Family of girl killed in Uvalde massacre brings message to California farmworker conference

Jacklyn “Jackie” Jaylen Cazares was excited about her First Holy Communion on Mother’s Day.

The 9-year-old, who loved to create TikTok videos and set them to music and sound effects, loved the attention showered on her that day.

Her parents said she felt like a “rock star” wearing her long, white dress.

About two weeks later, she went to school.

The fourth-grader did not make it back home. She died along with 18 other students and two teachers when they were mowed down by an intruder who broke into Robb Elementary School on May 24 in Uvalde, Texas.

The Cazares family buried Jackie in her communion dress.

She never celebrated her 10th birthday, which came about two weeks after the school massacre.

“My daughter … It’s hard to say. She’s like a normal little 9-year-old girl, happy, loving, you know,” Jackie’s dad Javier Cazares said of his youngest child. “She likes to be involved. But more than that, she loved her family and friends the most.”

Jackie wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. She also wanted to travel and go to Paris.

“You know she had a lot of dreams for a little girl. And that was taken away from us too early,” said Javier Cazares, seated in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Visalia wearing a shirt with a photo of his daughter.

Thirteen other people were injured in the shooting.

Coming to Visalia

Javier and Gloria Cazares and their 17-year-old high schooler daughter Jazmín Cazares shared their stories about Jackie at the 2022 Farmworker Women’s Conference at the Visalia Convention Center on Thursday.

The couple also have a 24-year-old son who is in the Marines.

The conference was dedicated to Jackie, said Lali Moheno, who for many years has organized the conference in Tulare County to educate farmworker women on health, safety, employment, education and environment.

The parents had tears in their eyes when Moheno told the audience why a photo of Jackie was on the stage.

The Cazares family met Moheno about two months ago at the Raza Unida Party 50th anniversary convention in San Antonio. He wasn’t expected to speak at the convention, but Cazares spoke about what happened to his family and what he was doing to raise awareness against gun violence.

“She invited me to come to this and I happily accepted. So, I’m here,” Javier Cazares said, adding he is doing everything he can to bring awareness of what happened to his daughter and her friends to “anybody that would listen.”

They also lost their niece, Annabel Davis, who was in the same classroom with their daughter.

The day of the tragedy, Gloria Cazares recalled that her husband took Jackie to school “just like any other day.”

Later in the morning the parents were to meet with Jackie for the school’s end-of-the-year award ceremony.

“I said goodbye to my baby girl and her friends and not knowing that that would be the last time I saw any of them alive,” said Gloria, who hugged her daughter at the conclusion, not realizing it would be the last embrace.

“We left my daughter at school on May 24, but she will never be able to come back home.”

They weren’t the only ones affected.

“That day changed the life of our community and the world, and especially those 21 families that will never get a chance to hold, hug or kiss their loved ones again,” Gloria said.

Coping and fighting for change

Coping with the loss of their child has not been easy for the family.

“It’s been very hard. It’s been very emotional. I mean, just the way she was taken from us makes it even harder,” said Javier. “You know, it’s not just me. All the other families that have been affected. It’s just something we never expected.”

“She was taken in one of the worst ways. So, it’s that much harder, you know, trying to cope with this. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. You have good days. We have bad days, but mostly bad,” Javier said. “But we’re staying strong and all we can do is try to make every day as good as we can.”

Six months have gone since that fateful day, and the Cazares family believe the response from lawmakers to the tragedy has not been enough.

“In Texas, nothing has changed. The laws are still the same. And we’ve been asking to get a meeting with the governor, a special session to raise the age from 18 years old to 21 to buy an assault weapon,” Javier said.

So far, Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to respond.

“He’s denied it and he’s called it unconstitutional. A lot of people want the same thing, but for whatever reason, (Abbott) didn’t want to do it.”

Abbott, who was first elected in 2015, was reelected to a third term in the midterm election on Nov. 8 with 54.8%. Democrat Beto O’Rourke of El Paso got 43.8%.

The Cazares’ fight for change won’t be easy.

“I’m not sure now after the elections, but we’re still fighting. We’re not going to stop fighting until things are changed because too many kids are dying,” Javier said, adding that not only “it’s too easy to buy that weapon and easily modify it to make it even worse than it already is.”

“We’re trying to make things better in Texas, but it’s a hard fight,” he said.

Jazmín Cazares said like her family, “most of the families and a lot of our community members have been advocating for many, many things, one of them being gun violence exclusively.”

Since the death of his daughter, Javier said he has been to Austin, the Texas state capitol, as well as to Washington, D.C., a couple of times to speak about his daughter and the school shooting that took her life.

“Since the tragedy I started fighting the next day and I haven’t stopped,” Javier said.

He made a promise to his daughter at the hospital where they went to identify her body. “You try to make change as much as you can, so it won’t happen again.”

María G. Ortiz-Briones: 559-441-6782, @TuValleTuSalud