Every St. Patrick’s Day, people pack El Paso’s Cathedral of St. Patrick for Mass. That cathedral is one of only about 8 in the whole United States named after Ireland’s patron saint, and one of only 2 in the state of Texas. And it sits in a city that is mostly Mexican and Mexican-American. The story of why is both brutal and true. There is a real reason the Irish and Mexican people have always had a soft spot for each other, and it goes way deeper than just both being Catholic.
These two groups know what it feels like to have their land stolen, their language treated like trash, and their suffering ignored by people in power. That shared pain built a bond that shows up in El Paso every single day, whether people realize it or not.
To understand where it all started, you have to go back to the 1840s, one of the worst decades in the history of both nations.
The Hunger and the Invasion Arrive at the Same Time
In 1845, a plant disease wiped out Ireland’s potato crops. Potatoes were what most poor Irish families lived on. When the crops died, people had nothing to eat. About one million Irish people starved to death, and another one to two million packed up and left the country just to survive…