The Segundo Horseshoe
Dignity In Juarez
Dignified man #7, Juarez ©2009 Bruce Berman
Juarez/13 June 2009
So what else is there in Juarez besides murder and catastrophe?
Right now, it doesn’t seem like anything.
But, then, there are those moments.
Tender Mercies.
I walk the streets. I walk the beaten down downtown. I bus through the factory landscape with For Lease signs more plentiful every time. I walk through the night clubs on Avenida Lincoln, defying myself, defying my fear.
But it’s there. The noise comes out of the clubs, loud, but not the joyous sound, more like the power-driven sound of defiance and booze.
People wait for the situation to end. It will. Someday.
Daily, the murder rate climbs, like an upward missile, slicing through the inherent good nature of this state and city, through this sunny northern Mexico metropolis that was turned into, first, a factory for first world consumption and, then, a monument to the future of world global wage reality. It was that, just a few years ago.
Seems like an entire epoch ago.
Hot Skinny Shadow
D’town El Paso, 104 degrees, July 28, 2009
It’s cookin’ in El Paso.
104!
Hard to breath.
But people do.
You keep moving.
Dignified Man #2
Dignified Man #2, Segundo Barrio/El Paso – July 11, 2009
There are a lot of viejos in the Sagundo barrio. They get around.
There are a lot of kids too.
Like it always was but just fewer. It’s the heart of this isolated town.
The Circle On Seventh Street
Sagundo barrio, El Paso – July 14, 2009
Needed a trip to see someone “rich,” get to my home, my ‘hood, the epicenter.
A day -part of a day- in Americaland was enough for me. Felt sick. Left wobbly. Everyone comes to that place where you’ve got to weigh the illness of your certainties against the “healthiness (or lack of it)” of your insecurities.
I’m there.
I head to the pueblo.
Murder Is A Teaching Moment (Editor Says…)
Local TV Handles Vilolence In Juarez (at least Art about violence)
- SEE FULL VIDEO ABOUT THE ART CONTROVERSY:
- >http://www.kvia.com/
- >Go to page #6 of videos
- >Hit:”Controversial border art makes waves”
Your Editor Stumbles Into a Defense Of Decapitated Heads (Art) At El Paso’s Library
July 9, 2009
Editor’s Note: Here is what they left on the “cutting room floor”
Dominoes Fall
Rush Hour, Juarez – July 9, 2009
You keep hearing about the murders.
Bad.
Real bad.
They are the wind that blows in the perfect storm.
Hand In The ‘Hood
Hand In The Hood, El Paso – 2009
World In A Pump
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.
Woman of Lomas del Poleo
Lomas del Poleo For Now
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.
Centro Family Train
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.
Deseperacida Monica
Welcome To Juarez
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.
Juarez March Against Violence For Professor Manuel Arroyo
The March against violence in memory of Professor Manuel Arroyo, Juarez, June 3, 2009
Juarez, Chihuahua/Mexico
June 3, 2009
The Megabandera (giant flag) in the Chamizal Park in Juarez is usually the place for joy and pleasure, a meeting place for families, lovers and tourists.
That was before la catástrofe.
The catastrophe.
Before the Cartel War.
The Mask Is Me
Ciego Musico/Blind Music
Calle Juarez, Ciego musico/Blind Music, Juarez – 1982
Juarez
This man played in the streets of Juarez for all my first years in La Frontera. He was blind. He was small. He made music like a special desert bird, joyful to bathe in just a drop of water, joyful to sing, even to the passing and witless American tourists.
Viva Los Viejos
Dignified man at the crossroads , El Paso, Texas / 2007
A man stands in the last light of the day at the corner of 6th and El Paso Street in El Paso, Texas. This is the first street of the United States after entering the U.S. from Mexico from the Paso Del Norte International Bridge. The bridge links Ciudad Juarez with El Paso and 6th and El Paso streets could be considered the crossroads of the northern part of the Western Hemisphere from south to north.
A lot of old folks (viejos) grew up in this barrio and are still there. They are the dignity of the barrio.
Imagine how people felt when a picture of an old viejo was used, by City planners, to show what was wrong with El Paso?
Los Viejos are what’s right with El Segundo.
Back In The USA: Watch Yer Tongue
Entering USA from Juarez.Yet again.The bridge.Flirting from enclosed car to enclosed car.
Fumes.
Juice.
Anticipation.
Mexico Sorts It Out: Obrador Gets The Boot
Boot/Shoe, El Paso, Texas, Highway 60/182 (Alameda Street), 2006
Text and Photography by Bruce Berman
Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called for a ballot-by-ballot review of Sunday’s presidential vote. He says the stability of the country is at stake. Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute Wednesday began reviewing the totals from polling stations to determine whether Obrador’s rival, Felipe Calderon, really won the election Sunday. A preliminary count showed him ahead by only one percentage point. Both candidates declared victory Sunday night.
REMEMBERING LUIS
Luis Jimenez, Hondo, New Mexico, 2001
Born: July 30, 1940, El Paso, TX / Died: June 13, 2006, Hondo, NM
The first time I met Luis, back in the seventies, he came into my apartment and seemed to fill the room. It was like no room was big enough for him.
He was that big of a g
Not physically, although he was that powerful.
Not spiritually, although he did have that aura of somebody who really sees the bigger picture.
He was just big. All of it. Life. Love. Art. Humor. Seriousness. Ambition. Regular guyness.
When I first met him, and I suspect this is what most people felt upon first encounter, I felt like my life was just a lot more complete than it had been a moment before.
If you wanted to be good at something, in my case it was to be a photographer- you knew he’d be encouraging for your dream.
He was a brother. A big brother. And like a lot of big brothers, he was larger than anyone could possibly be.
And, man, was he smart.
He said what mattered. He lived He cut the crap.
He made impossibly complex Art and made it look like you could buy it from a south side El Paso Body Shop. And the Art mattered. It was about something. It was about him and our culture and his culture and the idiocy of our system and about the flora and the fauna and intuition and magic and love and joy.