The president of the United States, Joe Biden, tried to comfort the relatives of the victims and the survivors of the massacre at a school in Uvalde, a town in southern Texas devastated by the tragedy, on Sunday.
Accompanied by his wife, Jill, the president visited the 21 crosses installed in front of the facade of Robb Elementary School in memory of the 19 children and two teachers killed last Tuesday in a classroom, and then attended a mass in a Catholic church. and bilingual. “Do something!” someone yelled from the street as he was leaving the church, and Biden replied, “I will.”
They were his only public statements during his stay in Uvalde, where he met privately for almost three hours with several relatives of the deceased and the survivors, and then also met with security agents, firefighters, psychologists and paramedics.
Empathy and grief
In a fiery speech hours after Tuesday’s shooting, Biden angrily asked when the United States will be ready to stand up to gun lobbyists and urged turning “pain into action.”
But Uvalde is a rural population in Texas represented mostly by conservative leaders, so the president preferred to leave the gun control discourse in Washington and bring only his empathy to this majority-Hispanic city, where many welcomed his visit.
“He is a person who cares about others,” a woman who did not want to give her name told Efe while waiting to enter the mass attended by Biden at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
In the same row, Rubén Cárdenas trusted that the president would speak “from the heart”, that he would offer “comfort to the families” and that he would give them guarantees that “they will not be forgotten.”
Cárdenas worked with Joe García -who died this week of a heart attack after losing his wife, Irma, one of the teachers killed in the massacre- and assured that he will never forget the smile with which his partner greeted him every day upon arrival. to the enterprise.
“The whole world is deeply saddened and paralyzed by what has happened to these young children and the teachers,” he told Efe.
Some 600 people attended the noon mass at the Sacred Heart Church, and many did not resist taking photos of the president and first lady, despite the fact that the priests asked to turn off cell phones during the service.
Biden, the first Catholic president of the United States in more than half a century, regularly attends mass and this Sunday he was one of those who rose to communion, in addition to greeting those who came to his bench to also receive the Eucharist.
Children at the altar
Faith is essential for many inhabitants of Uvalde and several churches in the area have turned to help the community after the tragedy, including the Sacred Heart, which on Saturday organized a vigil in its parking lot full of tributes to each of the deceased children.
“Our hearts are broken, but we know that God is with us,” said the archbishop of the nearby city of San Antonio, Gustavo García-Siller, during the mass, which Efe witnessed.
The archbishop then asked about thirty children to sit on the floor of the altar, where he told them: “I think you will help us rebuild. You will be children who want to live their lives to the fullest.”
“Jesus rose and went to heaven. He prepared a place for the 19 little ones we have lost,” he explained. After a while, the children returned to their seats, including one who was crying uncontrollably and who appeared to be of a similar age to the children between 9 and 11 years old killed in the massacre.
Before the communion, García-Siller even referred to the author of the shooting, Salvador Ramos, shot dead by Border Patrol agents, and asked God for “mercy” with his soul. He also urged those present to pray for Biden and other politicians who have to make “difficult” decisions.
The frustration and mourning for what happened were evident during Biden’s visit to the school, where Ben Gonzales, a resident of Uvalde, yelled at the president “We need help!”, according to CNN.
The authorities acknowledged on Friday that, during the shooting, the Police made the decision not to enter the classroom and waited more than an hour to receive a key to open the door, while a girl desperately called the emergency services surrounded by her dead companions.
The US Department of Justice announced this Sunday that it will investigate the police response to the shooting, at the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, and that the results of its investigation will be made public.
The Government thus hopes to get to the bottom of what happened, after the Texas authorities indicated that the agents stayed outside because a police official interpreted that there was no one left alive in the classroom except the aggressor, something that did not turn out to be true .
“We hope that the leaders listen to what the people want, because they want answers,” said Cárdenas, the aforementioned Uvalde resident who attended the same mass as Biden.
“They want leaders who are there to protect children and their families, and not guns. Guns shouldn’t be the priority,” he added excitedly.
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