Food truck trend continues to grow as profits roll in

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EL PASO — A hungry motorist driving on the desert highway on the east side of this border city could suddenly come up on Jesus Ramos’ El Vaquero food truck, stop and enjoy an “elotes,” a corn concoction that has its origins in old Mexico. “I have been in the food truck business for 30 years,” said Ramos, who specializes in serving the elotes, a mix of corn, butter, cheese and chile in a styrofoam cup. “I began in Mexico, and have only recently been in El Paso for three years. I sell 300 elotes a day at $3 to $5 each and to me it’s well worth the work of owning a food truck.” Opening a mobile restaurant or food truck is not an easy task.

Now cheer this, Super Fans take a stand for the crowd

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There are sports fans, and then there’s the Super Fan – that extra player in the stands who cranks up the crowd to cheer, sing and human wave the team to victory, or at least have a good time trying. In El Paso, many people may recognize Gregg Bush as that guy. “If I can help the sports teams that I care about succeed and win, I’ll do my best to cheer my team onto victory,” Bush said. And cheer them on he does. He is a regular in the stands at UT El Paso games, a fixture in the third-base section at El Paso Chihuahuas baseball games and in the heart of crowd at The Corner Tavern and Grill for major league soccer and other games.

Teacher trades time for big savings with extreme couponing

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EL PASO – Every Sunday is like Christmas for Diana Lopez when she sorts through stacks of coupons and thinks about all the things she’ll be able give and receive. “I get very excited when it’s Sunday because it’s time to go shopping and save some money,” she said as she outlined her weekly routine that has saved her thousands of dollars over the years. Her day starts at her local Dollar Tree where she picks up the Sunday newspaper to find the coupons and sales at area stores. Lopez, 27, a special education teacher at Dolphin Terrace Elementary School, has been hooked on coupons since she was 24 years old, when she realized she was paying so much for clothes and food that she wasn’t able to build up much of a savings. “Many people think that using coupons is embarrassing and a waste of time but what if I my total was $112.64 and I ended up paying $19.02 with coupons?”
Using coupons has helped Lopez and her husband save enough to be able to afford a two-story house valued at more than $190,000.

An El Pasoan’s personal reflections on the Ottawa attack

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By Roberto Perezdiaz

Canada’s governmental openness is at risk. Many comments I have read online under the different headlines on the internet indicate many Canadians do not want to see the implementation of the draconian security measures the US has put in place. Although I’m reflecting on the “Attack on Ottawa” the day after (10/23/2014) the deadly events on Parliament Hill it would have been a forgettable day as I prepare to return to El Paso to vote and other “chores.” I write, reflecting it was three weeks ago Irasema and I were in Ottawa for a Border Conference at Carlton University and stayed at a hotel a short walking distance from the National War Memorial and from our café across the street watched a couple of changes of the memorial guards. I bet in the winter it is very hard duty for them to march out there, observed Irasema. I wonder if they wear those kilts in minus 20 plus weather, I said, as we have already experienced 36-degree days.

For Hispanics, same-sex marriage another sign of generational culture shift

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By Vanessa Hornedo, Hispanic Link News Service
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 8 –The Supreme Court’s recent decision to not hear five states’ appeals that challenge same-sex marriage, coinciding with the majority of states now accepting the rapid social change, leaves the nation’s 54-million Hispanics trying to determine where their cultural heritage fits in. “Hispanics have been lagging a couple of steps behind and this will move our community to be more embracing,” Armando Vázquez-Ramos, professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, tells Hispanic Link News Service. “We have to go beyond the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church relative to same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian communities in Latino families because it’s not typically accepted.”
According to a 2013 Pew Research Center National Survey, 55 percent of Latinos identify as Catholic – a faith which denounces marriage between two people of the same gender. Bishop Richard Malone, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, responded in a joint statement released Oct.

New marijuana laws in U.S. violate international treaties

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By  Kara Mason, SHFwire.com

WASHINGTON – Marijuana’s legalization in Colorado and Washington has put the U.S. in violation of multiple international treaties for the past two years. And with Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., possibly following suit, it could be bad news for the U.S. on the international stage, says a new Brookings Institution report. The U.S. government has been a strong supporter of three treaties that outlaw marijuana until 2012, Wells Bennett, a fellow in national security law at the Brookings Institution Governance Studies program, said at a recent forum in Washington, D.C.

But the Obama administration has been relatively quiet about the federal and international laws the two states are breaking. The federal government has taken no action in Colorado or Washington regarding legalization. “It’s a problem because we’re straining the limits of an international drug control regime that most participants, including the United States, have long understood to be quite strict,” Bennett said in a blog post on the Brookings Institution website.

Ebola coverage too important to be a competition, editor tells journalists

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After reports of an El Paso hospital closing its emergency room over a possible Ebola case burned like wildfire through social media Friday, Bob Moore, editor of the El Paso Times, posted the following cautionary note on his Facebook account:

“Something important to remember about reports of the closure of the Del Sol ER and any possible connection with Ebola:

Hospitals across the country have been dealing with concerns about possible Ebola cases. They react with an abundance of caution, as is appropriate. But in every case except those tied to the case in Dallas, tests have all turned up negative. We in the media should be informative but not alarmist.”

On Saturday the hospital released a statement saying its emergency room did not close. It explained that a patient’s symptoms and answers during a screening process triggered infectious disease protocols.

A dachshund races across the field at the St. Luke's Great Dachshund Stampede 2014, Oct. 4.

