Her success is in company she keeps with 300 trucks

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EL PASO — Owning a small business can bring minority women much success and many challenges, and in some cases just being a double minority is an advantage. Rosa Marin-Abdeljaber told the Women’s Business Border Center of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce recently that she always knew she wanted to be successful. At one point her goal was to become a doctor and own her own practice. Well she didn’t become a doctor, but she is President and CEO of Russell Transport, an Hispanic female-owned and operated trucking company based in El Paso. She credits part of her success to being a minority.

El Karaoke-Lounge llega a El Paso

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EL PASO — A unos segundos de pisar el escenario con el micrófono en la mano, la joven se mueve al ritmo de la música y entre gritos y aplausos de la audiencia toma un paso hacia adelante y comienza a cantar una de sus canciones favoritas. La audiencia  aplaude más y sus amigos esperan ansiosos para animar a quien en instantes se convertirá en una de las tantas aspirantes al canto. “La verdad es la primera vez que vengo a este lugar y el ambiente está padre y me agrada. No suelo cantar en público pero el ambiente aquí te motiva”, dijo Stephanie Gonzales, estudiante de El Paso Community College. De acuerdo con la Cámara Hispana de Comercio en El Paso el crecimiento dinámico de está ciudad ha sido acreditado a un comercio internacional con Ciudad Juárez.

Juárez business finds new life across the border

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EL PASO – Drug-war violence has crippled the economy of Cd. Juárez sending many business owners packing along with their customers, to the safer sister city across the border. El Paso has become the beneficiary of that middle-class migration since the criminal activity began to escalate in 2008. Ke’ Flauta, for example, a restaurant in west El Paso, is one of many businesses that has fled from its original location in Juárez.  “Unfortunately, Juárez has gotten hit very badly with the violence. The economy is greatly affected and there are scary threats from extortionists against businesses all the time,” said Raul Aguilar, owner of Ke’ Flauta.

Businesses abandon a troubled Juárez as they follow customers to El Paso

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Editor’s Note – This is another in a continuing series of Borderzine articles on the migration to the U.S. of Mexican middle-class professionals and business owners as a result of the drug-war violence along the border.  We call this transfer of people and resources, the largest since the Mexican Revolution, the Mexodus. EL PASO — With a black apron around his waist and a headset on his head, the expatriated Mexican teenager places the payment for a lunch meal in the cash-register just as the drive-through starts beeping to place the next order. “When my dad came here we didn’t had any money, no money at all,” said Jose Antonio Argueta, Jr., 19. “Me and my sister had to pay everything, the house, the cars everything we had.” With a serious tone, Argueta tells how his family struggled to establish their restaurant Burritos Tony here. “My dad started working at minimum wage earning maybe like two hundred a week.”

Argueta has been working at Burritos Tony for more than a year.

Exodus from Ciudad Juárez impacts El Paso economy

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La Juárez vacía

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, México — Roaming the city is not what it used to be; the once busy and bustling city is losing money and residents very quickly. Recent provisional data from the INEGI show that Juárez has lost about 24% of its population. A city of 1.3 million has shrunk to one million, and 60 thousand families have migrated to other areas of Mexico or to the U.S.

As a result of this people flight, statistics from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte reveal that 116,000 houses have been abandoned, leaving 24% of the city’s homes empty. Yet those statistics may be erroneous because a study form the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez reveals that the sum might be closer to 100 thousand families leaving the city, leaving half a million (or about 40%) less inhabitants. These latter numbers do coincide; an article posted by the Diario de Juarez states that since 2006 nearly 110 thousand Mexican citizens asked for political asylum in the U.S., but only 183 obtained the asylum, less that 2% of the total.