Juarez harps(?), May 2008
There hasn’t been so much gunfire in Juarez since 1910. Since Jan.1, there have been over 230 drug war-related murders.
There was a time in Juarez -bourgeoise and ugly Americano, for sure, but what the hell- that it was just the old fashioned sins: getting drunk, dancing, straggling around with whatever “date,” that’d allow you to put your hands on her ( or whatever) and, if you survived, you crawled home over the bridge to El Paso and woke up late the next day.
I am told.
There are still remnants. Anyone tuned into the Juarez valley and its strange contra -Shangra La dilusions, feels a lot of remnants. It’s like a limb amputation: you feel the limb after its gone. Its nerves are still there.
People on this border remember the “good times (it’s all relative”.” They remember before it became totally militarized (1994?). They remember before people had been pushed out to the edges of town and across dangerous and swirling canals, to pass with the aid of a ruthless coyote’s hand, they even remember a time before that, when big green Suburban vans chased people through the streets of downtown El Paso. They remember a time when the developing maquila industry came to town, like a circus who’s main product was the disruption of a Tsunami. Fronterizos who came to the border, for work and a better life, remember being able to go out to the edge of town and land on a plot of unclaimed earth and by implicit invitation, build their homes, a time before the land was valuable and developers decided -retroactivley- that it was theirs. They remember when there was a time where most people thought of themselves as an “us,’ and not a “them.”
The border is a deep valley of hopes abandoned where memory lives in deep shadows and is more real than the endless exploitation that is and always was the border’s stock in trade.
They remember the musicos, the women, the white-coated waiters, the botas of wine, easy times, the tacky garbage of Juarez Avenue that was sold to ignorant and innocent gringos who really thought, somehow, that a bull’s horns -and other trinkets, somehow was a piece of Mexico’s culture.
Then there is the old blue doors. Harps I guess. An ancient door of an old building on Calle Lerdo. They’re from a time when the sound in the air was music, not bullets.
A Call To Arms:
Musicians! Artists! Unite and mobilize!
Come to La frontera.
Venga!
Make music again. Fill the air with music!
1 Comment
Where is a list of organizations a person can contribute to or work with? I grew up in the lower Rio Grande and the devastation of lives as a result of the drug business is awful. The dollars that used to come in from the tourists who did enjoy the border restaurants and sites are gone. The Mexicans who came across to buy a wide ranges of goods are afraid to.
Anyway, is there a list?