On Sunday evening following the El Paso terrorist attack the Mexican government issued statements denouncing the actions of the shooter who attacked Latinx people in El Paso, killing 22 people in a Walmart. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebraud is evaluating if the Mexican government can charge the shooter on terrorism charges and investigate the seller of the automatic weapon; he stated Sunday “We consider this to be an act of terrorism against Mexican American community and Mexican nationals in the US.”
Martha Barcena, Mexico’s ambassador to Washington, tweeted “The intentionality of the attack against the Mexicans and the Latino community in El Paso is frightening/ NO to hate speech. NO to xenophobic discourse” The assailant has been linked to anti-immigrant, specifically Hispanic, hate messages and authored a manifesto which spews rants against immigrants. NBC News stressed that the assailant went out of his way to target El Paso, which is more than 80% Hispanic or Latino and is located adjacent to Ciudad Juárez.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebraud concluded “But we are not proposing to meet hate with hate. We will act with reason and within the law, but with firmness” and he also assured that Mexico will attempt to work in union with the US government to collect information about the origin of the gun and “promote legal actions against whoever turns out to be responsible for the sale of the assault weapon.”
The United States has experienced a slew of mass shootings since 2016 and the concurrent rise of fascism in the US; yet still struggles to pass federal legislation to address the crisis due to Mitch McConnell’s blockade of the Republican-held Senate. In 2018 the American College of Physicians’ released New Gun violence Reduction Recommendations after the Tree of Life Synagogue attack in Pittsburgh which recommended stricter gun regulations and the [enactment] of legislation to ban the sale, transfer and subsequent ownership of assault weapons, emphasizing that less firearms reduces gun-related injuries and deaths.
Media Resources: Washington Post 8/5/19; NBC News 8/4/19; Law & Crime 8/4/19; Vox 8/6/19; Feminist Newswire 10/31/18
