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El Paso residents turned out for the National March for Science on Earth Day, April 22, 2017.
UT El Paso multimedia journalism student Christian Vasquez produced this video of scenes from the event.
Dogs and cats are locked in small enclosures, expressing confusion and fright. They look out a thick layer of glass, presumably hoping a passerby will take them to a new home. For most, their fate was to go into a room and receive an injection and everything goes black. That was the prognosis for some 75 percent of the animals impounded at El Paso Animal Services in 2012. More than 25,000 of the 33,000 animals impounded that year were were euthanized, according to shelter documents.
Borderzine is accepting applications from El Paso area high school juniors and seniors for full scholarships to attend the 15th annual Journalism in July (JIJ) workshop at the University of Texas at El Paso. The dates are July 9 – 16. Fill out the application form here. Over the last 14 years, the workshop has provided journalism training to more than 200 students from high schools in the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez–Las Cruces area. A goal of the workshop is to encourage high school students of diverse backgrounds who are already interested in journalism to pursue future studies and careers in news media and communication. “Journalism in July encouraged me to pursue a career in journalism,” said Gloria Heredia, 2012 alumna of the program and current multimedia journalism student at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Drug-related violence in Juarez has begun to spike again, raising concerns among nightclub owners and business leaders that patrons are staying home for fear of a return to the high levels of violence that plagued the city and peaked in 2010, some bar owners said. Nearly 50 people were killed in January all related to drug violence, said Alejandro Ruvalcaba Valadez, a spokesman from the FGE, Fiscalia General del Estado in Spanish or the Ciudad Juarez Attorney General’s Office, in English. The violence began to rise last fall, Valdez said, when 120 people were killed during September and October. During that period, the number of homicides averaged between 30-40 victims per month, or about 29 deaths per every 100,000 Juarez residents. “Since the year started until the end of January weekend sales and the number of customers has decreased,” said Don Chuy, a bartender at Club 15, on Avenida Benito Juarez, in downtown Juarez.
EL PASO – Lawmakers from this border community are concerned about the harm that would result if Texas begins requiring law enforcement and other agencies to act as immigration agents. The Texas Senate on Feb. 9 passed SB4, which Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, called “a thinly disguised attack on immigrant communities.”
The so-called “anti-sanctuary cities” bill would allow the state to penalize cities over policies that obstruct enforcement of immigration law or discourage police agencies from inquiring about a person’s immigration status. The Texas House is now considering its version of the bill. The senator says he, along with other opponents of the bill, offered amendments to decrease the negative impacts the passage of bill would have on health, safety and social life of communities.
Sarah Onofrey is one among millions around the world who rely on some sort of dietary supplement to lose weight and improve their overall health. “I had always used diet pills and I always felt sick, groggy, dehydrated, and dizzy,” Onofrey said recently as she waited for an Herbalife shake at a Nutrition Club in northeast El Paso. “But with (Herbalife shakes), I don’t feel like I’m going without anything. I feel a lot healthier.”
As a matter of fact, according to a 2011 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than half of all American adults use one or more of these types of products believing it improves their health. In an age when trendy health and fitness-related terms like “#gainz” and “fit fam” are seen everywhere from bumper stickers to Instagram bios, it’s no surprise that meal replacement shakes have been in such high demand in recent years.
En un foro legislativo que se llevó a cabo en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso a fines de enero varios políticos estatales dieron a conocer sus posturas legislativas en torno a diferentes temas de inmigración que afectan la zona fronteriza, en específico una propuesta estatal que requiere que autoridades policiacas locales reporten al gobierno federal a personas indocumentadas que han sido detenidas. El foro, llamado “El Paso Times Live”, fue auspiciado por el periódico local, el cual atrajo mas de 200 personas, donde dichas autoridades contestaron preguntas de la audiencia en torno a la propuesta estatal y otros temas
Cesar Blanco, representante estatal por el el distrito 76, comentó que no está de acuerdo con la orden ejecutiva de inmigración firmada por President Donald Trump a solo dos semanas después de tomar el poder. Esta orden ejecutiva hubiera impedido la entrada a Estados Unidos a personas de siete países predominantes de la religion musulmana, haciendo así énfasis a que estos países son un peligro para la nación estadounidense. La orden no fue implementada después de que varias cortes federales la declararon anti constitucional. Trump ha indicado que la esta revisando y pronto presentará otra version.
EL PASO – More than a decade has passed since pink crosses began to appear in the streets of Ciudad Juárez. And even though it seems to be a problem of the past for many, the mothers of women who disappeared or were found dead continue to seek justice for their daughters. Around 1996, Ciudad Juárez became internationally notorious after the murders of hundreds of young women, some as young as 12 years old. Many had been raped, strangled and mutilated. Their bodies were found in vacant lots and many of the cases are still open and unresolved.
