FIFTY MARIACHI MUSICIANS gather in the parking lot of a San Antonio law firm. Despite the heavy June heat, they wear traditional charro outfits—short, intricately embroidered jackets in gray, black, and red; silk scarves tied in neat bows at their collars; trousers studded with decorative silver. The mariachis comprise 11 different musical groups and include men and women, educators, students, and parents. They range in age from 7-year-old Mateo Lopez—the world’s youngest mariachi singer—to their 60s. Awaiting their turn to board a charter bus heading west to Uvalde, they tow their trumpets and saxophones, their violins and guitars and heartbreak.
The week before, on May 24, 2022, a teenage gunman murdered 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, while law enforcement took an excruciating 77 minutes to enter the classroom and kill the attacker.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, San Antonio-based artist Cruz Ortiz packed a bag of 35-millimeter film and drove to Uvalde. “I needed to document,” says Ortiz, who uses print, performance, painting, and film to address sociopolitical issues in bicultural, bilingual South Texas. He joined seasoned crime journalists, some of whom had reported on up to 40 school shootings.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘This is different.’ I’ll tell you what’s different. No matter who shot who, violence in this area has always been there,” Ortiz says. “This area was and still is Indigenous land. From numerous Spanish expeditions, Anglo Texan landgrab transactions, Civil War skirmishes, and anti-Mexican lynchings, we’ve seen this before. We know these feelings.”
Back home, Ortiz called his friend and mariachi violinist Anthony Medrano, a longtime member of Campanas de América, a 12-piece mariachi band founded in San Antonio in 1978. Medrano has performed with the group at the White House, and he also co-produces and directs Mariachi USA, an annual concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, which draws 18,000 people.
“I don’t know what to give them,” Ortiz told Medrano. “I don’t know what to give myself.”
An idea formed as the men remembered gathering a group of musicians in Ortiz’s studio to honor
