(Editor’s note: After this story was published, Guillén’s family appeared with former President Trump on Friday at an event in Austin.)
Leave Vanessa Guillén’s sister alone.
Guillén, a 20-year-old Houston native and daughter of Mexican immigrants, was last seen in April of 2020 on a military base in Killeen. She was brutally murdered in Fort Hood while stationed there as an Army private. She was bludgeoned to death, and then burned and buried by a riverbank; the army found her body 69 days after she went missing.
This week, The Atlantic published a piece about Donald Trump’s disrespect of American military members — and increasingly fascist ideas. In his blockbuster story, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg described Guillen’s horrifying death and Trump’s 2020 meeting with the Guillén family. Months after Trump offered to pay for the family’s funeral expenses, Trump reportedly asked for an update on the bill in a closed door Oval Office meeting. When given the figure, Goldberg reported that Trump allegedly said, ‘“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” and then ordered his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, not to pay it. Later that day, he was still agitated, according to Goldberg. “Can you believe it?” he asked, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”
Within an hour of the magazine sharing the story on X, amid statements from Democrats appalled at Trump’s words, Vanessa’s sister Mayra responded with outrage: “Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
She was quickly met with online trolls. “Your sister would be ashamed of you,” one person wrote. Comments varied from insulting (“You’re an idiot,” said one) to racist (“Respect? Trump’s plan is to round you all up and deport you whether you are legal citizens or not. Take your head out of your ass and wake up,” said another”). And many were personal: “You dishonor your sister by voting for that trash.”
Let’s pause and take a moment, just a small one, to recognize what the Guillén family has experienced.
Try and remember how the state rallied around a family that has been through something unimaginable. Photos of Vanessa posing in her uniform were shared widely. When she was missing, her mother Gloria Guillén wailed on camera: “Quiero a mi hija viva! I want my daughter alive!” She promised the world she would move mountains to get justice for her daughter, “muevo cielo, mar y tierra.” In English, that’s “I will move the skies, oceans and earth.”
Haven’t they been through enough?
Like Vanessa, I am a daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her remains were found in a spot I’d driven by many times. For many of us, it’s hard not to imagine the anger the Guillén family must have felt, seeing the military fail the person they were supposed to protect. When the story first broke, there were hundreds of #IAmVanessaGuillen hashtags from brave service members sharing their own stories sexual abuse, so many that there was a documentary made about it, named for the hashtag. Murals and candlelight vigils came after. Vanessa’s death, and the military’s failure, brought change. The ‘I am Vanessa Guillén’ Act, spearheaded by her family, included sweeping changes to the way the military handles sexual assault and harassment cases. The fellow soldier accused of killing Guillén died by suicide after he was confronted by law enforcement. His girlfriend was convicted as an accomplice in burning and hiding Guillén’s body and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Here’s the truth: What Trump said is abhorrent. And it’s hard for some of us to imagine supporting an overtly racist man who engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election. Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies, was found liable for sexual abuse, and has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 27 women.
But Mayra Guillén isn’t an elected official. She’s only in the public eye for one reason, and it’s because her sister was ripped from this world in a way that was both disgusting and cruel. Her sister’s death was politicized from the start. Vanessa’s very existence, like many other daughters of immigrants, was political. Mayra also has the right to vote for whomever she wants, and to want to be left alone. To want the conversation about her sister to remain separate from the chaos of the presidential election.
Progressives respect this when the victims’ deaths are being politicized on the other side of the aisle, like Seth Rich’s family — or the family of a man killed in a car accident involving Haitian immigrants.
Mayra Guillén doesn’t need to be perfect, or to answer to strangers online.
Imagine what this world would be like if we all took the time to pause, take a breath, and think before we speak. To lead with compassion for each other. Let’s not continue to fuel hate and disdain. And for those sending messages of cruelty to Mayra Guillén, look to the words of our past leaders like Dolores Huerta: “We can’t let people drive wedges between us… because there’s only one human race.”
At the end of the day, Mayra Guillén and her family deserve peace. I hope we can give it to them.
