Angry princess/Princesa enojado, El Paso-October 31, 2008
El Paso, Oct. 31 (Halloween), 2008
Halloween on El Paso Street, the first (or last) block of America. Everyone is dressed and laying a festival veneer over the street. 5:30pm, people still rushing to the bridge to Juarez to get home (especially these days, trying to get home before dark, before the murders begin).
Cookie is one angry Chihuahua.
Well, not actually. She’s just hard wired to protect Esperanza and, of course the big and new Chevy Suburban. That’s what Chihuahuas do.
Trick or treat.
She’s the hit of the street. Even the kids with the most spectacular costumes stop and pay homage to Cookie. She’s the star.
This is the barrio that the movers and shakers of this community want to “clean up.” This is the place that the main developer of the border’s wet dream called a “pile of crap (such class!).” This is the place a City Council person suggested would be a better place once there was a Starbucks where people (meaning their kind of people) could sit and drink coffee and work on their WiFi computers.
Dumbasses.
This is the First Block of America. This is the living and breathing soul of the border (ALL of the border from Brownsville to San Ysidro, Tierra del Fuego to the Northwest Territories). This is the place of riches that only the poor-of-heart see as poor. This is the epicenter of El Chuco. This is a street of life. This is the living cartoid artery of The Americas, this is the turf, the pasado, that has been walked since the beginning of humans in the hemisphere.
This is the jewel, the southern end of a city that is a desert of suburbia.
This street this night -most days and nights- is a place of joy and theater. You’d have to be blind to not see that (the real blind can hear and feel it).
Cookie is not blind.
Keep it up Cookie, we need your ‘tude.
Protect us from los ciegos (the blind ones).
