EL PASO, Texas — Award-winning writer Pat Mora is a jack-of-all-trades. She writes poetry, books for adult readers, inspirational books for children and young adults and is a dedicated advocate for reading and literacy. Open any of her works and you are taken on a journey that flows like water, bringing freshness to a reader’s mind. Her works are important to the border community. They paint a picture of the region’s Hispanic culture for those who are not familiar with the border.
EL PASO, Texas — Thousands, including many who crossed the border from Juarez, gathered to celebrate “16 de Septiembre” — 200 years of Mexican independence from Spain — at San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso. Festivities here drew more people than usual because public events in Juarez were curtailed due to the current drug-related violence there. Juarez residents were asked to celebrate at home with a televised ceremony. Others opted to celebrate in El Paso at Mexican Consulate sponsored festivities. “We came to celebrate because we heard a big party was going to take place,” said Juarez high school student Diana Mojarro, 17.
EL PASO, Texas — A major border news daily published a jaw-dropping front page editorial this week that seems to call on drug cartels, or whichever entities are in control of crime-plagued Ciudad Juarez, to tell them what the newspaper should publish to prevent further attacks against its staff. The September 18 editorial in El Diario de Juarez, prompted by the recent shooting death the paper’s 21-year-old photographer Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco outside a shopping mall, said, in part: “Tell us what you want from us, what you want us to publish or not publish, so we will know what to do?”
In typical knee-jerk fashion, quite a few journalists were quick to condemn the feisty border newspaper for scrapping its journalistic responsibility and caving in to the drug lords, a charge the newspaper denies. It troubles me that the major media, on both sides of the Rio Grande, did not take the time to carefully analyze the fine points of the editorial, but instead focused on the attention grabbing and alarm-raising message to “drug cartels.”
It seems that most missed the point of the long and nuanced editorial statement. Narcos, like ghosts, are unlikely to visit newsrooms or call with an offer to negotiate a public truce. They use subtle tactics instead to get what they want, like threatening to kidnap a Zacatecas editor if she didn’t publish a story about a young man who was killed by the army.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — “The workingman gives up his dreams and slaves for all his life,” the impassioned marcher shouted, her voice blaring Chicanoism out of a bullhorn that echoed down the streets of East Los Angeles. Hundreds of sign-wielding activists marched in the streets to mark the 40th anniversary of the National Chicano Moratorium of the Vietnam War August 27. The Moratorium, which was implemented by the Chicano movement back in 1970, protested the exploitation of minorities, especially Latinos in the Vietnam War. The march followed the original 1970 route, in East L.A., down Whittier Boulevard, passing the Silver Dollar, the bar where Ruben Salazar, a Juarez-El Paso native and acclaimed war and human rights journalist was killed 40 years ago during the first moratorium march.
EL PASO, Texas — Tres periodistas mexicanos, que esperan recibir asilo político en los Estados Unidos, expusieron los peligros y amenazas sufridas durante el ejercicio de la profesión en su país en una rueda de prensa en esta ciudad el 21 de septiembre. De igual forma condenaron la muerte de alrededor de 68 de sus colegas desde el año 2000 y urgieron al presidente Felipe Calderón Hinojosa para que dimitiera pues su gobierno no garantiza la seguridad de los comunicólogos, ni de los mexicanos. Durante la conferencia, en la que participaron diversos medios internacionales, los expatriados patentizaron la confianza de que el mandatario, Barack Obama, les conceda estatus legal, después de que esta semana en Washington se aprobara el asilo solicitado por el reportero chihuahuense, Jorge Luis Aguirre. “Felipe Calderón es el principal responsable de los actos criminales que ocurren en México; es, sin lugar a dudas, un genocida”, dijo, el ex-reportero de El Diario del Noreste, en Ascensión, Chihuahua, Emilio Gutiérrez Soto. Y agregó: “Debe ser llevado ante los juzgados internacionales para que responda por los crímenes constantes que se dan a diario en mi patria en donde no existe una sola familia que no haya sido tocada”.
EL PASO, Texas — Durante la presentación de Pat Mora, una de las escritoras más queridas por la comunidad mexico-americana, especialmente la de Texas, el público pudo escuchar de la voz de la escritora algunos fragmentos de su obra, sus ideas sobre la importancia de leer y de enseñar, pero quizá lo más importante fue saber lo que ella siente por esa ciudad. En un auditorio lleno, Pat Mora inició diciendo que para ella era muy especial estar ahí, este es el lugar al que su padre llegó cuando dejó Chihuahua, el lugar donde nació su madre, donde nació ella y donde nacieron sus hijos. “En Mesita se acababa la ciudad”, dijo. Ofreció diversos y ricos detalles sobre una ciudad de El Paso muy lejana a la actual. Pero lo más importante fue cuando Pat dijo: “Love a place, one is full when one loves a place.”
¿Cuántos de los que estaban en ese auditorio aman un lugar?
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Chihuahua – When he was elected as Mayor of this border city in 2007, José Reyes Ferriz had no idea that he had won the most difficult municipal job in the world, running a city that had earned the title of the “murder capital of the world.”