Hot dog! It’s the Great Dachshund Stampede

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LA UNION, NM — Call them wiener dogs, hot dogs or dachshunds. The folks who turned out for the Great Dachshund Stampede 2014 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church just call them a lot of fun. According to the Rev. Daniel Cave, more than 100 dachshunds from three states came out for the highlight of the church’s annual country fair on Oct. 4, 2014.

Feminismo e igualdad en el piso del cabaret

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EL PASO — En el piso del cabaret Dreams, Jaguar’s, Tequila Sunrise o cualquier otro, se encuentra el dólar, el “todopoderoso”, mojado, no por culpa de las bailarinas exóticas, si no por las manos sudadas del hombre ansioso por tocar. Ahí en los tubos cromados, divergen dos puntos de vista que es el empoderamiento femenil y la humillación de la mujer. Uno puede encontrarse un dólar en el piso, recogerlo y ya, no se piensa mucho al respecto, más que un “vaya que suerte”. Sin embargo, para la bailarina exótica esto suele ser mucho más complicado ya que mientras ella se agacha a recoger el dólar, a lado de sus zapatos de plataforma, toda una infinidad de pensamientos recorren su mente. Para un proyecto final para una clase de sociologia de la Dra.Nuñez-Mchiri en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso, decidí investigar si es posible que en los “strip clubs” la mujer pueda ejercitarse y empoderarse al mismo tiempo, o es simplemente un medio más por el cual la mujer es percibida como objeto?

Song inspires writer to search for nameless victims in ‘Deportees’ plane crash

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EL PASO — Folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a poem In 1948 about a plane crash that year in which 32 people lost their lives near Los Gatos Creek in the Diablo mountain range of California. The flight was carrying 28 migrant farmworkers who were being deported back to Mexico. Guthrie was disturbed by press accounts at the time that didn’t include the names of the passengers. The poem was eventually set to music and was popularized by Pete Seeger as “Deportees,” which included the haunting line: “to fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil, and be called by no name except “deportees.” Sixty-six years later, writer Tim Z. Hernandez has made it his mission to remember those whose lives were lost by finding out their names.

Images of Latinos in U.S. culture to be examined in 1-night lecture, exhibit at UT El Paso

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The UTEP Department of Communication and the Chicano Studies program presents a lecture and exhibit by Dr. William Anthony Nericcio that examines American visual culture reflecting images and stereotypes of Latinas/os. The event, Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious , will be at  5:30 pm, Wednesday, Oct. 15 in Quinn Hall Room 212 at the University of Texas at El Paso. 

Mextasy is a traveling art show/exhibit based on the work of William “Memo” Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García. The show, originally curated by Rachel Freyman Brown, South Texas College, McAllen, Texas, had its last exhibition at Boise State University, for the Third Cinema Research Group and El Consulado de México en Boise, Idaho on April 11, 2014.  

Mextasy both reflects and expands upon Nericcio’s 2007 book with UT Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the Mexican in America.

David Smith-Soto – Seeing life on the streets through my Leica

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LAS CRUCES, NM — My dad used to say that if Hitler hadn’t started World War II I wouldn’t have been born anywhere, but especially not in Costa Rica. My dad, Leon Smith, was 19, a gangly six-foot tall Jewish kid from Washington, D.C., when the war broke out and he enlisted in the Army to fight Nazis. The Army, in its infinite wisdom, sent him to Costa Rica. Not speaking a word of Spanish was not a handicap for a handsome guy in a U.S. Army uniform and soon enough he met a beautiful señorita, married her and I was born in San Jose a week before Hitler killed himself. Leon became a lawyer working for an international organization in Costa Rica, but he was an avid amateur photographer.

Herbal remedies big sellers in wellness strategies for Hispanics

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EL PASO— When it comes to trying to keep bodies healthy in the fit-vs-fat wars, this predominately Hispanic border city leans toward natural solutions. Seventy percent of residents here and across the border in Cuidad Juarez say they use herbal medicines to lose weight and treat a variety of illnesses, according to a 2010 study funded by the Paso del Norte Health Foundation. Infographic: The pros and cons of 5 common herbal remedies

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are essentially one urban metropolis of some 2 million residents divided by an imaginary political line. Together they make up one of the largest population centers to regularly use medicinal herbs. “It is definitely tied to the cultural factors especially among Hispanics,” said Armando Gonzalez-Stuart, one of the authors of the study.

Are you a thrifty shopper? The earth says thank you

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EL PASO – Savvy shoppers who hunt through thrift stores and vintage shops to create one-of-a-kind outfits may not even realize they are helping to improve the planet, too. “My family used to shop in those stores because it was cheaper and because the clothing isn’t at all bad,” said avid shopper Cinthia Prado “To us it was a normal and smart habit because of how much you could save.”

For Prado, 21, the search was about finding great deals on designer fashions. “I like how sometimes you find brands like Mango at a very cheap price,” she said. While consumers like Prado are looking for style and savings in used clothing stores, they don’t usually think about the Earth-friendly benefits of their shopping habits. “It wasn’t on my mind that buying used clothing is something positive in an environmental way.” Prado said.

Gallery: The Street Photography of David Smith-Soto

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Images from David Smith-Soto’s 60-years of street photography were taken during his travels as a journalist in Latin American, European and U.S. cities.  They include images from Oaxaca, Ciudad Juarez, Guatemala, Tangier, Paris and Madrid. Related Story: Street Photography exhibit, rare Beatles print to help journalism students