Ciudad Juárez walls full of colors, late 90's. (Courtesy of Cheryl Howard)

La frontera de mi memoria

Traducido por César Silva Santisteban

Read this story in English

EL PASO – Deseo escribir sobre la frontera. Deseo escribir sobre ella sin llorar, pero eso no parece posible. Si todas nuestras lágrimas juntas cayeran sobre el Río Grande/Bravo irrigarían de nuevo su torrente. La edición «Mexodus» de Borderzine justo acaba de salir, y yo deseo leer y escribir acerca de todo esto sin llorar, pero no es posible. Mi amiga Georgina publicó un enlace hacia un artículo de El Diario que dice que 300 mil viviendas en Ciudad Juárez han sido abandonadas.

A store at Mercado Juárez. (Courtesy of Cheryl Howard)

The border of my memory

I want to write about the border. I want to write about it without crying, but that doesn’t seem possible. If all our collective tears fell into the Rio Grande/Bravo, it would be a raging torrent again. The Mexodus edition of Borderzine just came out, and I want to read and write about it without crying, but that doesn’t seem possible. My friend Georgina posted a link to an article from El Diario that says 300 thousand dwellings in Cd.

Popular culture offers a different way to evaluate the immigration experience

EL PASO — Immigration on the U.S.-Mexico borderland is portrayed in popular culture as criminal and illegal to audiences that are disconnected from the reality of immigrants who cross the border to save their families from poverty and widespread violence. “Would you risk everything to come to the Unites States?” Dr. Richard D. Pineda asked an audience at the University of Texas at El Paso. He followed this thought with the example of an immigration raid in northern Iowa. Workers at several meat-packing plants were apprehended and taken to deportation facilities. “Even though that force was essentially gutted on that day, they’ve been replaced,” he added, explaining that those plants now show record outputs, “and I can assure you those are not workers working in high level jobs, but workers working for a minimum amount of pay.”

The economic incentive for immigration is too high in the United States and a variety of tasks require a “disposable workforce,” one that comes in the form of undocumented immigrants, explained Pineda, an associate professor of communication at UTEP.

La violencia ha robado el alma del pueblo

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.

New Plan Stresses Improved Cross-border Communication

EL PASO, Texas — Improving the balance between security and trade along the U.S.-Mexico border, including much better communication, is essential for both countries to focus on and solve the huge problems of arms and drug trafficking. “Mexico and the U.S. will have to work together to maintain security and help trade. It will take both countries to give important information to one another,” said newly appointed Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Alan Bersin. Right now there is not enough trust or confidence on either side of the border, he said. These are essentially the two basic ingredients that Secretary Janet Napolitano and President Obama have included in a new vision for the U.S.-Mexico border.

Crazy Mario

Mario was part of our lives since we were small kids and today, 40 years later, I was one of two people at his funeral.

Borderline Lesson – An Austrian Sees a Third Country on the U.S. Mexico Border

GRAZ, Austria — In my degree thesis I tried to present El Paso as a political nation-state buffer zone between Mexico and the United States, an unconventional view of the Sun City sparked by the near-omnipresence of the Border Patrol. Everything started with naïve questions to my Mexican-American roommate regarding the Border Patrol. I would sometimes see them eat tacos at the table next to mine – in the first couple of weeks after my arrival in El Paso in August 2007. What were they doing? What were they after?

New Trend in Mexican Immigration Appears on the U.S. Border

By Billie Greenwood

Seeking safety by immigrating to the United States, thousands of Mexicans are fleeing the violence of Juárez. They represent a new trend in Mexican immigration. Making the most of legal immigration visas available to middle and upper economic classes, some may push those visas beyond legal usage. Recent estimates of the increased numbers of new immigrants in El Paso range from 5,000 to 60,000. It is clear to see why they flee.

Border Patrol Agents Numbers Increase Along U.S. Borders

EL PASO, Texas — The Border Patrol numbers of federal agents has grown to about 11,000 since the year 2007, this number has tripled since the tragic events of 9/11 according to the agency’s website. One of President George W. Bush’s final acts in office was to push the bill containing the budget request for the U.S. Border Patrol which totaled just fewer than $11 billion of tax payers money. With more funding, the U.S. borders have seen a sudden increase in the numbers of agents patroling high traffic areas. Just in The El Paso/Las Cruces area about 400 new agents were hired for the stations of the El Paso sector which are located in El Paso, Fabens, Fort Hancock, Ysleta, Alamogordo, Albuquerque, Deming, Las Cruces, Lordsburg, Truth or Consequences, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Drug busts have yielded about 100 tons of illegal narcotics since this sudden increase in funding for the Border Patrol nationwide, with big contributions coming out of the El Paso sector.