5 routes bicycle riders should try around Ciudad Juarez

Although cycling is not one of the most popular of sports in the Ciudad Juarez area (not even close to being one), there are great spaces in this border community for people to go out on their bikes and have a good time. Whether just for pleasure or as a way to train for a cycling race, our Mexican sister city has different zones where this sport, for both road and mountain bikes, can be practiced on a daily or regular basis. Here are five places in or near Juarez for a cycling enthusiast. Valle de Juárez

According to cyclist Juan Carlos Salayandia, Valle de Juárez is a 90 kilometer route that cyclists can really enjoy due to the great views, especially with the green landscapes abound during the spring and summer. Dunas de Samalayuca

This is a mountain bike training trail.

My bucket list includes fluency in Spanish, French, Italian y mucho mas

I grew up in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a 90-minute drive from El Paso. As a 9 year old child, I began learning Spanish from Señora Ramirez, my tutor for five years. Señora Ramirez was Mexican American. At the time, I struggled with the notion that after school I had to go right back to class to study Spanish while my brother was at soccer, tennis or hockey practice. Completely unaware of how invaluable the ability to read, write and speak Spanish would be to me, I continued to take Spanish lessons to please my mom.

‘Sicario’ film sold fact, delivered inaccuracies

When it comes to films that deal with the topic of the drug war in Mexico, I expect to see factual information on film and not just an exploitation of the darkest periods the drug war has left in the country. But sadly Denis Villeneuve’s new film “Sicario” does just that. The film’s trailer gives the impression that the film will be based on actual events that relate to the situation on the drug war, but instead it only takes certain violent events that occurred in the city of Juarez Mexico and depicts them as if they were daily occurrences. Thanks to the poor preparation on the subject by the director, “Sicario” succeeded in wrongfully illustrating Mexico as a country in a constant state of war, while contributing to feeding the stereotype of the Mexican people as lawless savages. More thoughts on film – Mexican filmmakers erasing borders with their talent

The first part of the film centers on FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) joining the DEA as an advisor.

6 things that make El Paso’s Rubin Center an exceptional art space

A faint sound of a motor engine rumbles in your ear as you enter the building. When you look to your right, high above the ground, there’s a video of a couple of people floating in air and you automatically feel like you’re in space. The flying, the colors, and the vast, clean space make “Territory of the Imagination,” the Rubin Center’s exhibition and the celebration for it’s 10th anniversary, entertainingly futuristic. “In our tenth anniversary we wanted to think about where we were at and so in a playful way, we are looking towards the future. These are all futuristic topics and imagery,” Kerry Doyle, managing director, said.

What a difference 35 years makes in portable personal music technology

ROCKLEDGE, FL. (1980) — Waiting for my favorite song to play on the radio seemed to take up all my time when I was 10. The cassette player of my hi-fi stereo endured countless hours of wear and tear from keeping the tape paused until the song I wanted to record finally came on. I was just learning about technology, but at that time, I was blown away by the ability to spend my allowance on blank cassette tapes at TG&Y to make mix tapes. I was impressed by the quality of every recording.

Los Bravos de Ciudad Juárez llegaron para quedarse

Que tardes aquellas cuando el ‘Benito’ se llenaba con los colores blanco y rojo, y al sonar de los tambores ‘El Kartel’ entonaba sus cantos. Esos goles de los jugadores consentidos, Sebastián Maz, ‘El Coco’ Gimenez, Edwin Santibáñez, y Juan Pablo Rodríguez. Y esas atajadas de ‘San Cirilo’. Que recuerdos! Y esa tarde cuando se le ganó a las Chivas 3 a 1, ese resultado dejaba a los dos más grandes, Guadalajara y América fuera de la liguilla.

Our generation is changing the way we celebrate holidays on the border

The holiday season is always a time for family to come together, combining generations of family members to reminisce over old memories and build new ones. And, with each generation new traditions are made. Take Thanksgiving, for example, where watching football and tossing the pigskin around has become a modern part of the post-feast festivities in some homes. Here on the borderland my family tosses a football around, and we watch football and eat as much turkey as possible. We give thanks for all we have, we put gravy on our mashed potatoes and of course have seconds or thirds – perhaps even fourths.

