For sure, one of the things I like about El Paso, the Border and maybe the culture of the Southwest, is the prevalence of family. It’s the foundation of that city. Over 80% Latino, it’s a natural outgrowth of that culture. Here, on a busy street (Hawkins Boulevard), Dad happily gives his niña a ride. From when I first noticed him until he turned a corner I could not, he had walked over a mile! This wasn’t funzy... it was required transportation. Dad Cab. Probably one of the memorable rides of her life.
Dodged the bullet again. Well, this time there is no ‘explainin’ it so it’s fair to say, a hand deflected the fatal bullet. Another chance. Haven’t been doing photography much–for myself–in recent years. Been teaching. 34 semesters and most days in between spent on working at it. Caught up with me. Every word that went out came out of somewhere, somewhere where ghosts dance, that place deep inside where who we are actually lives. I built that up for years. Can one afford to let it go, driveled out in a million repetitions? And, for what? On February 12 a bomb exploded in my chest during my first class of the day. I taught my way through the whole class while The Reaper toyed with me, as God stood by and watched me gamble. Idiot! Why would I think God would intervene for a fool? It wasn’t my time it turns out. Not now. Not yet. Why? All the right pieces fell together on the timeline, miraculous people showed up, the traffic parted ways for Mary’s defacto EMS Hyundai, and colleague Darren, always quiet, protecting his genius, appeared. Navy man. He all but carried me to the car then went into the building and with the precision of a true leader, with his cellphone, assembled the “troops,” at the nearby hospital, the cardiac team. Mary battled noon traffic. I was in and out, almost gone. We got there and Dr. Miracle, Abdul, his Rock ‘n Roll med team, waiting, like a great band about to play the once in a lifetime anthem; Lights Out.
I thought I was bringing “the border” into homes that knew it not. I no longer think that. I remember an acquaintance, at an exhibition I had, coming up to me after the show and talk and saying, “Now I really know the border and I’ve lived here all my life.” I was flattered and felt great gratitude. After all, that was my intention in photography, to show and tell what others didn’t see or know. He then said, I’d buy a photograph, but my wife just couldn’t see one that fit her new color scheme for our living room. I didn’t know what to say. What could you say? I understood that when he said he finally “knew the border,” he actually meant he finally could see how he could use what I saw and made for his own needs and wants. ¿Interesante, eh? It’s OK, but I hope for more. I’ve come to know that most people overlay themselves on the border–maybe on all photography–and for them whatever is there is what is already embedded there, within them, no matter what the image shows. So be it. I look for coherence in what is incoherent and hope that someone–anyone–sees what I saw, felt what I felt, but most importantly, comes to know what I know from it. I have have no expectations.
The Red Bus, Paso del Norte International Bridge, El Paso/Juárez, 1989
Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman
The Old Red Bus ran back and forth over the Juárez International bridge for decades. The bus itself was from the late 1950s, a GM. First photo I ever took when I got to El Paso and started wandering around was of the Red Bus, on El Paso Street. I noticed the women, from 18 to late 40s, lined up. I came to know that they were “maids,” low wage women from Juárez that came over every day and served the Anglos of a neighborhood north of downtown. It was called Kern Place. At the end of the day -those that worked by the day and not the week- would walk south down the hill to “EL Centro,” get on the bus and go home, to Juárez Generations of Anglo kids were raised by these “maids.” Tons of dishes were washed. Beds were made. Laundry was done. They watched the American culture and went home. Key word: Home. Theirs. Another world. I shot that old photo in October 1975.
Hope on the border (Illustration), El Paso-Juárez, 2021
Text/Photography by Bruce Berman
This is not a photograph. It is an “illustration.” It’s a “montage,” a form of photography that goes all the way back to the near beginnings of photography. The distinction between “illustration,” and “photograph,” is that the former is an idea and an opinion and the latter exploits photography’s main strength: believability.
