From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, June 8th.

With Aldi, Texas, where, of course, the elementary school shooting was, is a town of the

population of only about

15,000 people. And because it's just 80 miles from the Mexican border, it is heavily guarded.

Now, as we know, despite the presence of hundreds of police at the scene or close to the scene

on the day of the shooting and the town's history of police surveillance, 19 lives

were lost that day anyway. And while the aftermath of the Uvaldi school shooting reporting

focused on the need for gun control laws and the failure of the police to enter the classroom,

there was this context that has gone largely unmentioned, such as the history of heavy patrolling

and violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexicans and Americans of color, long-facing

discrimination and inequalities in the area. Some people even speculate that this could have

contributed to the shooter's mental state.

Here to speak with us about these factors as we talk about a different kind of context for

the Evolved A tragedy.

Michelle Garcia, who's a journalist and essayist, recipient of the Soros Equality Fellowship,

and she's got an article about exactly this for

the site Palabra, which publishes work from members of the National Association of Hispanic

Journalists. It's also published by U.R.L. Media, which is based here in New York. And we also have

University of Texas history professor Monica

Munoz Martinez. So Michelle and Professor Martinez, welcome to WNIC. Thank you so much for joining us

for this. Good to be here, Brian. Thank you. Thank you. Michelle, I'll start with you. Since you wrote the article that brought this to our attention, you described policing at Uvalde as, quote, the border security apparatus created by elected officials, Republicans and Democrats, had converted South Texas communities into a real and symbolic theater,

complete with armed agents and heavy weapons to project an image of toughness and power,

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