The chaos and terror of a war between drug cartels that has killed some 7,000 persons in Juarez since he took office, Reyes Ferriz said in an exclusive interview with Borderzine.com, forced him to focus his efforts on insuring the safety of the citizenry. With that in mind, Reyes Ferriz placed the reconstruction of the city’s police force at the top of his list of priorities. Corruption was ingrained in all branches of the police force bureaucracy, he said. “Part of the police force reconstruction was recruiting and training new officers. The government hired 2200 new officers to bring the total to 3000.
La Fundación AL DÍA de Filadelfia entregó este jueves 16 de septiembre su premio nacional “Félix Varela” al periodismo en asuntos latinos a Julie López y Thomas MacMillan, en el Club Nacional de Prensa en Washington D.C.
La ruta del narcotráfico Guatemala-Estados Unidos, y el acoso racial a manos de la policía de East Haven, Connecticut, fueron los temas ganadores del segundo premio anual a la excelencia. Dibujó el mapa del narco de Guatemala a EE.UU. A través de “Imperio narco”, Julie López evidencia en cuatro partes los personajes, escenarios y la cronología de una red de narcotráfico que ha transportado, por décadas, toneladas de drogas a EE.UU. La guatemalteca, de El Diario La Prensa de Nueva York, ganó con ese reporte el primer lugar en la categoría de periodismo impreso en español. “El premio fue una reiteración de que tenía buenos datos y que valió la pena el sacrificio que hice por mi cuenta” dijo López, quien hizo la investigación como periodista independiente. La historia sería parte de una consultoría para El Diario La Prensa hasta que la recesión afectó al periódico.
EL PASO, Texas — Emilio Gutiérrez quiere tener voz, sin embargo, sufre una afonía inusual. Un padecimiento que ni médicos, ni sociólogos, ni siquiatras pueden resolver. Y es que desde hace un tiempo para acá intentaron cortar sus cuerdas vocales (su libertad de expresión). Aunque en honor a la verdad, tuvo mejor suerte que muchos de sus colegas. A ellos, cerca de 30, no solo les truncaron las palabras, también los borraron de sobre la faz de la tierra.
Borderzine contributor Jago Molinet wrote this story in the newsroom of El Diario of El Paso a few hours after two young colleagues were gunned down in Juarez, Mexico. Molinet told me he wrote this in anger and frustration and as he wrote, his anger and frustration only grew. As I translated the article into English, I saw that he also wrote this lament with love, love for his fallen brothers and love for a profession that too often in Mexico today demands a journalist’s life. —David Smith-Soto, Borderzine Executive Editor
[Lea esta historia en español]
EL PASO, Texas — The news spread like wildfire through the newsroom —two young photojournalists from El Diario gunned down in Ciudad Juárez… one dead, one wounded. They went to lunch and ended up splashed in their own blood, riddled by bullets blasted from the empty minds of unscrupulous assassins.
El fotógrafo de El Diario de Juárez Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, de 21 años, fue asesinado y su acompañante, el fotógrafo Carlos Manuel Sánchez de 18 años, resultó herido de dos impactos de bala en la tarde de Septiembre 16 en el estacionamiento del centro comercial Río Grande Mall en Ciudad Juárez. Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé! Los Heraldos Negros de César Vallejo. (1918-“2010”)
[Read this story in English]
EL PASO, Texas — Fueron por comida y los cubrió la sangre.
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EL PASO, Texas — It has been just over 20 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was created to provide supplemental needs and rights to disabled Americans. It has been just over 17 years that a car accident changed a young boy’s life. Within those 17 years UTEP graduate student Adrian Villalobos has witnessed how the legislation has affected his life, and is still improving the rights of disabled Americans. “The notion of inclusion and accommodation of disabilities in society allows us to fuse together as a community,” said Villalobos, 25. “If people of disabilities are not allowed to participate in community settings we are putting them to the side.
EL PASO, Texas — A state-of-the-art, 210,000 square foot facility for the University of Texas at El Paso School of Nursing and College of Health Sciences is set to open its doors on Wiggins Way, across the street from the library in the area where the Student Health Center used to be. The 40-year-old converted Hotel Dieu currently serving as the UTEP College of Health Science and Nursing Program headquarters is insufficient spatially to accommodate its nearly 2,500 students and 150 faculty and staff, UTEP administrators contend. Moreover, its one-and-a-half-mile distance from the main campus has presented logistical problems for those who commute to and from it. According to a UTEP 2007 Facility Proposal, “the quality of healthcare in the Paso del Norte region relies heavily on UTEP’s capacity to prepare graduates in a broad range of health professions programs.” Such programs include: nursing, physical therapy, speech/language pathology, pharmacy, occupational therapy, kinesiology, health promotion and clinical laboratory science. Pursuant to graduation, a substantial portion of UTEP health graduates stay in the Paso del Norte region. To aid in increasing the number of qualified health professionals, UTEP has expanded various programs and admitted more students, causing the need for the new facility.