Night adult classes at Central and Winn Seal High Schools are composed largely of Latin-American veterans who are completing grade and high school. Corpus Christi, Texas
El Paso’s Central Plaza, is officially named San Jacinto Plaza. It is located in the middle of El Paso’s original business district and about 3/4 of a mile from the border with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In recent times its unofficially been called Plaza de los Lagartos which refers to the old pool in the middle of the plaza that used to be the home of alligators (lagartos in español) which no longer existed after the early 1970s. The alligators were later commemorated, in 2006, by a fiberglass sculpture of alligators by native son and internationally renowned artist, Luis Jimenez.
Maria Gonzalez and soldaderas, Photograph from the Runyon Collection/Library of Congress
This photograph was taken during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), exact date unkown.The photograph was taken by commercial photographer Robert Runyon (1881-1968), a longtime resident of South Texas. His photographs document the history and development of South Texas and the border, including the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. military presence at Fort Brown and along the border prior to and during World War I, and the growth and development of the Rio Grande Valley.
This image was shot on a glass-plate negative ; 5×7 in. Camera unknown.
No telling what and who will come over the Cordoba bridge that links El Paso, Texas with its sister city Juárez, Chihuahua.
In this case, crossing from south to north, was Spencer.
Pipe, a hat that said “F___ Off,” aged Doc Marten’s, punk rock labels every where, he is as ecclectic as the border. In a strange way he, is the border: neither this or that, neither Mexican or American, neither barrier nor passageway.
A friend once called the border a metaphor for a person who has “an undefined personality.”
Looking at Spencer -and some others (in my mirror!)- I’m thinking it’s a place for very defined personalities.
The problem is that it’s really difficult to say exactly what they are.
Everyone is talking about it. A new day, full of new promise. Many acquaintances tell me about all the new bars and cantinas. That Juarez will rise again.
This morning, Easter morning, two bodies were found hanging from a bridge in central Juarez. The victims were young, scruffy, boys with no names.
Hanging, like crucifixion, is a public and humiliating death. A death after death, the person shamed, rendered helpless, publicly. This is death with a message.
There was a day when you could think of Juarez and think in color. I get whiffs of it lately, but one is so cognizant that under that shiny surface is a black and white heart that has been ripped open for all to see and it will take a long time fill with the energy and joy that was -and will be again- the hallmark of Ciudad Juarez. It will happen. It is happening now. A generation has now come that learned to live abajo, and carefully. There has been damage. No one can live under that cloud forever.
It’s nice to look back, now and again. But here, on the border, it has been years since people have allowed themselves to look forward.
Juarez, Chih., Mex. — So how did this Cartel War begin and how does it end?
The Border Blog will not answer that today. We look for the things that make the heart tick and leave the fancy thinking to those that make these messes in the first place.
Roughly, for me, it began a long time ago, when the people who have most of the marbles understood that they didn’t have to do a thing about bringing along another class of people who had hardly any marbles at all. Impunity. No apologies. In Juarez the maquila industry began when someone figured out that Labor was a cheap product that Mexico had a lot of and that it could be exchanged for some major profit. Of course nothing so crass as that was said. Rather, this was the bright new day that would lead to a burgeoning “middle class,” and bring everyone up from the bottom. So they said. So the “development” of Juarez began. The powers that be brought willing companies looking for labor and they delivered “labor.” This labor, also known as the citizens of Mexico came from the far flung corners of Mexico. They had nothing else to do and would work at any price, went the theory. Everyone would be happy. You move here, we’ll give you subsistence (and societal dislocation), and we’ll go to the bank. Everyone will be happy.
Right?
When I first started photographing in the maquila factories of Juarez in the early 1980’s the salary in a maquila was $5 per day. Today it’s a little over $7. A full two dollar increase in 20 years. Imagine!
It wasn’t sustainable then and it isn’t now.
The promise of some kind of job, of rising above downright depraved poverty, was strong and people flocked to the border factories. First from Veracruz, then from Durango, then from Torreon and on and on.
