DPS rammed family vehicle, pointed guns in mistaken Operation Lone Star stop, El Pasoans say

An El Paso family returning from a visit to Ciudad Juárez says they were forced off the road by Texas state agents who then rushed out of their unmarked vehicles and pointed semiautomatic rifles at them.

“This was excessive, way too much force. It would have been just as easy to turn on your lights, pull us over and do an investigation” said Gerardo Ayala, 37, who was in his Chevy Cruze on Oct. 12 with his wife, 13-year-old daughter and mother-in-law. 

NAACP president: El Paso Chapter continues to grow, adapt with city challenges

By Frances Gunn, El Paso High School —

For over a century, El Paso’s Chapter of NAACP has been advocating for the rights of its citizens. But it’s far from staying in the past, as it’s been evolving with the city. “I think just being in El Paso is unique. We’re on the border. We have other issues here that kind of make our job a little bit more interesting,” Jackeline Biddle Richard, president of El Paso NAACP Chapter said.

Historic churches continue community work

By Emilio Escarcega, Parkland High School —

In over a century of work, El Paso’s Shiloh Baptist Church, located on 3201 Frutas Avenue, has led numerous efforts for the well-being of the community. Pastor White, leader of the church attacks the conditions in which various individuals persist. He sought to accomplish this goal by donating, sheltering, and alleviating the homeless towards better living conditions.  “We try to make sure we do things in that community to help those who are definitely in need”, White said. 

 According to White, his objective is to maintain the community unified and to “show them that we care about them because they are our neighbor.”

In this community, this sometimes looks like small gestures. “So doing simple things such as cutting lawns for our neighbors, seeing what they need and being there for them, is very important,” White said.

McCall Center manager reflects on tenure

By Lucia Haugh, El Paso High School —

She came to play cards, and over a decade later, Barbara Byrd is the first to tell you that the McCall center isn’t just fun and games.  

Byrd, referred to lovingly as Ms. Byrd, is the McCall Center manager and has been for over 10 years. She has commissioned countless renovations to this center, “from the outside in”.  

However, replacing windows and doors for the center is not why she became the manager. Ms. Byrd wanted to carry on the McCall center legacy. “There was a great need. I could see it.

Students make friends, history at journalism camp

By Frances Gunn, El Paso High School

On Monday, October 9th, nine El Paso teens filed into the McCall center, located on 3231 Wyoming Ave, ready to learn about journalism and black history. However, this camp turned out to be much more than they could have imagined. Along with meeting new people from different schools, these teens learned valuable lessons regarding teamwork and what it takes to create a newspaper, from the ground up. 

Loryam Soto Aguilar, a freshman at Parkland High school said, “I wanted to know what it felt like working in something journalism related, especially since before this, I didn’t know much about it or what people did in journalism. It always interested me in some way, and I just wanted to learn more about it.” 

She wasn’t the only one who had a unique experience. A newspaper is a major publication for high school students, a thought that’s reflected widely across the camp. 

“My experience in this camp, while working with students from other districts and schools has been great.

General Edward Greer shares life experiences, lessons

By Nevaeh Vasquez, Silva High School —

A man with great stories and incredible accomplishments, Major General Edward Greer is still commanding attention after being retired from the U.S. Army since 1976.  In the small rooms of the McCall community center, Greer offsets his larger-than-life persona with light conversationa and jokes. 

Born on March 8, 1924, Greer grew up in West Virginia and like most people of color at the time, he was a target for racism and discrimination. While he was growing up, he was segregated and treated poorly. According to him, this treatment did not stop when he came to El Paso to attend the school at Fort Bliss. “Lots of discrimination, lots of segregation,”   Greer said when he came to school for the military in El Paso. 

Although the post was not segregated, Greer said when he opened the doors and went outside, everything else was segregated. He had to go to the back door to get a simple hot dog while white people got to enter the building through the front door.

Black El Pasoans who made history

This list was produced as part of the 2023 High School Journalism Camp at the McCall Center. The center hosted a one-week journalism camp where El Paso high school students publlished a special edition of The Good Neighbor Interpreter, a regional newspaper that McCall Center founder Leona Ford Washington once published with news about the Black community. The El Paso History museum sponsored the camp as part of the city’s 150th anniversary this year. Henry O. Flipper – first Black graduate of West Point
Andrew Morelock – organized the first school for African Americans in this part of the country (later became the Douglass School)
Mary Webb – organized the first recreation center for African Americans in El Paso
Marshall McCall – first African-American United States Postal worker in El Paso
Olalee McCall – first African-American Principal, El Paso Independent School District
Texas Western 1966 Basketball Team – first all-Black starting line-up to win the NCAA basketball final
Jethro Hills – first African American city representative in El Paso. Donald Williams – El Paso’s first African-American Judge
Dr. Maceo C. Dailey – first director of the African American studies department at UTEP
Ouisa Davis – first Black female judge
Greg Allen – first African American police chief of the El Paso Police Department
Charles Brown – first African American student athlete to attend Texas Western College (now UTEP)
NAACP Branch #6175 – first branch of the NAACP in Texas
Maj.

