Veteran journalist Alfredo Corchado accompanied by his parents signs copies of his book Midnight in Mexico. (Gustavo Aguirre/Borderzine.com)

Veteran journalist Alfredo Corchado tells students to learn the basics and embrace their culture

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EL PASO – “July, 2007 was the last time I felt safe in Mexico,” said Alfredo Corchado, the Dallas Morning News Mexico Bureau Chief, when he took the podium as he returned to his alma mater to deliver The University of Texas at El Paso’s Centennial Lecture Thursday. Corchado presented his book Midnight in Mexico – A Reporter’s Journey through a Country’s Descent into Darkness, which will be released at the end of May. He also took the opportunity to do his first ever reading of the book to a full auditorium with his parents sitting in the front row. A 2009 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a 2010 Rockefeller Fellow and Woodrow Wilson Scholar, Corchado, native of Durango, Mexico, he won the Maria Moors Cabot award from Columbia Journalism School in 2007 for extraordinary bravery and enterprise. In 2010 he was awarded Colby College’s Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism.

(©iStockphoto/Milous)

Lourdes Cardenas: Journey across country has led to US citizenship

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By the time most of you read this, I will be a U.S. citizen as I am taking the citizenship oath this morning. Instead of covering the story as a reporter, I will be an active participant in today’s naturalization ceremony at the El Paso convention center. It has been a long, and sometimes harsh, road. The journey for me officially started eight years ago, when I came to the U.S. with an H1B visa to work as an editor for Al Día, a Spanish publication of The Dallas Morning News, which was launched in 2003 with the purpose of serving the growing Hispanic community in the city. Luckily, the company decided to sponsor me for permanent resident status, which allowed me to apply for U.S. citizenship after holding a green card for five years.