Mas de una década ha pasado desde que cruces color rosa aparecieran en las calles de Ciudad Juárez, y aunque parece ser un tema olvidado para muchos, las madres de las víctimas siguen en la búsqueda de justicia por la desaparición y muerte de sus hijas. Ciudad Juárez fue colocada en el ojo del mundo después de que cientos de jóvenes mujeres entre 12 y 18 años fueran violadas, estranguladas, y mutiladas empezando desde el año 1996. Sus cuerpos eran encontrados en lotes baldíos y muchos de estos casos siguen abiertos y sin resolver. “Lo que esta pasando aquí en Ciudad Juárez no es una historia ni una leyenda; es una realidad que estamos viviendo las madres de familia aquí y que ya no queremos que pase,” compartió Susana Montes Ruiz. María Guadalupe Pérez Montes, hija de Susana Montes Ruiz, joven de tan solo 17 años de edad, desapareció el 31 de Enero del 2009, en el centro de Ciudad Juárez cuando se encontraba realizando la compra de unos zapatos.
The city of El Paso welcomes a new professional-level dance platform known as the El Paso Coyote Girls, the official dance team of the El Paso Coyotes soccer team. For dancers all around the community, the addition of the new team brings more opportunities for local dancers who aspire to perform on for a large audience and engage in community outreach. The women are not paid for their work. The Coyote Girls debuted the team on Nov. 4 at the home-opener match against the Dallas Sidekicks, where the El Paso Coyotes fell 14-7 at the El Paso County Coliseum.
As students file into a freshman algebra class at Bowie High School they begin to notice that something is different. The round tables in the center of the room have folded tent cards with job titles such as “Resource manager”and “Task manager.” The outer tables in the room each have a tower of wood blocks. “Miss, we’re playing Jenga?” asks Amber Macias, a student in teacher Celeste Cano’s algebra class.
Nine years after the start of a curbside recycling program, city workers say El Pasoans still don’t get it. “Within the last few years, we have seen the contamination rate of non-recyclable items in the blue container dramatically increase,” said Raeann Ortega Recycling, manager of the Environmental Services Department with the city of El Paso. Ortega said people are frequently tossing non-recyclables into their blue bins, which increases costs for labor to sort out at the city’s recycling centers. “Within the last twelve months we spent approximately $750,000 in processing fees,” Ortega said. The most common mistake residents make is putting Styrofoam containers and pizza boxes in the blue bins or taking inappropriate items with their recyclable items to one of four citywide Citizen Collection Sites (CCS).
El Paso’s poor air quality is driving down school performance for children in neighborhoods with high rates of airborne metabolic disrupting chemicals, researchers say. In a study published in the September issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso and Northeastern University looked at school performance among fourth and fifth-grade public school children in El Paso. They found that children exposed to higher levels of airborne toxins had lower grade point averages,
Related: Air quality one of biggest threats on U.S., Mexico border
Study author Stephanie Clark-Reyna, a second-year doctoral student at Northeastern University who attended UTEP as an undergraduate, said she hopes the research will have an impact on how El Paso addresses its unique air quality issues. “Air quality in El Paso is concerning because of the trucking industry. Last time I looked it up, something like 800,000 trucks passed through a single port of entry in one year,” Clark-Reyna said.
EL PASO – This border city appears to be growing more gun-friendly as the number of gun dealers has increased by 29 percent in the past three years, according to a Borderzine analysis. The city now has 80 gun dealers compared to 62 in 2013, the analysis of ATF data showed.These figures include large retailers such as Walmart as well as private dealers, but exclude pawnbrokers who sell firearms.
“We have had peaks and valleys,” said Louis Southard, general manager at Sportsman’s Elite, a gun store and shooting range in El Paso, which has been open since January 2013. “In 2008, a little over five years ago, there was a rather large uptake in gun sales.” Tragic events can often drive an increase in gun sales, such as when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred in December 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty children as well as six members of the school’s staff were fatally shot by a troubled gunman who killed himself after the attack.
In the sleepy little farm town of Canutillo, Texas – just across the river from El Paso, is the 20-acre Rio Grande Valley Ranch that boards horses, steers, ponies and even goats . The ranch is also home to a some horses that are specially trained to help people with special needs. The horses are used to connect with people who have disabilities such as social disorders, confidence issues, PTSD, fetal alchohol syndrome, Downs syndrome, autism and even young abuse victims.
