Borderland queer youth embrace new film based on bestselling book

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It was an historic evening at the screening of Aristotle and Dante, a queer story set in the Borderland. Fans of the YA novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz packed the theater to watch the movie when it opened at the Alamo Draft House in El Paso. “I think our voices are not always heard and especially for queer youth trying to find a place in the world, in their community, in their city,” said Enrique Perea, at the special screening in September. “ I think it’s one of those things where you think about, hey, my story needs to be heard and I matter”

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, published in 2012, tells the story of two boys in El Paso juggling high school, and growing up while learning more about themselves and the love they feel for one another while they defy social and cultural norms.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the executive producer with Aitch Alberto, a transgender film director. The movie feature several well-known actors including Eva Longoria and Eugenio Derbez, both prominent Hispanic voices in the film industry.

El Paso baker’s whimsical creations showcased in Food Network’s Halloween Cookie Challenge

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El Paso baker, Naomi Gil, did not believe it at first when the Food Network invited her to be on one of their seasonal shows. “They reached out on my business profile, and they even went to my personal profile,” Gil said. “I don’t know how they found me.”

Gil, 27, is the owner of Azúcar Morena Bakery in El Paso, a dessert catering service with a following on Instagram. Gil did not respond at first to messages inviting her to try out for the Food Network’s, Halloween Cookie Challenge. She throught it might be a hoax.

Neighborhood center, anniversary newspaper highlight Black El Paso stories

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Lifelong El Pasoan Karen Cooper Linen calls the little rock house at 3231 Wyoming “a hidden treasure.”

The house on a quiet street corner in El Paso’s East Five Points neighborhood connects to a larger building to make up the McCall Neighborhood Center. Inside is a vibrant community gathering space and repository of El Paso’s Black history and achievement. “A lot of people that grew up here don’t know that it’s here,” said Cooper Linen, who serves on the center’s board. The McCall Center was established in 1983 by Leona Ford Washington, a teacher and community activist. It serves to preserve and showcase the history and accomplishments of Black El Pasoans as well as the contributions of African Americans in our country’s history.

Poet Rubí Orozco Santos, director of storytelling and development at La Semilla Food Center, holds a freshly picked beet from the center’s community farm in Anthony, New Mexico, on June 5, 2023. Photo by Rachele Kanigel/Borderzine.com

Food as art in the social justice movement

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Since its founding in 2010, the non-profit La Semilla Food Center in Anthony, New Mexico, has been creating a vibrant food system that prioritizes community connections, equitable economic practices and environmental health over profits.

Women advance in once male-dominated mariachi scene – preserving tradition with unique style

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CIUDAD JUAREZ — When Stephanie Cramer started playing mariachi music in Ciudad Juárez 24 years ago, she didn’t know any other women mariachi musicians in the city. Now a violinist and singer for Mariachi Trio México de Noche, Cramer said she had to earn acceptance from the men because she was breaking a long-standing tradition. “They would make me cry, not only the guys in my group but the clients. They see a girl, and it was something new,” she said. Cramer’s experience is common according to Leonor Xóchitl Pérez, founder and executive director of the Mariachi Women’s Foundation.

A story about basketball Hall of Famer Tim Hardaway and El Paso’s role in how America changed

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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Near the end of the evening, when the television cameras were finally turned off, but fans were still clicking photos, Tim Hardaway tried on the orange blazer that all Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees are gifted. You could sense right away that the jacket wasn’t his style, and he wouldn’t likely wear it as much as the massive ring. But it fit. In that moment, he dipped his left shoulder, put an imaginary basketball through his legs and into his left hand, and then changed hands back to his right — it was his iconic killer crossover.

‘Life-saving conversations,’ immersive learning, advance military training in suicide prevention

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On a sunny spring morning, Air Force cadets gathered in a dimly lit auditorium at the University of Texas at El Paso to hear a 20-year Army officer with 11 combat tours talk about suicides in the military. Retired Lt. Col. J.C. Glick began his discussion, via Zoom, with a brief description of his military experience, mostly in special operations. What he said next stunned many of the cadets. “About 18 months after my 11th combat tour — was my first of four suicide attempts,” he said.

Problems remain for private border wall builders after founder’s guilty plea in fraud

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by Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica

Brian Kolfage arrived in Texas three years ago pledging to help fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of a “big, beautiful” wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. After pleading guilty to federal fraud charges last month, Kolfage leaves behind two small stretches of fencing that are mired in legal, environmental and permitting fights.

