Community members left flowers, candles, photographs and handwritten messages at a memorial near the site where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo must have loved ranchera music.
As mourners, many wearing shades of blue at the family’s request, made the slow procession to view his body at Forest Park Lawndale Funeral Home on Thursday, songs by ranchera legend Antonio Aguilar played on repeat. The blazing trumpets and weeping violins of the mariachis told stories about a homeland left behind.
This is the music of Mexico’s beating heart. Unapologetic and heartfelt.
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This was Salgado’s story.
The 52-year-old husband, father and homebuilder was fatally shot on July 7 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer as he drove his construction crew to a Houston job site.
TIMELINE: What happened before and after the fatal Houston ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
For more than three decades, Araujo lived in this East End community, worked sunrise to sunset to build a construction business and put his boys through college. Now men, they stood strong and proud as mourners passed by. They shook hands and received blessings and condolences.
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Houston stretches its arms to welcome people from anywhere, and it was Salgado’s home. He did what so many come here to do — build a life, raise a family, find a path to make their dreams come true and carve out memories along the way.
More than any major city, Houston is where the American dream can take root deep into the soil. Families come here with little more than a prayer and find acceptance in community, which gives them courage to spread their wings.
TO HOUSTON, WITH JOY: A newsletter for a city that’s never simple
Headlines across the nation tell how Salgado died tragically along a street in the community he called home. But few stories will share how he lived, that by all accounts he was a good person and father.
At the funeral home, that was evident. This was not a media spectacle that high-profile funerals with dignitaries and celebrities often become. It was a celebration of a family man who was loved. Cell phones even were prohibited so that mourners could be fully immersed in the moment.
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Memories of a good life played in photos across two TV screens.
There, Salgado appeared as a young, dignified man in a denim shirt. In another image he’s holding his sons and in another he appears with horses in the mountains. One image even captures him laughing with pie on his face.
Those who spew derogatory names at people like Araujo are filled with so much hate that they are blind. They can’t see that Houston is the melting pot of cultures. That here, many people may be different at first glance, but connected in their values for hard work, family and community.
This city, more than any other, understands that the path to being an American citizen is not easy, but often winding and very long. Houston’s strength is its ability to pull in people like Salgado, make them feel like they belong and then marvel at the lives and loves and families they build.
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Before Salgado’s casket was closed, his sons stood in front their father. Ronaldo Salgado, the older son, bent over his body and held on tight.
To belong is also to be someone worth holding onto, one last time.