Noel Cass and her friend Rita Nicolini operate KNJ Therapeutic, which helps about five people a day break through the wall built by their disabilities. Cass was trained in Phoenix and is PATH certified, which stands for Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship. She has been in the field for 10 years.
EL PASO – When Juliana Varkonyi and her mother Mary Ibanez decided to open a flower shop, they knew they wanted it to reflect a sense of community and respect for the environment. That’s why they decided to open Desert Modern Florals in Downtown El Paso and then partner with Calhoun Flower Farms based in southern New Mexico. The shop is in the center of the Cortez Building downtown, across the street from the newly renovated San Jacinto Plaza. Ibanez said they chose the downtown location because of the revitalization that is going on right now. She wanted the business to be part of the emerging community.
Starting a business can be a risky and tedious endeavor. Yet six Bowie High School seniors have taken on the challenge with a donated school bus, the support of school officials and assorted contributions from local businesses. If all goes according to plan, business seniors Sophia Morales, Veronica Rodriguez, Andres Valdez, Joseph Gutierrez, Sergio Marrufo, and Sisco Gonzalez, all age 17, will soon be selling healthy food options out of the Oso Good Food Truck to raise money for college scholarships. The student-run food truck business, slated to hit the streets in January, is a partnership with Bowie’s International Business Academy in partnership with EPISD, El Paso Custom Food Trucks, Bowie Garden Resources, and now Whole Foods Market. The six seniors enrolled in the International Business Academy at Bowie produced the business plan.
El PASO – On election night as Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and Hillary Clinton’s campaign drew to a close in defeat, I spent the evening with the El Paso County Democrats at their “victory” party. What started off as a hopeful event at the Camino Real hotel soon turned into a miserable affair. 6:40 p.m.: I arrive. There were already around 60 people gathered in the hotel’s grand Dome Bar. Drinks already flowing, the atmosphere was calm and relaxed.
La contaminación ambiental es un problema que afecta a todo el mundo, no respeta fronteras. El aire es un elemento natural que es compartido por la frontera norte de México, por Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, El Paso, Texas y el condado de Doña Ana. El problema mas importante que esta enfrentando Ciudad Juárez es que el equipo con el que cuentan para medir la contaminación ambiental trabaja con tecnología de los años 80’s. El Índice Metropolitano de la Calidad del Aire, mejor conocido como el IMECA, se utiliza en distintas ciudades de México. El hecho de que este equipo es muy viejo no sirve para medir el IMECA, por lo cual no se le puede informar a la comunidad del nivel de contaminación ambiental.
Editor’s note: This article by Bob Moore was originally published in the El Paso Times Nov. 5. It is reprinted here with permission of the El Paso Times. Women and younger voters who did not vote in 2012 fueled El Paso’s record-shattering early voting turnout. An El Paso Times analysis of county election records shows that the number of voters under age 30 doubled from 2012, to almost 20,000.
EL PASO – Lower Valley resident Daniela Caro struggles to breathe some days. “On bad days my asthma gets really bad, my throat closes up, even walking to class is a little bit hard,” she said. The 23-year-old El Pasoan lives near Riverside where trucks spew toxic fumes as they transport goods across the El Paso-Juarez border. The American Lung Association ranks El Paso’s pollution in the top 20 among U.S. metropolitan areas for both particles and ozone. Poor air quality has been linked to health issues, particularly for at-risk groups like children, older adults and anyone with respiratory problems like asthma.
More than 900 UTEP students, faculty, staff members, and residents of the El Paso community took advantage of early voting on Thursday at the Student Union on campus to cast their choice for president of the United States. Maggie Ortega, 57, a staff member who helped coordinate and organize UTEP’s early voting day, said she was surprised by the high turnout. City wide, early voting has broken previous voting records, according to local news reports. “This is the highest turnout that we’ve had in years,” said Ortega, who is services coordinator for the UTEP Student Government Association and worked with the El Paso County Elections Department to bring the mobile voting booth to the Student Union from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on October 27. The El Paso Department of Elections notifies UTEP staff in advance of the date they intend to set up the mobile voting booth, said Administrative Coordinator Maggie Ortega, who also helped organize the early voting day.
EL PASO – More than 1,000 people daily are shopping at the newly opened Whole Foods Market, supporting local vendors while enjoying organic foods not typically found in El Paso supermarkets. “Our first day open we expected to see a lot of people, but the amount of customers we’ve had has exceeded our expectations,” said Mark Heins, store manager. Whole Foods – founded in Austin in 1980 – has more than 460 stores worldwide and opened in El Paso on Oct. 19 in the heart of the West Side near Coronado High School at the corner of Mesa and Resler streets. “All in all we’ve been having great days, and not only was the public happy we were open but all the employee and management were happy we were open to finally see the El Paso community,” Heins said.
