldn’t get through all of it,” said Rosa Marinero, who works for a fashion designer as a marketing consultant. “It made me so sad.”
Dallas Bishop Edward J. Burns, who led the Mass, asked parishioners to take a moment to pray for victims of the weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso and Ohio.
He said he'd reached out to the Catholic bishop of El Paso to “let him know they’re not alone.”
“There’s no doubt this weighs heavy on their hearts and minds, and our hearts go out to them,” Burns said. “We can only imagine what they’re going through.”
He offered to send priests to El Paso to help the clergymen there, who will be counseling families and officiating at victims’ funerals.
‘You live with fear’
Shop owners at Bazaar El Royal Shopping Mall in northwest Dallas said business was normal Sunday morning.
But some of them kept their TVs tuned to Spanish-language news coverage of the massacre in El Paso.
Even as customers bought dresses and backpacks and sat down for a late breakfast of menudo and chilaquiles, shop owner Gloria Escobar worried the massacre would stoke fear in the Hispanic community.
“I feel like one day something could happen to me. I don’t know when or where, but I know it could happen,” she said. “You leave your home with fear. You live with fear.”
Coming together
Corina Lopez, a volunteer with No More Violence, gathered Sunday evening with about 40 people for a vigil in downtown Dallas.
"I know that there's a lot of hate, but at the end of the day, there's still love," Lopez said.
Lopez said the public display honoring the victims in El Paso was important despite the city's distance from Dallas.
"It hurts. We have a family, and we know a lot of families lost daughters, sons, family members," she said. "I feel like if we're going to be united under one nation, we're supposed to come together in grief ... it doesn't matter that we aren't in El Paso."
Staff writer Paul Cobler contributed to this report.