Poet Rubí Orozco Santos, director of storytelling and development at La Semilla Food Center, holds a freshly picked beet from the center’s community farm in Anthony, New Mexico, on June 5, 2023. Photo by Rachele Kanigel/Borderzine.com

Food as art in the social justice movement

Since its founding in 2010, the non-profit La Semilla Food Center in Anthony, New Mexico, has been creating a vibrant food system that prioritizes community connections, equitable economic practices and environmental health over profits.

El Paso’s untold stories emerge in new murals

Christin Apodaca believes she and other local artists have much in common.
“We all make things for our community and create spaces where you have something really fun to look at and think about,” she says. “And, you know, a lot of history is on the wall.”
It’s this multilayered history that seems to boost El Paso’s growing reputation as a city of murals.

El Paso’s Mission Trail sees surge of growth and economic development 

El Paso’s historic Mission Trail may be quiet on a Monday, but as the weekend approaches, traffic and visitors begin to stream into the small communities of San Elizario, Socorro and Ysleta. The trail is a 9-mile stretch of the Camino Real, the Spanish Royal Road built in 1598. Shops, museums and businesses once again teem with visitors along  this section of the oldest European trade route in North America, which is once again seeing a resurgence in economic development.

Reapertura de la frontera de El Paso, Texas y Ciudad Juarez

Fue en marzo del 2020, que Estados Unidos decidió cerrar sus puertas de la frontera debido a la pandemia del COVID-19. Desde ese entonces, comerciantes como en la zona centro de la ciudad de El Paso, no pudieron continuar y se ve reflejado en los letreros y en los locales abandonados, pero algunos otros, si decidieron continuar, aun sin los clientes de México. Socorro Pinales, empleada de “Contigo”, un negocio ubicado al cruzar el puente internacional Santa Fe, trabajo durante todo el tiempo que permaneció cerrado y cuenta como pasaron estos casi dos años en términos de ventas y que es lo que esperan para las próximas fechas festivas como el dia de accion de gracias y navidad ahora que la frontera ha sido abierta. “Pues las ventas antes si eran muy bajas, muy muy muy bajas, hubo días que en esta tienda no se vendió ni $100 dólares, no sacamos ni lo que era lo de la empleada y literalmente era yo solita aquí, porque no, no había ventas”, Pinales dijo. https://youtu.be/9oDHEeDYCuM

Pero hoy con la reapertura de la frontera, los negocios esperan que las ventas incrementen o que al menos, sea mejor de cuando se mantuvo cerrado, así lo cuenta Pinales.

What you need to know about the U.S. border reopening to ‘non-essential’ traffic on Nov. 8

By Lauren Villagran / El Paso Times
At midnight on Monday, Nov. 8, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security lifts the restrictions to “non-essential” traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border. That means that Mexican nationals with a valid border crossing card will able to return to El Paso and other U.S. border communities to shop and visit friends and family for the first time in 20 months. Here’s what you need to know. Does the change affect U.S. citizens or lawful residents?

Photojournalist has unique view of border life as a non-Spanish-speaking child of immigrants

Briana Sanchez frowns at the images on her computer screen. 

“I need to add some happier photos in here,” she says. Sanchez, lead photojournalist at the El Paso Times, knows better than anyone the difficult times that the border has been through in the last two years. After spending eight years away, first in college in Georgia and Arizona and then working at newspapers in the Midwest, Sanchez returned home to El Paso in the spring of 2019. 

“As soon as I moved back here, we had those patriots at the border, protecting the border on their own volition,” she says. “And then we had the ‘We Build the Wall’ people. And then we had the mass shooting.

Some Ciudad Juárez residents happy for chance to be vaccinated against COVID in El Paso

American residents and citizens who live in Ciudad Juárez are taking advantage of their status to cross to the United States and be vaccinated. But the health authorities in El Paso are not keeping records of people from Ciudad Juárez who have benefitted from this.

Health authorities in the Mexican state of Chihuahua said it is hard to determine the exact number of residents in Ciudad Juárez who have been vaccinated in El Paso since a large percentage of the population has dual nationality, Mexican and American.

Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy 2021 goes online with Navigating Multiple Worlds: Portraits of the children of immigrants

Two journalism students and nine journalism instructors from U.S. Hispanic Serving Institutions explored stories of children of immigrants for the 2021 Dow Jones News Fund Multimedia Training Academy June 5 – 10 hosted virtually by Borderzine through the University of Texas in El Paso.

Thanks to a grant provided by the Dow Jones News Fund, Borderzine organizes this annual training program geared to support multimedia journalism instructors who teach in institutions with a large minority population.

Changing times, support raise aspirations for youth in The Barrio in Amarillo

On the glass coffee table, with her favorite issues of the Golf Magazine, she finally finds the book. 

“It focuses more on the now.  Some people I recognize, some people I don’t”, said Maria Guerrero, whose dad immigrated from Mexico. “It gives you a start on the historical aspect of El Barrio.”