No guns in my classroom — the massacre in San Bernardino only strengthens the resolve to fight the Texas campus-carry law

EL PASO — Radical Islam inspired the slaughter of innocent Americans in San Bernardino and America’s crazy gun laws put the assault rifles in the terrorists’ hands.  For the nation of 300-million guns, of daily mass shootings, the killings last week in California are just another ritual sacrifice to the pitiless gun god.  Authorities now label the massacre in California as terrorism, but so what? The dead don’t care. The vast and complex machinery of U.S. law enforcement running in neutral, unable to stop daily mass killings in America, now searches for some link to those evil jihadists in Syria.

These 4 treats are worth tracking down at El Paso’s Mexican snack shacks

When I first moved to El Paso from Arkansas, my definition of Mexican food was tacos, guacamole and quesadillas. After living here for 10 years now, I have expanded my palette and grown to enjoy even more Mexican foods and snacks than I knew existed. I’ve come to enjoy authentic Mexican plates at restaurants like tacos al pastor, tampiquena, and aguachiles. But, I have also grown fond of some more unusual culinary treats available at local snack shacks anchored in parking lots around town. Not the newer trend of gourmet food trucks, which come replete with chefs from California and Las Vegas, but the simple mom-and-pop snack spots closer to El Paso border style.

Bringing Caribbean history to life through music

VAUCLIN, Martinique – Each generation tells its history in its own way. In Martinique, a young jazz artist, Nicolas Lossen, has chosen music to tell the island’s history dating from its African roots to colonialism and the challenges going forward. The result is a compelling new CD entitled “Pié Coco-a” that parallels the resilience of the Martinican people to that of the coconut tree—which was also brought to Caribbean shores centuries ago and, like the descendants of slaves who constitute the island’s population, has endured and thrived. The CD is expected to be released shortly and will be available at www.nicolaslossen.com and a number of other sites. (See French translation below.

In Mexico tradition, the dead help the living maintain family bonds

The day before Halloween my mother asked if I wanted to visit her hometown of Torreon, Coahuila, to celebrate the Day of the Dead. “After 28 years I want to go see my grandmother,” my mother, Blanca, told me. My parents are Jewish and pray for the dead during Yizkor services which correspond with the seasons four times a year. My grandmother always comes to mind in the fall. So we packed our bags and caught a bus in Juarez for a 10-hour bus ride through Mexico.

Latin American restaurants that go beyond Mexican in the Borderland

In the neighboring cities of El Paso and Juarez, a border region where Mexican and U.S. cultures intertwine, divided and connected by the Rio Grande, you can find a great number of authentic cuisines, from the typical U.S. burger and fries to homestyle Mexican tacos and enchiladas. Although this variety is satisfying for Borderlanders, it often leaves me craving “pupusas” and “tamales de hoja de platano,” two dishes common to one-half of my ethnic background which is Mexican and Salvadoran. This means I usually need to wait for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays to satisfy my Salvadoran taste buds, when my Mexican-born mom cooks up traditional Salvadoran dishes she’s mastered since she married my Salvadoran dad 25 years ago. Hopefully, one day someone will open a Salvadoran restaurant on the East side close to home. Related story: Popular Latin American foods show common characteristics, diverse accents

I know I am not alone.

Spanglish works against preserving cultural heritage by degrading language

In the early morning, I usually listen to the news as I drive to school. This route takes 20 minutes, and I stay fixed to the radio listening to bad news mixed with humor in order to start the day with a laugh. But then, my program goes into a break and the first thing that comes out is an advertisement for Tecate Light using Spanglish. We are exposed to this dialect in advertisements, music, television, and radio and in our bicultural communities it is not uncommon to hear Spanglish and that is how some companies aim their campaigns at young Hispanic consumers. The problem with Spanglish

Spanglish is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs by taking parts of English words and mixing them with parts of Spanish words.

