Rhodora Elizondo with her 10-year-old daughter Francheska. Elizondo immigrated to the Rio Grande Valley in 2003 from Aklan, her home province in the Philippines. (Courtesy photo)

Students would hop into a karate stance when Rhodora Elizondo would walk down the hallway of a high school in Pharr.

During her first few years teaching math after immigrating to Pharr from the Philippines in 2003, she said when she would pass by some of her students on campus, they would hold their hands up and set their feet apart — like the way they’ve seen in movies — ready to strike a karate chop at her.

Elizondo would hold in her anger, telling herself “they are just being playful.”

Then she would take out a map.

“I would show them Asia and teach them that it’s a huge continent,” said Elizondo, who was born in Aklan, a province in the Philippines. “I would show them China, then I would show them South East Asia where Vietnam and the Philippines are — and I would tell them that the Philippines has nothing to do with kung fu.”

Education, she says, is the key to fostering a more inclusive community, and that it was “ignorance” behind the string of attacks Tuesday by Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, at spas in and around Atlanta leaving mostly women of Asian descent dead.

A couple days before the shooting, an elderly Asian woman was punched in the eye in San Francisco, leaving it so swollen it appears in photos to be almost shut. In February, an Asian American woman was shoved to the ground near a bakery in New York. She had to get about 10 stitches to close a wound on her forehead.

These are only a few of the latest wave of attacks that have ignited widespread attention over racism targeted against Asian Americans in the country.

Stop APPI Hate, a reporting database, reported 3,795 incidences of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19, 2020 and Feb. 28 of this year, in which women experienced hate-based assaults at 2.3 times the rate of men.

Part of the conversation centers on centuries of violence with Asian-American victims in the country, while another facet stems from the rhetoric of former President Donald J. Trump, who insisted on calling COVID-19 the “China virus” and “Kung flu” long after the World Health Organization named the disease.

“I don’t know why he had to call it that,” a distraught Elizondo said. “Instead of leading us during the pandemic to healing, calling it the ‘China virus’ was him leading ignorance.”

Elizondo can’t help but weep when talking about how the recent attacks on Asian women like her across the country, but she finds comfort knowing that at least in the Rio Grande Valley, her heritage is embraced.

“We are accepted here,” she said. “I didn’t feel strange when I came here because the people are so kind here, and because there are so many similarities of our cultures.”

Though her students pretended to stunt karate moves at her, she overall feels welcomed in the Valley’s Hispanic-majority community. Living here, she said, even makes her feel at home, noting similarities of Latino and Filipino cultures, such as a large Catholic basis, and high respect for elders.

Elizondo is the chairwoman of the Valley’s Philippine American Chamber of Commerce, and lightens up when talking about all the local support the organization has received throughout the years.

The chamber recorded more than 20,000 Filipinos living in the Valley about five years ago, and Elizondo says that number has surely grown since.

“I don’t think we are going to have a problem with what is happening in Atlanta or San Francisco or New York,” she said. “I don’t think we are going to have that problem because the Filipino community and the Asian community is valued and accepted in the Valley — in the Valley, we are part of the community.”

Zhuang Li, a nurse for premature babies at the DHR Health in Edinburg, also feels welcomed in the Valley.

“I always feel comfortable and accepted here, I don’t feel any different here,” said Li, who immigrated in 2003 to McAllen from Sichian, her home province in China.

Li, unlike Elizondo, does not trace anti-Asian violence to Trump referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”

“It’s just a name, he just said whatever was in his head,” Li said, who supports the former president. “That is just the way he is. He’s him.”

She has raised her two children in the Valley, and said she has never felt discriminated against.

“We don’t look down on them, and they don’t look down on me,” Li said. “We work together, and I really like the Hispanic culture. I really enjoy it here, I love them.”

Alexa Zabat, a senior of IDEA Quest College Preparatory, wrote that she was not surprised about the recent surge of Asian-targeted violence, though it stoked fear among her and her other Asian American friends.

Zabat’s parents immigrated to the Valley in 2000 from the Philippines.

“A friend texted me that she was scared to go out of her house for practice because there were a bunch of police in her area,” the 17-year-old Edinburg resident wrote. “Victims looking like our relatives hit too close to home.”

“Given America’s long history of and a system that allows violence towards Asians, I didn’t necessarily think of the incident as an anomaly,” the 17-year-old Edinburg resident wrote.

She recalled during her freshman year, a group of her classmates edited a photo of a Filipino student to make it appear as though she was thinking of eating a dog.

Zabat partly blames Trump for the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, saying “he’s just a symptom that this system has successfully ingrained racism into America.”

She said having conversations about cultures and understanding one another is the key to inclusivity. Zabat recently joined the International Club Society at her school, an organization that provides a space for students to learn about different cultures and teach others about their own.

“It felt so good to finally be able to defend my community and not care about what people thought of me if I did,” she wrote.

Elizondo has a 10-year-old daughter, Francheska, and said as much as she wants to, she knows she can’t protect her daughter from learning that the color of her skin will set her apart from her peers. Instead, Elizondo will teach her how to see, believe and encourage the good in others.

“I can’t hide these bad things from her, and she needs to learn about these things,” Elizondo said. “But I also want her to continue believing in the human spirit. I want her to continue believing that most people are good.”