On The Edge of the Edge – The U.S. – Mexico Border
Flags are down in Parque Chamizal. Wind must be up and hopefully a little rain. Just a whisper of a season change. Not yet. But not all that far off either. ‘ta bien. The View South. Days come and go. Then years. Then decades. Then…? I turned my back on the past a long time ago. People tell me that’s good. Bible says it too. Do they really mean it?
VIDEO
by Shiho Fukada:
The river with two names: Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte. Depends where you begin and where you end and where you return to. These women are heading north. It was a long time ago. Everything has changed and nothing has changed and I suspect it will continue to change and not change forever.
The river with two names, the R2, is also the place of the personality with two halves.
Confusing, no?
It is the place of bifurcation. But even that has two sides: twice as much insight.
Where are these women now? Which side happened to them? What happened to me? What happened to Juárez and the U.S.?
What happened to me?
I know this: people will cross going north no matter what and no matter the year. People will cross less, going south, depending on the year.
The river will flow south from Colorado (a Spanish name) to the Gulf of Mexico (an English language name).
And none of it matters to anyone living here except that one government makes it hard for another people to do what they have done for thousands of years and another government makes it necessary.
Who’s confused and who’s doing the confusing?
Editor’s Note: This is an amazing project. In the era when people worry about the demise and/or future of journalism, when academics question the effectiveness of journalism in a 24/7 news cycle world, there is JR, who is producing and promoting another form of photojournalism and not only bringing his subjects into the communication process, he is bringing the work done on the subjects back to their environments. Check it out:
About JR the artist:
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.
See the video:
[flagallery gid=8 name=”Gallery”]
From the movie The Border:
Marcy (Valerie Perrine) : (Showing her Border Patrol husband brochures about El Paso, trying to talk him into moving there, at their breakfast table, in Los Angeles) Honey sometimes you gotta dream.
Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) : (Pausing, furrowing his now signature brow) I never dreamed no El Paso.
Snow!
A rarity in this no-mans-land.
Hardship. No one is ready for it. Not man nor beast nor domicile. The aftermath will be unnavigable mud on some of the streets in Juarez: there’s always a fire from people using heaters they’re not used to using; tons of $14.95 coats will be sold on El Paso Street and Stanton Street and the various Fallas Paredes tiendas all over town; car crashes aplenty; you can bet on it. The homeless freeze. Rich people buy juniper logs for five bucks apiece to have their moment of apres ski. Everyone will adapt eventually, but by then we’ll be back in T-shirts and shorts; my loft turns to a freezer; life is anew. This is a place of the sun, not really set up for anything else.
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.
Wary eyes.
Everyone’s wary, in El Paso/Juarez, these days. The border is at war, with itself, with it’s two yin/yang sides, with the Interiors of each of the two sides.
Everyone’s wondering where it’ll end, where they will fall on the have and have not scale, what’ll be left of this little rough Shangri La (not a Shangri La of paradise but a refuge for those who have fallen from paradise. Sort of a suburb of Shangri La).
The Juarez Indios are a professional futbol team(soccer). They are in the middle of the Cartel Drug War. Much of the city of Juarez has rallied around the Indios, finding some “normalacy,” in the middle of the troubled Juarez violencia. Julio Daniel “Maleno” Frias is a star of the team, a “striker,” a troubled city’s hero. The city loves him, he’s a hero in the middle of bad news caused by rats. When “Maleno,” was younger he joined a gang. He got shot. He decided to change his life and he did. Maybe this is why the city fell in love with him, he’s a living metaphor for a city’s hopes. Maybe they just like the way he plays: smooth, quiet and intense.
Some players have left the team and others have sent their families back to the cities they came from (some in Mexico, one in Argentina), trying to avoid the touch of violence that has afflicted Juarez, Mexico’s third largest city.
The team is struggling to stay in the top tier of Mexico’s professional soccer league.
Attendance is sold out.
Futbol is trumping the war.
So far.
Life goes on.
Yesterday I worked with an incredible journalist from Der Spiegel (the German equivalent of Time). She is German, from the north of Germany. Works out of the DC Bureau. Sharp and smart and witty and ironic and puro journalist. We did a story at Fort Bliss. She was bright and lively and brave and charming and funny and we’d had a successful day and did a great story together. She wanted to see “El Paso.”
So we head for the border (I’m a one trick pony. To me, the border is El Paso).
You start to wonder if it’ll ever end but it will end.
La violencia. The violence.
Life goes on.
Mexico is a great pueblo. So is El Paso and southern New Mexico.
One reads the newspapers and one thinks the world has gone insane. Particularly here, on the border.
Alameda Street is about (what’s this “about,” stuff?) to get stomped. Progress. New Hospital and Medical School down the Street. Progress.
‘ta bien, really. Time to move on. One thing about Urban Renewal and Plans: we have had the best of it and now you can have the rest. The next “blight,” that I move to -older and wiser now- there will be no Forwarding Address.
Venga Santa….come on!
If ever there was a place (other than certain parts of Africa right now) that need some kind of Devine Intervention, this is it.
Come on Santa! Forget the regalos. Paz, baby. Bring on the Peace.
If there is a Santa, bring on the Peace.
First block of America (FBA).
El Paso Street. La Frontera. I’d call it Texas but it ain’t. Everyone knows it if they’re from here. Texans hold their arms out, full length. Americans think it’s part of Mexico…or hell. New Mexicans…furgidaboutit! It’s all they have to really feel superior to.
El Paso, the nation-state of nowhere.
Carlos is his name.
I don’t know…what…maybe 10 or 11?
No doubt, though, he is the leader of his pack.
I am supposed to be packing right now. I have a job in another city. It starts in three weeks. I won’t be leaving. This corner, this light, these people, their shadows, have inveighed my life for an adulthood…a long time.
Why do I ever leave my loft?
Went to the gym where a friend of over three years, a retired professor at the local university, someone who has never displayed anything but kindness and goodwill, out of the clear blue, no warning, told me “…the Jews got what they deserved after all the stuff they did as bankers in Germany, don’t you think?”
Wha-a-a-a-a-a?!
SEE VIDEO: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player?titleID=1372185572
Borders. North and south. Mexico is a yin yang of the first order.
See what’s going on on the southern border and get some insights into what’s going on on the northern one.
Article by the always interesting and powerful Charles Bowden with cut-to-the-bone humane photographs by superb Magnum shooter, Alex Webb.
Assume nothing.
I asked this man, in Espanol, if I could photograph him and his Chihuahua (part of a series I’ve been doing for a long time).
“I don’t speak Spanish,” he countered.
Why would I think he was Spanish-speaking?
Photo and story by Julian Cardona
March 31, 2008
About 50 Juárez police officers protested what they consider the arbitrary arrests of fellow officers by the recently arrived Mexican army in ciudad Juarez. They were protesting the alleged framing of numerous officers on charges of drug possession.
Miguel.
Another border encounter.
He’s a savior for me on this day.
James Barraza prowls the Segundo barrio with his Bible and attempts to spread “the good word.”