‘No guns in my classroom movement’ gains traction in the University of Texas system

EL PASO –The latest notable gun killings (as opposed to the daily carnage now routine in our cities) struck close to home.  The gunshots last week echoed in the halls of a university campus, spreading terror throughout Delta State University in Mississippi. This time one professor shot another educator. It was not a case of an alien killer dropping in from hell to cause havoc. It was simply an angry man shooting another, which can happen anywhere a gun is present.

No guns in my classroom No. 4: More killings with a legal gun now in Roanoke, more reason to stop ‘campus carry’

This week the mass gun shooting — two dead, one wounded — was in Roanoke, Virginia — another gun killer, again shooting with a legal gun. Another hater who bought a gun legally and killed two unsuspecting young journalists in the street. Another legally owned gun carried by its purchaser to a public place and used to shoot to death reporter Alison Parker,24, and photographer Adam Ward, 27, on a pretty morning as people just like us went about their business. That is why I don’t want any guns, legal or not, in my classroom.  Anybody in America can get a gun and we are all targets. That’s why the “campus carry” gun law passed by the Texas State Legislature this year, which allows guns to be carried on public university campuses is  a travesty and a violation of our civil rights, a danger to my students as they attend class and to me as I lecture.

Shadow image of a crow

CrowCaw* — Flying Yuans and crouching Renminbis

Yuan and Renminbi kicked me in the 401Ks and took a cleaver to my IRA. Not acquainted with them you say, well you better pull on your chaps. They’re really one and the same Chinese currency in black Ninja robes, designed to keep you off balance as they feint like tigers and fly like dragons around us unsuspecting victims.
 The Chinese dictators recently deflated them in a spate of panic when they saw their hybrid commie/capitalist economy slowing down for the first time in some 20 years. They freaked when their ridiculous stock market plunged dragging down millions of hapless mom and pop investors who had been spurred to gleefully rake in profits on margin deals – borrowing Yuans to buy stocks. So the incandescent bulb switched on above their noggins and they thought, well America boosted its economy out of the Great Recession by pumping Fed dollars into the U.S. economy so let’s pump up the market.

The way to power is through ballots, not bullets, Julian Bond told me decades ago

Julian Bond answered my question and then with a smile bestowed the supreme compliment on a rookie reporter — “You did your research,” he said. That was 44 years ago and I was in my first year as a cub reporter at the Winchester Evening Star, a small afternoon newspaper that is still in business today in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Bond, an African American leader going back to the early days of the civil rights movement who died Saturday at 75, had stopped on a lecture tour in this conservative bastion of Old Virginia where the ghost of Jim Crow was still flapping. I was surprised to hear he would speak at the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music. I had arrived in this southern town just a few months before and felt I had dropped into a 1950’s time warp.

Bienvenidos, Monsoon Storms

How pleasant it is to say “adios” to scorching June. As possible proof, during this June, my Rio Rico, Arizona suffered through ten consecutive days of torrid highs between 96 and 105F, according to my possibly trusty patio thermometer. This June’s sun was also so bright and hot that I spent far too much time hibernating indoors with all my blinds pulled down. But June finally has eased into July, which has become, perhaps, one of my favorite months here. Because the arrival of July means it will bring Monsoon storms.

Like the one I experienced just the other day, whose vivid lightning strokes and following thunderclap nearly scared me silly. I’d witnessed that first flash of lightning while I was foolishly standing under my metal garage door.

(Saray Argumedo/Borderzine.com)

Racism persists as long as we don’t try to understand each other

I was born in Ciudad Juarez Mexico, next door to El Paso, Texas. My family and I moved to El Paso in 1997 for better work opportunities,education, and a better standard of living. I attended U.S. public schools from third grade through high school, and then went on to study at the community college level, first in El Paso and then in Lubbock. When we moved across the border from Mexico to the U.S, I didn’t notice much difference in culture. People still spoke Spanish to me, we continued to celebrate the same holidays, including el Dia de los Muertos and Cinco de Mayo.