EL PASO, Texas – After providing services for 72 years, El Paso’s Planned Parenthoods has shut down virtually over night due to lack of funding. Locally, Planned Parenthood (PP) first opened its doors in 1937, with founder, Margaret Sanger, making a visit to El Paso to deliver an opening speech. From its start in 1921, with its original name, American Birth Control League, PP has provided vital healthcare information to men, women, and young people all over the world. It has been a place for affordable HIV/AIDS testing as well as a trusted source of prenatal and postnatal information and healthcare. For the last 90 years “PP has promoted a commonsense approach to women’s health and well-being, based on respect for each individual’s right to make informed, independent decisions about health, sex, and family planning,” according to the Planned Parenthood website. El Paso is a community deeply rooted in the Catholic Faith. Between 2000 and 2006 16,263 women between 15 and 19 gave birth, according to the County Health Rankings.
EL PASO, Texas — Un grito de paz y contra el terrorismo, a través del lenguaje universal del arte, fue uno de los objetivos principales del programa “Amor por Juárez”, presentado septiembre 11 en el Teatro Plaza, de esta ciudad. La iniciativa, de la Opera de El Paso, unió a mexicanos y estadounidenses en una jornada donde se derrochó talento, exquisitez y concordia. Destacó la llegada temprana de los espectadores, sobre todo de los más jóvenes, quienes abarrotaron las instalaciones. “Con la presentación de hoy nos unimos al dolor que sufren los mexicanos por la violencia en Juárez” dijo, la doctora Michele Stafford-Levy, una de las organizadoras. Y agregó: “También lo hacemos para recordar los sucesos terribles del 11 de septiembre de 2001”.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Step into any local bar on a Friday night and you’ll likely find yourself engulfed in a sea of smokers—and smoke—a scene San Antonio’s City Council wants to change. Only one of three major U.S. cities that still allows smoking in public restaurants and bars, the Alamo City is embroiled in a heated debate over a citywide smoking ban and the right to light up in public places. “I’m guessing bar business will go down by 21%,” said Diamond Dave, general manager of the popular Downtown bar and grill, Broadway 50/50. He makes this prediction on the heels of the hot-button issue approved by the City Council in August., The updated smoke-free ordinance takes effect Aug. 19, 2011 “I see it affecting our business pretty adversely,” he said.
Twelve journalism professors were welcomed in early June in El Paso where the temperature hit 110 degrees. “Summer started earlier for me,” I thought. We all had been selected to participate in a multimedia training geared to journalism professors who teach in cities with a large Hispanic population. The chosen states? California, Florida, Texas and Illinois.
RIO RICO, Ariz. — When I returned to my Rio Rico, Arizona home from a second visit to my dentist who works twenty minutes away in Nogales, Sonora, I reflected on what a fine dentist Dr. Emilia Sáenz is. But her assistant, José, a gracious young man, is even finer. My spoken Spanish is decent, but my level of understanding sometimes lags – especially with Dr. Sáenz, an immigrant from Colombia, whose rapid Spanish confused me, which made José even more crucial as I endured another root canal. I marveled at José’s skill at anticipating Dr. Sáenz’s demanding needs and at anticipating any discomfort I might feel.
EL PASO, Texas — In May, 2010, UTEP student Alejandro Ruiz Salazar, 19—also an employee of the Graduate School—was the first known UTEP student slain in Juarez since the beginning of the current drug war. The same day, former UTEP student Jorge Pedro Gonzalez Quintero, 21, was murdered. According to Steve McCraw, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the situation in Mexico is worse now than the Colombian drug war of the 1980s and 1990s ever was. “Colombia was never threatened like the government of Mexico is with the level of violence,” McCraw stated at a Capitol hearing. “At first, we all saw the violence and murders as something that would never happen to us but now so many families have been torn apart, and a once prosperous, to some extent happy city, has been destroyed,” Acosta commented.
EL PASO, Texas — As President Barack Obama addressed the troops in Ft. Bliss Tuesday morning, protest groups gathered here to voice disappointment with the lack of change they say was promised by candidate Obama. “I’m out here because we were promised immigration reform,” said Delia Barra, a member of Red Fronteriza, the organization that headed the protest. Some 100 protesters lined up on Airway Boulevard between Montana and Boeing, just across from the airport Marriott at 11 a.m. just as heat waves began to rise from the sidewalk. As the Sun City blazed down on their heads, bottled water was distributed down the long line of protest posters and US flags. “I joined for the reason that I don’t want families to be separated [due to deportation].
NOGALES, Ariz. — I remember what it was like all the days when I was ten, mi mama dijo, “Mijo vete a comprar unas tortillas.” So I walked out the door to the Morley Street garita, crossed the line and went to the tortillería. Regresé con una docena. One day, in 1973, mi tia Meli decided to get a job at department store right at the line on the American side. She went to the Morley Street garita and told the U.S. migra man, “I’m just going over to Bracker’s to ask for job.” He said, “OK, go ahead, they have all the papers you’ll need.”
In 1976 we walked from Nogales to Nogales from the movie theater at 12 o’clock at night.