The Barrio, which in Spanish means neighborhood, was developed in Amarillo, Texas, to house railroad workers brought to the U.S. from Mexico. It is full of history, culture, and family stories. 

“The focus was always the thought that we were going to grow up, finish school and get married and raise families,” Guerrero said. “So that kind of cut my education, higher education short”. 

The pressure to marry came from her mother. The high school counselors didn’t help. 

“I lacked that initial push,” she said.

Musician draws on diversity of influences as a teacher, performer and composer

Christian Cruz, 30, is a musician, composer, and second-generation American who lives in Los Angeles. When not teaching guitar lessons or playing gigs, Cruz, who holds two master’s degrees in the field (USC and Fresno State), finds his talents best satisfied with project-based music composition. He also looks forward to teaching this fall with Lead Guitar in Los Angeles, a non-profit that takes music education into schools with low access to the arts. He took some time to tell part of his story to Borderzine from the home base of his “Caucasian family” in Denair, a small town in California’s Central Valley. Cruz was visiting, along with his spouse and fellow musician, Erin Young, who he met in USC’s music program.

Gardening keeps family traditions alive across generations

Cindy Vasquez is a second-generation Mexican American who lives in Oakdale, California. She graduated from Enochs High School in 2019. Her grandparents migrated to the U.S. from Mexico, when her mother was a young child. Her grandfather, Paul Velasco, learned to garden from his father and continued after the family moved to California. Cindy Vasquez embraces her life of rooted tradition and culture.

Thanks to lessons learned in a family of nurses, 2nd generation Filipina builds a career in art

When Noelle Mongcopa was a young girl, she felt compelled to draw and create art, spending hours copying her favorite images of Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon characters. Today, she has channeled her creative force into her career as a toy designer and product manager. However, the choice to pursue an artistic career wasn’t an obvious one. Mongcopa grew up in a family of medical professionals, where becoming a nurse was not only a family tradition, but also considered a responsible financial decision. Both her mother and her father immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in search of more professional opportunities, and worked as nurses for many years.

Photojournalist has unique view of border life as a non-Spanish-speaking child of immigrants

Briana Sanchez frowns at the images on her computer screen. 

“I need to add some happier photos in here,” she says. Sanchez, lead photojournalist at the El Paso Times, knows better than anyone the difficult times that the border has been through in the last two years. After spending eight years away, first in college in Georgia and Arizona and then working at newspapers in the Midwest, Sanchez returned home to El Paso in the spring of 2019. 

“As soon as I moved back here, we had those patriots at the border, protecting the border on their own volition,” she says. “And then we had the ‘We Build the Wall’ people. And then we had the mass shooting.

How the immigrant founder of a preschool builds community in Northern California through dance, diversity and determination

Mi Escuelita Maya is in a working class neighborhood at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Chico, California. A mural on the building depicts children from diverse backgrounds flying kites in open spaces. One of the founders, Maria Trenda, helped build the preschool in 2007, just before the Great Recession, on a corner lot just blocks from her home. Her first estudiantes are now entering college. 

Trenda’s school is an homage to her past. For 30 years, her mother ran a preschool in Mexico.

From borderlands of Brownsville and Tucson, Chicanx artist explores themes of barriers, belonging

Artist Alejandro Macias was born, raised and lived for more than three decades in Brownsville, Texas, communicating the borderlands experience through visual art as a second-generation Mexican American. 

In 2019, he moved hundreds of miles west to the borderlands city, Tucson, in Arizona, to continue working on his art and to teach at The University of Arizona in the School of Art. His work, which in part is inspired by Chicanx activist work, draws on artists who transformed the human figure, artistically.  His art reflects his and others’ lived experience, striving to find a sense of belonging in the borderlands region. His work also reflects social-political climates of the times. 

Macias’ paintings focus on identity, the Mexican American experience within U.S. society, migration, his own family history and the many other families struggling and who have witnessed barriers in the borderlands. He uses images of himself in some work as representative of others with visuals often related to physical and metaphorical barriers in the Mexico-U.S. borderland region, which embodies two nations, two cultures with different identities that often merge together. 

Danza cultural helps build important life skills in rural California community

Children wearing masks stomp their feet on concrete as they watch the new baile folklórico teacher nod her head and gesture the beats: right, left, right, left. The students are gathered on this Sunday evening in June at the local park in Humboldt County, California and show their excitement with this fun, social activity. 

The person leading this effort is Lucy Salazar, the president of Cumbre Humboldt — a local nonprofit celebrating its 2-year anniversary. “Music. Dancing. It’s math.

El Paso couples happy after finding their pandemic wedding styles

Elaine Gordon Wilson and her fiance Kevin opted for a church ceremony with a virtual audience. Angel Iturbe and his fiance chose an outdoor event  with safety rules for guests. Both tell the stories of how their plans to get married survived all the challenges the pandemic threw at them. https://soundcloud.com/borderzine-reporting-across-fronteras/a-tale-of-two-pandemic-weddings