Shadow image of a crow

CrowCaw* on Trump – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you

Fox News threw a beanball right at Donald Trump’s weird hairline with the opening question of last week’s Republican debate, and he took it like a man, falling right into their trap. Only his hand went up to affirm that he would not rule out an independent run for the White House if he failed to win the Republican nomination. The question was framed to show that a positive response would lead to a sure defeat for the Republicans in the national election. There was no escape.  The question was designed to single him out at the very start since he had already said as much in the past. Then, realizing that the game was rigged, he determined to get in some licks too.

Beyond Twitter: Crass and raw musings from the editor

Crow-caw 1—come the deluge – Two weeks in Saint Petersburg Beach, Florida, have been marked by near constant rain, not the sin-ganas rain of the Southwest, but the turbulent cascades of tumbling airborne rain sheets I remember from my childhood in Costa Rica. My daughter claims global warming is to blame for the downpours. But I love the rain. Crow-caw 2 — I’m calling these musings crow-caws because I find that Twitter Tweets are just too fine and tweety a vehicle to express how I felt after watching the Republican clown car belch out its payasos the other night , so I’m using this new medium, crass and raw, not subject to fine little tones and yet not too wordy.  Crow-caw 3 – The so-called debate that brought all the Republican presidential candidates to the Fox lair Thursday was terrifying but totally predictable.

No guns in my classroom – Part III The banality of gun massacres in America

There have been three mass murders in the U. S. using legally obtained guns, virtually one massacre per week since I first protested the new Texas ‘campus carry’ gun law by declaring in June that I don’t want guns in my classroom. The unraveling TV coverage following each tragic event becomes horribly commonplace as if demanding a certain formula that at first builds a virtual three-dimensional sculpture of the killer, unwittingly glorifying him and his motive, followed by necessarily sketchy details about the victims, unwittingly relegating them to the grave, and then followed by an oddly similar string of police officials, politicians, and bureaucrats congratulating each other on the containment of the event and usually the death of the perpetrator. After all that, their statements of condolence for the victims and their loved ones ring strangely hollow. It always seems that no amount of subsequent grieving can ever be enough to make up for the injustice and pain caused b the murders, especially as the mass gun shootings blend into each other as naturally as one week following another. Related Columns: No Guns in My Classroom
No guns in my classroom — part II Gov. Abbott celebrates ‘campus carry’ with target shooting in Pflugerville
In the midst of the tragedies, there is always a parenthetical discussion in the media deploring the prevalence of guns in our society  — 300 million more or less in the hands of individuals — and the usual red herring morphed into a red whale that the prevalence of mental defectives in the nation and the lack of mental health care is to blame for the violence because guns are only inanimate objects subject to the will of the individual.

Tackling the U.S. tourist market / Tourisme : à l’assaut du marché américain

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique – Jacques Bajal is a Renaissance man who manages the Martinique Tourism Authority’s cruise department, champions the island’s historic bèlè music and dance that date to the time of slavery, and takes prides in speaking English on an island where few people do. During our interview, he is quite taken with the English translation of l’espoir fait vivre, which is fitting, because for years “hope springs eternal” could well have described Martinique’s tourism industry, particularly regarding the United States. Times are still tough, and even today only 4% of Martinique’s GDP comes from tourism, despite its beautiful beaches, lush nature reserves, excellent French cuisine, modern infrastructure, and low crime rate. (See French translation below. Voir la traduction en Français ci-dessous)

However, this tiny island in the southern Antilles is gradually reestablishing itself as a cruise ship destination and forging ahead with an ambitious initiative to attract U.S. tourists.

Don’t worry – we’ve got El Chapo in charge of the universe

LAS CRUCES, NM — On an early summer morning in the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico I sit in my sunroom watching the hummingbirds flutter on the grapevines fruit-swollen by the monsoon rains wondering why God summoned Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut to rule the world. Not that I mind. It makes for interesting reading. Let’s start with El Chapo Guzman. Now there is one classy Mexican drug lord.

