EAGLE PASS, Tex. — From the moment she heard about the eclipse, Patricia de Hoyos began making plans to watch the celestial phenomenon. Finally, she thought, her city had a reason to come together for something special.
But on Monday, de Hoyos joined hundreds of people at a football field to watch as Eagle Pass became the first city in the United States to experience the total solar eclipse. As the sky darkened, tensions over the standoff seemed to disappear from people’s minds. A singer crooned, “I’m walking on sunshine!” The crowd clapped and craned their necks toward the sky.
“I just kept thanking God for allowing me to see this,” de Hoyos, 65, said in between tears as she sat mesmerized by the black orb crowned by a ring of diffuse light. “This means so much to Eagle Pass.”
As the eclipse enraptured millions across North America, it left a particularly resonant mark on two Texas cities that have been engulfed in conflict. A few minutes after Eagle Pass witnessed totality, people in Uvalde got a front-row seat to the eclipse as well. That city is still reeling from the Robb Elementary School massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead in May 2022. Both cities hoped for a moment of unity and awe.
“It’s an opportunity to celebrate one star that shines on everyone,” said Marcel Corchado Albelo, 25, a scientist with the National Solar Observatory research institute, which set up a booth in Eagle Pass. “It’s a reminder to look back and look beyond.”
Leaders in Eagle Pass invested millions of dollars to draw tourists and give the border community a much-needed economic lift. But the state takeover of Shelby Park threw a wrench in their plans. State troopers have occupied the green space since January. The throngs of visitors local leaders had hoped for did not materialize. Tickets to a music festival ahead of the eclipse went for far below the original price, and many were not sold.
Vita Garza Flores, 76, traveled from Northern California to see the eclipse in the city where she was born. She brought her daughter and brother. Neighbors back home questioned the wisdom in traveling so close to the border.
“People asked me, ‘Are you sure? Is it safe?’” Garza Flores recalled, bemused more than bothered. “I told them, I don’t care, I just want to be there.”
In the lead-up to the eclipse, curious tourists swung by the city’s downtown and riverfront to get a firsthand look at the state troopers patrolling the border. A store selling Western-style outfits and cowboy hats posted an advertisement for eclipse glasses in the window. A local newspaper sold commemorative T-shirts to mark the occasion.
“I hope this will put us on the map with people for something other than the border,” said Joshua Peralta, an Eagle Pass resident who watched the eclipse with his wife and their two young boys.
The park where the event was supposed to take place would have been a natural gathering place for this bicultural community to watch the eclipse. Shelby Park has historically hosted Tejano music festivals and carnivals within view of its Mexican neighbors across the river. Since January, no one has been allowed to enter the compound without the Texas Military Department’s permission.
State forces took control of the crucial crossing spot just after the number of migrants apprehended at the border plummeted. Despite the lower numbers, Abbott has continued to build up his forces at the park and is moving forward with plans to construct an operating base on the riverbank. The state accuses the Biden administration of failing to enforce immigration laws and is sparring with the federal government in court.
When Garza Flores thinks about what is happening in Eagle Pass, she is saddened.
“I try to put myself in those parents’ minds,” she said, referring to migrants with children. “I empathize because that could be us.”
As the moon began to obscure a quadrant of the sun her expression changed. The clouds broke and the sun shined. She grabbed her eclipse glasses.
In that moment, one word occupied her mind: “Wow!”
High school senior Alejandro Camarillo delayed his first day of work at a local fast-food restaurant to join his friends at the football field. They laid out on artificial turf at the 50-yard line and traded jokes while waiting for totality. Nothing really happens in his hometown of nearly 30,000, he said laughing, “except for Donald Trump and Elon Musk visiting the border.”
The eclipse was a chance for Eagle Pass to show a different side that he said doesn’t make the headlines: “I hope people know it’s a nice place.”
Camarillo was one of dozens of Eagle Pass public school students exploring booths at a local activity center set up by scientists and graduate students from local colleges, NASA and the solar observatory. Organizers handed out coloring pages and crayons, distributed space-themed comic books and let children look through special telescopes and pinhole contraptions to peer at the heavens.
As the moon aligned with the sun, the center’s jumbotron blared, instructing the hundreds of families in attendance to put on their glasses. The crowd cheered as the clouds split open for a nearly unobstructed view.
“Was it worth it, kids?” Roberto Hinojosa asked his three children, who’d traveled with him from a Texas city 400 miles away to witness the eclipse. They were too engrossed in the celestial show to answer.
The day gradually turned dark as the total eclipse arrived in Eagle Pass. The glasses came off. De Hoyos hopped up from her chair, clapping and exclaiming: “Beautiful. Beautiful.”
“Es algo maravilloso,” she said in Spanish. “It’s marvelous.”
For a few moments the people of Eagle Pass were mesmerized and in unison — something de Hoyos said she hopes will happen when the sun and moon aren’t aligned, too.
