How Miss El Paso’s ‘the Bachelor’ Journey Came to an End

Jessenia Cruz, the woman with an El Paso connection competing to win the heart of The Bachelor lead, Matt James, isn’t going to get a chance to introduce him to her family or her hometown of San Antonio.

Alas, there was no rose for the twenty-seven-year-old from the Alamo City who spent a few years here when her family was stationed at Ft. Bliss. As I previously reported, Jessenia attended the University of Texas El Paso from 2013 to 2016, and was crowned Miss El Paso in 2016.

On the post-Valentine’s Day episode, the former Sun City beauty queen finally went on a one-on-one date with the man she was competing for, only to get the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech followed by the heave-ho -- and not long after stating she was falling in love with him. But you knew it was coming when Matt replied, ‘thank you for sharing that with me’ (Sas!)

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“I don’t think I’m there yet,” The Bachelor told her over dinner. “And knowing that you deserve unwavering love and respect and knowing that I can’t give you that love right now, I can’t give you this rose.”

On the show, Jessenia stated she felt “blindsided,” and since she recently set her Instagram to private and deleted every Facebook post past December 2016 there’s no way of knowing where her head and heart are at these days.

But there’s talk that perhaps we haven’t seen the last of Cruz.

She was a Bachelor Nation favorite and a few of the entertainment and reality show sites I’ve visited speculate she could be a future Bachelorette candidate. After last season’s first Black Bachelorette and this season's first-ever Black Bachelor, and in light of how woke the franchise claims to now be maybe a Latina Bachelorette is where it goes next.