No guns in my classroom — part II Gov. Abbott celebrates ‘campus carry’ with target shooting in Pflugerville

EL PASO — A few hours after James Lance Boulware, 35, riddled Dallas police headquarters with gunfire on June 13, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that allows individuals to legally carry concealed firearms on university campuses. There was plenty of shooting that day in the streets of Dallas where Boulware was shot dead by a police sniper and also later at Red’s Indoor Range in Pflugerville, Texas, where Abbott, relishing the added liberty he said he was bestowing upon the citizens of Texas, did some target shooting of his own after signing the bills. Boulware had legal ownership of the firearms he used to attack the police station.  In fact, authorities had once confiscated the very same weapons after Boulware was jailed briefly two years ago for threatening his family, schools and churches. According to news reports, the arms included a hunting rifle fitted with a telescopic sight, a 12-gauge shotgun and two handguns, a .45-caliber revolver, and a 9-millimeter, semi-automatic pistol as well as hundreds of bullets. A few months after his release from jail, assault charges against Boulware were dropped and a judge ordered authorities to return the guns to their legal owner — Boulware.

Is Ciudad Juarez’ celebrated return to normalcy after years of brutal drug violence a miracle or a fragile peace?

This question is at the heart of our special report that we publish today in English and Spanish in Borderzine, entitled Special Report Cuidad Juarez: Fragile Peace, by U.S. investigative reporter Ana Arana, who is based in Mexico City, and a team of reporters from Ciudad Juarez. This series was originally published by El Daily Post and Animal Politico. Special Report Ciudad Juarez: Fragile Piece – Read the series here
 We are proud that Fragile Peace is a necessary follow-up to Borderzine’s award-winning project, Mexodus, published three years ago. This bilingual multimedia project charted the exodus of Mexican middle class families, businesses and professionals to the U.S. in response to the widespread drug cartel violence and lawlessness raging in Ciudad Juarez and other areas of northern Mexico.  While most local and national news media reported the story in incomplete fashion or not at all, we worked with a team of journalism professors from the U.S. and Mexico to edit and publish the student-produced multimedia project.

No guns in my classroom

 

EL PASO –I don’t want guns in my classroom. Before Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs into law legislation passed Sunday by the state legislature, which allows individuals to carry concealed handguns into  public university campuses, he should take a moment to actually think. I am saddened by the endless arguments from gun rights advocates and the counter-arguments from their opponents, insistent arguments that imply that logic can prevail in absurdity. The logic is always twisted. Some say more guns on the street will stop the killing.

There’s more to minor league ball than who wins and loses

The El Paso Chihuahuas are back after what could only be considered a successful debut season for the Triple-A franchise. The beautiful new ballpark was a hit with locals and tourists, the initial name controversy simmered down and the attendance was through the roof. The brand new, state of the art Southwest University Park broke El Paso’s minor league single season attendance record half way through its first year, which might have played a part in the city receiving the Triple-A National Championship. Now that the novelty is over, my fear is that casual fans will lose interest, especially if the team doesn’t win most of the time. The Chihuahuas did some winning in 2014, but also did plenty of losing.

Los ‘Top 10’ súper alimentos queman grasa, según especialistas en nutrición

EL PASO — No todos los cuerpos son iguales, ni todas las calorías son asimiladas igualmente. Un sin fin de alimentos son procesados diariamente por nuestro organismo. Con las tendencias que marcan la búsqueda del anhelado “cuerpo perfecto” nos causa dolores de cabeza el estrés de lo dificil que es la pérdida de peso. El estar informado acerca de los nutrientes de los alimentos que ingerimos puede ser la manera mas sencilla de lograr un balance entre una vida saludable y un cuerpo estético. Hay alimentos que al consumirlos se desata una reacción hormonal que suprime el hambre al igual que la ansiedad por que comer y que cantidad comer, según especialistas en nutrición.