A year after Half Moon Bay mass shooting, impact remains

Marisela Martinez-Maya attended her uncle’s funeral in Mexico on behalf of her parents, who could not.

“As I was walking with my brother and my uncles, carrying my uncle’s casket, that’s when it hit. I was walking, and I just had a sudden realization. This was not OK. This should not have happened,” she said.

On the one-year anniversary of a mass shooting that took the lives of seven farmworkers in Half Moon Bay Jan. 23, Martinez-Maya — the niece of Marciano Martinez Jimenez, a victim of the shooting — spoke to a group of local, statewide and national officials and community advocates. The group was gathered for a discussion to honor the victims and reflect on commitments to change made after the shooting prompted investigation into squalid farmworker living conditions.

Martinez-Maya decided to tell them about her beloved uncle and his funeral in Mexico and its impact on both her and her family. He had sent money to build a house in Mexico and told his family in the United States that he wanted to show it to them, along with the home he grew up in with her father. She saw the house, but without him.

“I was able to see all that. I was able to see his home. I mean he was there with us, but it wasn’t the way we had worked out,” she said. “We saw everything. I saw everything.”

A service had already been hosted to honor Martinez Jimenez’s life in Half Moon Bay, Martinez-Maya said, but the processional in Mexico elicited new emotions of grief — both because her own father, Servando Martinez Jimenez, could not attend, and because family in Mexico said she knew her uncle better than they did.

“I wanted to break, but I couldn’t. Because I went with a sense of responsibility, as being the oldest in my family. I went with a mission to make sure that my uncle had the funeral that he deserved, and he was laid to rest in the way that he deserved, because he was really a kind man. He was such an amazing uncle to my brother and I,” she said.

Martinez-Maya has also worked with the community organization Ayudando Latinos A Soñar since 2012. ALAS, a Latino cultural arts and programming organization, has been deemed an essential service provider in the weeks and months following the shooting.

ALAS, which hosted the roundtable discussion alongside the Latino Community Foundation, provided housing support, financial donations, resources and supplies not only to survivors and families who lost loved ones, but also to the 19 farmworker families displaced after the shooting due to the discovery of untenable living conditions on the farms where they worked.

Chunli Zhao — who was indicted by a grand jury Jan. 19 and recently had further arraignment continued to Feb. 29 — allegedly shot and killed seven individuals and injured one on two separate mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay. After the murders, dire farmworker housing situations were revealed at these locations, which were sometimes without heat or running water.

But reflection from the assembled crowd, which included representatives from the Biden and Newsom administrations; Latino Community Foundation CEO Julian Castro, also the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; and a variety of San Mateo County leadership, expressed pride in the way Half Moon Bay and San Mateo County moved forward to address the glaring gaps in their housing services for coastal farmworkers.

“In 42 years of elected office, I have never seen a community pull together the way this community has,” Eshoo said. “Out of that pain, this community understood the shame that was under it, and committed — committed from day one, one a year ago tomorrow — started the planning and the execution to get rid of the shame and the need for decent housing for human beings, for the workers in this community.”

Eshoo also asked if the Chinese community, deeply impacted by the farmworker shooting but had often gone unknown before it occurred, felt more connected to Half Moon Bay now.

“They’re nervous, they’re still anxious ... but they can see the hope. A lot of people reach out to them,” Sao Leng U, director of social services at Self-Help For the Elderly, who worked to provide translation services for Asian families who had lost loved ones in the farmworker shooting, said.

Two substantial affordable housing projects — one at 880 Stone Pine Road and another at 555 Kelly Ave. — are underway, with the county facilitating a third purchase of Bay City Flower Company, also designated for housing. Earliest move-in dates for some housing units are predicted by next fall, although all three projects will require more funding to move forward with on-schedule development.

Aside from housing, leaders addressed other substantial issues facing the farmworker community and California residents at large, including immigration reform and gun violence. Judith Guerrero, executive director of Coastside Hope — a nonprofit serving the San Mateo County midcoast — said fear of their immigration status being weaponized can stop farmworkers from reporting crime.

“There is one piece and I’ve noticed that it’s always missing, and it’s an immigration reform, because a lot of farmworkers are afraid that they will lose their jobs,” she said. “Whether you believe it or not, there’s still owners of farms that will use that as a measure of fear. So I do hope that there’s a permanent solution coming soon.”

California has taken steps toward providing mental health benefits for all citizens, regardless of immigration status, Stephanie Welch, deputy secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said, which is particularly relevant in the wake of traumatic events like gun violence.

“What happened to this community results in years of trauma, and we have a responsibility to be available and to make more accessible behavioral services,” she said.

The lone survivor of the shooting, Pedro Romero Pérez, also spoke at the event, telling the assembled crowd that although he was glad the city and county were supporting affordable housing post-shooting, his life has been irreparably changed.

His brother, Jose Romero Pérez, died in the shooting, and left behind a wife and children in Mexico who are in need of continued financial support.

“I came to this country to help my family have a better life,” he said. “My father, my brothers, we didn’t have anything there. And ... my idea was to be able to build a home, but I wasn’t able to do that. I need your help, because now I only have to think about this tragedy that’s happened.”

The event was followed by a “Heart of the Farmworker” memorial service 6 p.m. at ALAS’ main building, with an artistic tribute by Fernando Escartiz unveiled and music, poetry art and reflection.