Email
Font Resize
EL PASO, Texas — Church's Fried Chicken seemed only slightly less crowded than Kentucky Fried Chicken, but both restaurants sit in a prominent spot right across the street from the Saturday marketplace. That means, on Saturdays, the fry baskets stay hot.
Almost as hot, perhaps, as the kiosk booths, where a ready-made taco can be purchased from an enterprising street vendor.
The fast-eat spots dotting downtown El Paso stay full on market day. There are a few English-speaking Anglos who sometimes wander inside, but most of the customer base in this part of town seems to be Spanish-speaking, just as with the gigantic flea-market type of tent mall going on next door. There, used clothes, cheap socks, and amenities such as the all-important giant packages of toilet paper all can be had for a good price.
A Western-style clothing store sits on one corner. Inside, racks of contemporary shirts from the brand-name likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren sit lonely, while the racks of Wrangler- and Stetson-brand shirts and hats are surrounded by entire families wrestling for styles and bargains.
The smell of fried chicken fills the air.
"A three-piece, with potatoes, biscuit, and Dr Pepper to drink, please," is the request after finally reaching the counter.
The high school girl taking the order, whose primary language is Spanish, shifts
Suddenly, she stops. Frustrated, she searches for the words to say in English. She can't find them. "No, uh, no..."
No Dr Pepper?
"Yes! Yes!
"No!
"No Dr Pepper," she repeats, relieved at the help. "How about a Coke?"
All of this, just down the street from where a state-of-the-art theater and civic center district stands, and where an entirely different fan base is attracted.
Yet, the bustling community interacts as if all of the 600,000-plus residents and thousands more visitors know each other as neighbors.
Welcome to America.
El Paso style.
Finding the target
John Cook is a former soldier.
He served in the Vietnam War, and he still has vivid memories of pain and mental anguish, not the least of which came in the form of protesters who despised his military service after he came home.
It didn't help matters with people like that when he asked a Vietnamese woman to be his wife.
The Army first brought Cook's attention to El Paso when he was stationed at nearby Fort Bliss.
He fell in love with the area, and the diverse people here, and that neighborly love and atmosphere of tolerance so hard to find elsewhere brought him back.
Today, Cook is the mayor of El Paso. He got elected by knocking on doors and working the grass-roots network, surprising opponents and local political observers in getting elected to the city's top post.
"Our border doesn't divide us," he says of the U.S.-Mexican boundary a few blocks away. "What it actually does is bind us together."
Cook has an entirely different view of border relations with Mexico than do many of his political colleagues in Washington, D.C., and he is not shy about sharing his resentment toward what he sees as incompetent decision-making on Capitol Hill.
He likes to make comparisons to the U.S.-Canadian border in his talks with politicians. "I remind them, if you want to build a wall, then start it up there!" he says, pointing to what he feels is a greater threat for terrorists entering the country.
"I keep hearing it's a matter of national security," Cook said of calls for a border wall instead of a border fence with Mexico. "But what you're really talking about are immigration issues.
"OK, let's talk about immigration issues."
Cook proudly points to statistics that show the El Paso area is the third largest manufacturing area in North America. That, he said, is because of the close working relationship that exists between the people of El Paso and the people of Ciudad Juarez, the more populated city across the river in Mexico.
Each day, thousands of Mexican citizens cross the bridges into El Paso with work visas, getting to jobs that otherwise would be hard to fill, Cook said. The city governments also work closely together to address problems of mutual concern, such as flooding with the Rio Grande during heavy rains.
The more Cook talks, the easier it is to see his admiration for the hard-working Mexican neighbors that go to-and-fro across the border, filling jobs and stores in El Paso to make that city's economy robust. He also enjoys the unique culture created among the people of El Paso.
To him, the concerns of over-immigration, national security and border control that make so many other Americans nervous or uneasy are for the most part sensationalized far beyond what he sees as the truth.
Things have changed
Cook is not alone in his beliefs about what is happening in El Paso.
"The border is not backwards, it is a step into the future," said Jon Amastae, a border scholar at the local University of Texas in El Paso.
The best way to look at the border is to look at it as a zone, Amastae said. "The Texas border zone is 1,000 of the 2,000-mile border and includes much of the population, from El Paso to Brownsville."
In the last 15 years, "there has been rapid growth, but not rapid development," he said.
"The border is pictured as a violent and dangerous place. Yet, El Paso is the third safest city of its size in the United States, especially if you put it up against comparison cities such as Albuquerque and Tucson," he said. "There is violence, but reality and myth don't mix."
Although Amastae offers statistics to back his claim, the same cannot be said for Juarez, just across the border, where murder rates and other crime occur at a much higher rate.
Nevertheless, there are different dynamics at play on both sides that make both cities different from others in their respective nations, and that contributes to the misperceptions about the area, he said. "The border zone on the U.S. side is relatively poor, in U.S. terms. The border zone on the Mexican side is relatively wealthy, in Mexican terms."
By combining economic resources, such as labor and technology, transportation and consumer markets, "the border is arguably Ground Zero in the globalization of the world," Amastae said. "Outsourcing began right here. Things have changed from old sweatshops ... to modern, high-tech assembly plants."
The population of El Paso is 80 percent Hispanic, he said. "Our multiculture should be seen as an example of what's coming to the rest of the United States."
Perhaps not in the numbers, but certainly in the participatory influence, as cities of all sizes across the U.S. offer jobs to immigrants by the hundreds if not thousands.
But what makes many Americans nervous about that also goes for Mexico, in a manner of speaking, said a senior Mexican official.
A terrible mistake'
"There are threats to both countries," said Juan Carlos Foncerrada Berumen, the Mexican consul stationed in El Paso.
Security and prosperity are the two main pillars of focus for his country at the moment, and the success of obtaining them directly affects the security and prosperity of the United States as well, Berumen said. "We cannot be secure unless we create the types of opportunities we need."
By that, he means jobs.
"The North American community has its basis here, in what we are doing here," he said. "We really should be focused on how to make the North American market more competitive. Both of us are losing competitiveness in the world" by being distracted with border issues instead of competing with markets, such as Europe and Asia.
But officials here, such as Cook and Berumen, are not immune to the need for reform and better border security. They simply feel the reform should zero in on the right targets, and not be done in the name of politics without sound reason and understanding of how important the U.S.-Mexico economies have become intertwined.
Mexico has to work on reforms with its own immigration policies, Berumen said, and "to make our country more friendly to capital, and to create more opportunity at home."
Regarding U.S. efforts, "I would like to see policy set by people who know something about border issues," Amastae said, "Not just for politics."
Cook agrees, favoring an improved system for identifying honest workers, most of whom he feels don't even want to live in the United States, but need the work to take money with them back home. He argues against militarizing the border with soldiers trained for a different job than border agents.
"Personally, I think it's a terrible mistake," he said. "Fort Bliss is not here to protect the border," and National Guard troops and other military personnel on hand "sends a bad message."
"There are a half million jobs a year that go unfilled in the U.S.," he said. "Find the good people, and take them out of the equation. That leaves the bad.
"Deal with them."
Troy Turner is the editor of The Daily Times. He can be contacted at P.O. Box 450, Farmington, N.M., 87499; or at tturner@daily-times.com.
