Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans’ mom was born in the United States. Yet, throughout his election campaign and after he entered Congress, Evans repeatedly stated that his mother believed she’d spend her entire life in a “hut” with a “dirt floor” in Mexico.
Evans is careful to say that his mother, Rebecca Chavez, “thought” she’d pass her life in Mexico, not that she actually did or that she was born there.
His mom “thought the best life had to offer was a dirt floor hut in Juarez, Mexico,” he stated in a May 6 email titled, “A Dirt Floor.”
His mom “thought she would spend her whole life in a one-room hut with a dirt floor in Juarez, Mexico,” he wrote in a 2023 email with the subject line, “Without my family, I’m nothing.”
His mom “thought she was going to grow up in a dirt floor hut in Juarez, across the river from El Paso,” Evans said on a conservative podcast last year.
Is there any reason why Evans’ mother would have thought that she’d spend her life in Mexico?
“I don’t have any idea where that came from,” said Jennifer Chavez, who is Evans’ mother’s sister (2 years younger). “You know, we may have crossed the bridge to go over there for, you know, a shopping day or something. I remember going over there to get haircuts, but that was like a day excursion. I mean, it was an effort to go over there.”
“It’s just totally delusional, because, I mean, that’s just such a stretch,” said Chavez.
Jennifer Chavez has no recollection of her sister mentioning any fear about spending her life in Mexico.
Evans’ comment about his mom thinking she’d live in a Mexican hut was first reported by Colorado Newsline, as part of an investigation revealing that Evans’ Grandfather did not enter the U.S. the “legal way,” as Evans said, but instead crossed illegally.
Newsline quoted Jennifer Chavez as saying she and Evans’ mother, “were raised in a middle-class neighborhood in El Paso. We went to Eastwood High School, which was predominantly Caucasian.”
The Colorado Times Recorder corroborated key elements of Jennifer Chavez’s story and found that Evans or his campaign delivered versions of the carefully constructed dirt-floor line in at least 10 interviews or emails, including in the September 10, 2023, email that launched his campaign (and was reported by Newsline).
Evans himself says his mom was born in the U.S. — not Mexico. Her wedding announcement states she indeed went to Eastwood High School. The obituary of Evans’ grandmother states that she was a “lifelong resident of El Paso,” suggesting that El Paso was where she raised Evans’ mother. Property records and photos suggest that Evans’ mother had a middle-class upbringing.
“Their Story Is My Story”
In interviews, Evans has said directly that he tells his mother’s story about the hut to appeal to Latino voters in his district, which is about 40% Hispanic, to help them understand that his family’s aspirations were their aspirations. And it worked, he said.
The first-term congressman presents his mother’s life journey — and thereby his own — as a rags-to-riches triumphant manifestation of the American Dream.
The hut, the dirt floor, and Mexico create the impression that his mom was actually a poverty-stricken immigrant, details that add memorable octane to the story.
Asked on right-wing radio in May of last year how he was going to “appeal” to his district’s “strong Hispanic communities,” Evans said, “These are hardworking folks that are, again, trying to put food on the table and trying to put gas in the car. And when leftist policies absolutely handcuff their ability to do that, they start to get frustrated.
“And I can resonate with that because their story is my story. My mom thought that she was going to grow up living in a dirt-floor hut down in Juarez, Mexico, but because of the American Dream, she was able to, you know, move to Colorado, earn that American Dream, get that better life, amass that generational wealth. That is what Republicans offer to the Hispanic community. That’s my story. And that resonates with them when we have those conversations.”
“Gabe’s family story is the American Dream story,” stated a campaign email sent before the election, with “Who Is Gabe Evans as the subject line. “When his mom was a child, she thought she would spend her whole life in a one-room hut with a dirt floor in Juarez, Mexico. But because her family had immigrated to the U.S., everything changed. Gabe’s mom’s pursuit of the American Dream catapulted him in a direction she would have never thought possible for anyone in her family.”
Evans: My Mom’s Dirt-Floor Story “Resonates with Hispanics“
In another example from last year’s campaign, Evans told the Hispanic Patriots podcast, which is hosted by a GOP activist, who’s Latino, “I can have those conversations and I can say, look, I want to fix that because my story is your story.