EL PASO – On a recent Saturday in September hundreds of local residents attended a health fair event, sponsored by Entravision 26, at Sunland Park Mall. The annual event provided residents with health and medical information as well as free vaccines, blood pressure and hearing tests. The all-day event featured music, free food, and an opportunity for attendees to have their picture taken with well-known Entravision news reporters and anchors. A primary goal of the fair was to help residents who lack medical insurance and have limited access to health care. One of the primary speakers at the fair was Weather Anchor Aldo Acosta, 53.
In the Northeast region of El Paso, Texas there lies more than 7,000 acres of land next to the Franklin Mountains that may be most known for the yellow Mexican poppies that blanket the foothills come springtime. Now, the golden field of Castner Range may also be known as a national monument thanks to efforts by a coalition of El Pasoans pushing to preserve it for future generations. The Frontera Land Alliance and the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition teamed up to promote protecting the land from housing and commercial development. In December 2015, El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke introduced legislation (HR 4268) to establish Castner Range as a national monument. Now, a public push is gaining momentum to urge President Obama to protect the area by using the Antiquities Act to designate it as a national monument.
Editor’s Note: Saturday, Oct. 8 marked the one-month countdown to Election Day. So New Mexico In Depth’s Sandra Fish decided to travel to Deming and Silver City with University of Texas El Paso exchange student Jack Price of Darlington, North East England. The two cities are each hosting key state House races, with incumbents retiring and political newcomers vying for the seats. These contests could be key to whether the House remains in Republican hands or goes back to Democratic control.
This year’s contentious presidential election will most surely be remembered as one that broke new ground on many fronts: first woman on the ballot, first business tycoon/political outsider to run for the oval office, first time hot button issues of immigration and free trade made it to the national debate stage. After election day we’ll also know whether the race for the White House has produced a long-awaited milestone regarding the national Latino vote, which many believe to be a sleeping giant that will soon wake up to vote in large enough numbers to affect the outcome of a presidential election. This remains to be seen. Read and watch border region election coverage by UTEP and NMSU student reporters and online news site New Mexico In Depth here. A question in the minds of many is whether Latinos will be motivated to cast ballots in greater numbers than before because of Republican Donald Trump’s anti immigrant rhetoric and hate speech against Mexicans, Latinos and others, and promises to stop illegal immigration by building a “beautiful wall” between the United States and Mexico. Mexico will have to pay for it, he has said.
Voters taking advantage of early voting in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, say they wanted to avoid the long lines on election day and were eager to cast their ballots for the “good of the whole community.” Early voting began Oct. 11 in New Mexico and runs through Nov. 5. In Texas it runs from Oct.
On the last week of voter registration, Claudia Perea, a 45 year-old housewife from Las Cruces goes door-to-door in neighborhoods with the largest numbers of eligible Latinos who are not registered to vote. Armed with a pen, voter registration forms and a clipboard, Perea took to the streets of Las Cruces and El Paso to register Latinos to vote in the 2016 presidential election. Perea is part of a voter registration drive conducted by Hillary for Las Cruces’ organizing office. “I help to recruit people to register to vote and target the Latino community heavily. I go door-to-door or to churches, parks and neighborhoods to try to register as many Latinos to vote as possible by Oct.
EL PASO – Like millennials elsewhere, young El Pasoans are distinguished by their historic low levels of civic and electoral participation. But a group of local political leaders and others have spent the last year in an aggressive campaign inside high school classrooms and auditoriums to help sign up 18-year-olds and get them to cast a ballot November 8. Spearheaded by the office of State Sen. José Rodriguez, the Student Voter Initiative deployed volunteers to 26 high schools in nine school districts over the last 11 months to talk to about 7,000 teenagers about the political process, civic engagement and the importance of voting. As a result of the high school campaign, 650 El Paso area students age 18 years and older are now registered to vote, according to Samantha Romero, office coordinator for Sen. Rodriguez
Claudia Yoli, Director of Community Affairs for Sen. Rodriguez, said of the initiative: “We wanted to let students know that Texas overall has a very low voter participation rate and,in our community, it can go as low as 10 percent during non presidential elections, so we want students to know that and change it.”
Related: Latino voter registration lags other groups
Immigration debate boosts voter registration on U.S. border
According to VoteTexas.gov, during the 2012 presidential election, there were 383, 737 registered voters In El Paso, County, and out of those only 171,070, or 44.58 percent actually voted. At the national level, Pew Research Center data shows that as April 2016 an estimated 69.2 million millennials (people between the ages of 18 – 35) were voting age U.S. citizens.