If you were a Mexicano and wanted to improve your life without the terrible alternative of actually crossing the border and trying to make it work in El Norte, you headed to the maquilas of Juarez or Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo. If you made that journey you left your culture and customs behind. This was the brave new world.
I drive my old routes. Camera on the passenger seat or my lap. As always, these days it usually stays there, untouched. There are things along the way that spark memories. Object that aren’t there anymore. Gorgeous commercial signs constructed by craftsmen in the 1950s and 60s (not the least of which from the Jimenez Sign Company) were carted off to other cities that were twenty years ahead of El Paso in their bourgeoisie ambitions.You can drink under some of El Paso’s “Motel, Vacancies,” signs in various bars from Austin to Houston to Baton Rouge. There’s a withering away now, aging and weathered, but mostly not endearing anymore, not worth stopping for (to make images). There came a year, a month, a day when the treasures of El Paso were either gone, carted off or just left to rot.
There are whole swaths of this incredible and authentic city that are gone, at least for the long gaze of a photograph: Alameda. El Centro (downtown). Segundo is shrinking fast, bordered by El Paso Street on the west (with nasty tentacles of them all over it) and Cotton on the far east, with old residents living out their days, youth getting out fast and them with their bulging eyes all over it. Off of Delta there are condominiums and some revamped industrial buildings, residents living an almost urban lifestyle (sans humanity). Even the Gay Bars have fled, a sure sign of urban renewal/removal.
It’s not my job to do anything about any of this. My job, as I saw it, at the beginning, in 1980, was to give face to a face that was not known and I have tried. As The Grid lays out its future in the city with two hearts, it’s clear to me that my mission isn’t to pick sides in land rights, power exchanges, or to watch -or judge- the inevitable blandification. But blandification has come. Oh happy day. Some loudly exhale and go, finally! The city is becoming presentable to visitors again. It’s cleaner. It’s newer. There’s baseball. Soccer is coming (watch out Chamizal! The final blow that started in the mid 1960s is finally here). There are restaurants with the preface Le with Foo Fo thing-a-ma-jig dishes with little portions of things that look like they squiggle -vegetables- on top of things it’d be hard to identify below. Fancy. Plates of Foo Foo. There are young people downtown again, well, the kind of young people that look like they’d also be comfortable up in Kern Place on Cincinnati and the upper Westside.
Finally, there’s a Starbucks downtown near the Plaza and the Westin. The kids from the ‘hood can serve the hipsters that come in from outer Zaragosa Road and beyond.
Boring? Not to everyone and I wish them the best. I am not part of this. I left this scene in three other places I lived before this very long stretch here. It’s the same message: you’re in the gentry or you’re equitied out of the gentry.
Halloween is The Great Day in El Segundo barrio. The ‘hood comes alive. People are pouring over the bridges heading from Juarez on the candy quest. People in the neighborhood put on the costumes and come out of invisibility. The first block of America (6th and El Paso) is a riot of laughing and color and wild abandon.
Nothing is sure on this border in this neighborhood anymore. “They” are back! The Developers. “The 180s” aren’t around on this day. The Developers, their Pol puppies, the Gov. employee “Good Germans,” even the The Do Gooders (even if they are really the Do Badders). That’s what I have come to call them all. They say something and if you want to find out what they just said just think 180 degrees opposite from what it was. Most of them are up in Kern Place handing out candy, their yearly contact with the rabble. They’re all afraid of the people when they have fun.
It’s getting the squeeze. The squeeze has been coming for a century or more but it’s a full assault now, and a generation that had roots in the ‘hood, that was born of a time and place that demanded they fight, is no longer there in numbers and possibly not there in energy and historic resentment.
The neighborhood is being squeezed from the north with the Dreamland Downtown Plan back on Premium and from within. A proposed Science museum in the old Armijo School would be the death blow.
If the deathblow can be delivered to an already dead corpse.