“I didn’t grow up rich. My mom’s first generation American, she thought she was going to grow up in a dirt floor hut in Juarez, across the river from El Paso. But because of the American dream, she was able to move up in the world. … She was able to pass on that generational wealth and that American dream to me. That story resonates with Hispanics, with non-Hispanics. That resonates with most folks in the 8th Congressional District, because it is the story of the American Dream. That’s what I want to preserve and protect for them.”
He frequently said his mother was a “first-generation American,” which may sound like she was an immigrant from another country but is mostly understood to mean a U.S. citizen with immigrant parents who were born abroad. Evans did not use the term “first-generation immigrant” to describe his mom. This would have meant she was born outside the U.S.
“From a Dirt Floor to Congress”
Evans continued telling the hut story after he entered Congress. In February of this year, he wrote about his mother in an email with the subject line that’s false: “From a Dirt Floor to Congress.”
“Born to an immigrant family, she thought the best life had to offer was a dirt floor hut in Juarez, Mexico. But through her strength, hard work and faith – she found a career, raised a family, and now, her son is in Congress,” states the email. “My name is Gabe Evans, and my mother is my hero.”
Why Stuck in a Hut?
Evans’ mother could not be reached for comment for this story. Evans’ spokesperson didn’t respond to a request to arrange an interview with Evans or Rebecca Chavez or provide a statement from Evans or his mother.
The core unanswered question is, why did Rebecca Chavez think she’d live in a hut in Mexico, or why does Evans think she thought this?
Or did Evans wordsmith the story to make it nearly impossible for fact-checkers to categorically disprove it — even if it seems senseless and is contradicted by a family member and other evidence?
All available information points to Rebecca Chavez spending her childhood in El Paso and then going to college there without fear of a life in poverty in Mexico.
Jennifer Chavez says that both she and her sister graduated from Scotsdale Elementary, a few miles from Eastwood High School, in El Paso. Chavez, who opposed her nephew Gabe’s run for Congress and is not speaking to her sister or Evans, provided photos of two El Paso homes where she says her sister grew up, one on Cadwallader Street (apparently purchased in 1956, one year after Rebecca was born) and the other on Gardenia Ct. (purchased in 1964). The photos depict a modest house, looking nothing like a hut with a dirt floor.
“We certainly weren’t upper middle class, but we were middle class,” she said, adding that before he started his political campaigning, Evans had no interest in his family’s Hispanic history.
She says she and her sister Rebecca would visit their grandmother in a low-income neighborhood of El Paso, Texas.
“Her backyard was mostly dirt, but remember where El Paso is located. In the Desert Southwest!” she wrote in an email.
Jennifer Chavez says she also remembers visiting the store of her grandfather’s sister in a poor section of Juarez, Mexico, but neither she nor her sister spent much time there, much less an entire night. That, she says, is the closest experience she can think of supporting her sister’s alleged thought that she’d spend her life in a Mexican hut.
Jennifer Chavez is two years younger than her sister Rebecca. Does Jennifer Chavez think the two-year age difference could explain why her older sister had thoughts about life in Mexico and she didn’t, perhaps something that she doesn’t remember because it occurred when her older sister was, say, 4 years old and she was 2?
“It is a fabrication made up, in my opinion, purposely to play on the emotions of the Hispanic voters in his district,” said Chavez when presented with the theory that her sister might have had an earlier memory than hers.
A spokeswoman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) Action Fund, an immigrant advocacy group, also sees Evans’ story about his mom as a calculated effort to misrepresent himself to immigrants in his district, which he won by just 2,500 votes last year, making it one of the closest races in the country and a key mid-term-election battleground in the war over which party will hold the majority in the next U.S. House.
“Representative Evans is exaggerating his family’s immigrant background to score political points, while pushing policies that harm Latino and immigrant families,” said Karen Orona, communications manager of the CIRC Action Fund. “If he truly respected our communities, he would fight for dignity and opportunity instead of using his mother’s story as a political prop.”
