Boy On The Hill, Juarez – March 2002
Someone observed, generally, that in so-called third world countries, poor people have to live on top of hills and mountains (where it is more difficult to get water and where roads are rough and barely existent), but in first world countries the rich like to live on top of hills and mountains, for the “views.”
And the status.
This is true in Juarez and it is true in El Paso. The rich look down and the poor look down too. A mutual valley, a mutual water source, a mutual culture (pretty much), different reasons.
Here, Juan Rodriquez Marquez rides his bicycle in the hard scrabble mountaintop of colonia Felipe Angeles in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. In the distance is El Paso, Texas’ downtown. The high rise buildings are, mostly, multinational corporate banks. The two realities are no more than two or three miles -and two worlds- apart.
Visually, the border is evident. It is not a line, or even a river. It is reality itself.
