border photography, el paso juarez border, Mexico, Segundo barrio, Texas, US/Mexico Border

World In A Pump

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Pumpa Monumental, FBA Project/El Paso -2009

It ain’t all war and drugs and deals.

Or is it?

Right here, in  the midst of it all is…this!

Who made this? Chinese hands? Sweat shop Haitian hands? Don’t tell me North Carolina hands! They did wingtips, right?

Who will end up with this radical pump? Where will they wear it (I think I can imagine)? Is there pain and despair there, or a  happy night? Baile, baile. I hope. Will this end up on the other side of the border or is there a place, close by, that will be dazzled by the wearer of this shrine?

Is this the scariest thing I have ever seen or the funniest and why is it this that provokes my thoughts and not the library or some archive or gallery? Why is it this that reminds me of those who toil without options of what is toiled at? Is everything always going to bring my thoughts to the Cartel, to class disparities, to the haves and the have nots, to the black magic of the border? Is that my fate: to see the most outrageous shoe in the history of my life and I can only think of slavery, not aesthetics?

Can I just let it slide? That seems like a long time ago.

Ah, all this in la pumpa monumental.

I smile. I gather the image. I harness my moment. What else can you do? We’re all stumbling around, teetering on some spiky platform or another. Making it look good. We toil at what we toil at, we dance with the partners we’re given, we all try to slick it up. What else can you do?

Otra vez, calle El Paso…estas el mejor!

I have loved you for a long time.

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border photography, el paso juarez border, Juarez, Lomas del Poleo, Mexico, Photo of the Week, US/Mexico Border

Lomas del Poleo For Now

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Tres niños before The Grid, June 2009

Lomas del Poleo/Juarez, Chihuahua/Mexico

June 20, 2009

Lomas del Poleo. The battle goes on. More people leave. People fight to stay.  A mean strip of ten lane highway has snaked its way through Lomas del Poleo (see previous posts or Google it). The Developers got what they needed and left what they didn’t, more or less. They don’t even blink as they plow ahead. This highway is going to happen, no matter what. The development will follow, is gonna happen, no matter what. Nothing stops the grinder. The Grid viene: Diamond Shamrock, The Chicken Colonel, Pemex, trucks full of electronic crap, three bedrooms, two baths, probably a Wal Mart (whoa..let’s not get too crazy!), the same vexing and stinking Grid that we hate and that people fight to have (Iran, Cuba, Libya, you, too, can have it!). There goes the texture, and, in the case of Lomas del Poleo, the isolation and faux rural vibe, the farm at the edge of the city, the special dream that has been Lomas: get out of the city, raise some chickens, leave us alone. A quiet hope on the edge of always possible chaos that is Juarez.

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border photography, Discussion of Documentary Photography, el paso juarez border, Immigration, Love, Segundo barrio, Texas, US/Mexico Border

Centro Family Train

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Family in Segundo barrio, El Paso – 2009

Thanksgiving Day.

Summer of 2009.

I see it every day.

That other day, the one in November, I guess it’s in there somewhere. Eating and stopping the world and traveling and the whole schmeer. That’s thankfulness, right.

What is the word for grinch in Thanksgiving-ese?

I see thanks every day in my barrio. I see thanks for the mere act of being alive and being safe and having someone who calls you Dad or Mom or Mijo.

Yeah, I’m a simpleton.

And I dig it, too.

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US/Mexico Border

Welcome To Juarez

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Entrance to Juarez, June 2009

Militarization works two ways.

The bridges between Juarez and El Paso used to be friendly -although tedious if in a car- gateways to good times or better times, depending on which way you were traveling. Or is that just nostalgia?

Well, if not “friendly,” than at least not hostile.

Now they are reinforced pathways to go do what you gotta do. No joking. Get back by dark. All business. No fun or pleasure. Nothing lives. One endures the crossing. Rigid. Steel. Chrome molly tubes. Crash proof.

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