Better paying job opportunities await more El Paso women going into construction work

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Roger De Moor has presented his students with an emergency scenario many of them know well: Your 3-year-old has locked themselves in the bathroom. They’re panicking. In a room that looks like a high school shop class, nine women walked up to a makeshift door and slid a small pick into the doorknob, searching for the groove that would open the lock. “My teenager, she takes the keys,” said Kathy Chavez, whose daughter went through “the terrible teens” and used to lock the door to her room. Chavez’s cousin, Terri Garcia, held up the pick and grinned: “Not anymore.”

The cousins are single moms eager to rely less on Garcia’s aging father for help with home improvement tasks — and to save money.

Married for 51 years, photos capture loneliness of the pandemic for couple living just a few feet apart

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Ana Maria, 74, and Jose Becerra, 80, are a high-risk couple living in El Paso. The two have illnesses that weaken their immune system and make them fearful of contracting COVID-19. After a recent surgery Ana Maria Becerra, who is my grandmother, socially distanced herself in her home to protect my grandfather from anything she may have contracted during her time at the hospital. This photo essay captures moments of their lives on a recent Saturday, nearly at the end of the two week at-home social distancing period. Married for 51 years, they struggled to stay six feet apart, manage day-to-day tasks and outwait the loneliness.

Restaurant wall painting of Puerto Rico inspired images

What El Pasoans need to know about Puerto Ricans

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El Paso is dominated by residents of Mexican descent, so other Latino groups aren’t always reflected in the mainstream culture of the city. In this video, Borderzine reporter Michelle Rosado breaks down the differences and similarities of Mexican and Puerto Rican cultures in the borderland. https://youtu.be/mZSwbETnghQ

 

Ruidoso’s peak season a bust as tourism from Mexico, Texas collapses over coronavirus

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RUIDOSO, NM — In this town where tourism is one of the biggest sectors of its economy, not having visitors can become a real problem. Ruidoso has experienced a huge drop in tourism because of COVID-19 concerns beginning with spring break, one of the village’s busiest times of year after the winter season. We actually haven’t been seeing a lot of tourism at all,” said Juan Sosa, a sales clerk at clothing store Parts Unknown in mid-March. That’s when the casinos, racetrack and ski resort saw a drop off in visitors before they closed down completely. “It’s affected the town as far as tourism quite a lot,” Sosa said.

Census form and mailbox

Fear may keep undocumented immigrants out of 2020 census, hurt communities

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By Mary Lehman Held, University of Tennessee

The United States might not be able to get information about more than 10 million people in the 2020 census. That’s the number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Another 16.7 million individuals live in a household with an undocumented member and so might also not be counted in this year’s census. The primary reason that undocumented immigrants might forego participation in the 2020 census? Fear.

All Latinos don’t vote the same way – their place of origin matters

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By Eliza Willis, Grinnell College and Janet A. Seiz, Grinnell College

Joe Biden won Florida’s 2020 Democratic primary, capturing a majority of the state’s Latino voters. Polls have been tracking the Latino vote in Democratic presidential primaries, and many analysts are trying to predict which candidate Latinos might favor in November. Interest in Florida has been especially strong. Observers commonly speak of “the Latino vote” as if Latinos make up a distinct and unified interest group. This both overstates and understates Latinos’ uniqueness.

Children of color already make up the majority of kids in many US states

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By Rogelio Sáenz, The University of Texas at San Antonio and Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Texas A&M University

Demographers project that whites will become a minority in the U.S. in around 2045, dropping below 50% of the population. That’s a quarter-century from now – still a long way away, right? Not if you focus on children. White children right now are on the eve of becoming a numerical minority. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that, by the middle of 2020, nonwhites will account for the majority of the nation’s 74 million children.

Fort Bliss soldiers share their thoughts on living in El Paso

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EL PASO – Life in the military brings soldiers to duty stations across the U.S and overseas. For many, it is easy to picture being stationed in places like Hawaii or Colorado. But, when it comes to a posting at Fort Bliss in this West Texas city on the U.S., Mexico border, some soldiers didn’t know what to expect. “All I really knew of it was what I heard from old tales of the wild, wild west,” said New Jersey National Guard, Staff Sgt. Brandon Glaser, who came to El Paso from Chicago in 2012.

Cross-border home ownership rate reflects El Paso, Juarez binational community dynamic

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About one in every six El Pasoans say they own homes in both Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, according to a recent survey. The Border Perception Survey asked border residents about topics ranging from education and health to the security and environment. The survey, a collaboration between the El Paso Community Foundation and Fundación Comunitaria Frontera Norte as part of an initiative called Building Broader Communities in the Americas, was conducted between August and September of 2018 and included 896 El Pasoans and 1,535 Juarez residents. “The surprising thing was such a large number of people who actually are dual citizens, or are citizens of one side of the other but have homes on the other side of the border. And so that was an impressive finding,” said one of the researchers on the project, Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies and professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso.