ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the politics of hate and hope in the wake of the most recent white nationalist terrorist attack in El Paso, Texas. On August 3, 2019, Patrick Crusius drove over 650 miles from Allen, Texas to El Paso, a border city along the U.S.–Mexico border, and opened fire in a local Walmart, killing twenty-two people and injuring another twenty-four. Officials later confirmed that Crusius intentionally drove to El Paso to target Mexicans whom he believed “should go back to their country.” This chapter also examines how the El Paso community utilized the hashtags, #ElPasoStrong and #ElPasoFirme, as material and ideological forms of interruption in response to the massacre. The chapter specifically focuses on how youth, artists, and educators used the hashtags and various forms of community art to disrupt a rhetoric of hate and fear and instead put forth an image of collective strength and agency. Given the current political climate and continuous contestation of the border, the gente of El Paso rose as an example of community-led “interruption” and “answered back” to the demonization consuming the peoples and the Land along the settler colonial borderlands.
