The Plaza of Stooges

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. 

The Plaza-whatever name you want to give it, go ahead, it seems anyone can name it whatever they want- has been under “revitalization” for the past two years and Looking through the sloppy construction fence barrier hiding this undoubtedly lame fiasco, it is clear the old Plaza is to become an atrocity of the first order. The park has been buffed and contoured into a textureless  blandness, its patina erased as surely has been the old heart of El Paso’s historic downtown. This is fitting because downtown’s heart was removed almost a decade ago as the city self-appointed fathers and their gullible arts-leaning useful stooges tinkered with the downtown, trying to make it more into their own likeness: self important, gray and clean. El Paso’s charm has always relied on its lack of pretension, its common man population and its desire to spit in the eye of anyone who would have it be otherwise. When the Plaza was crossroads for the city’s buses -they took those out several years  ago- one could see the real people of this city as they waited for their rides. The real people did not look like the self appointed fathers and their dreams of a yuppified urban professional  wasteland that would bring bars, restaurants and loft apartments to landlords who have had empty building for decades.

The buses were rerouted to an area on the edge of downtown, and, in the words of one well known south side resident and writer, it was   “de-Mexicanized.”

Indeed, this new plaza is will be the shining new jewel of the  “It” hip and affluent who think El Paso’s downtown is going to rise again and be a shining hub of commerce and culture that it was in the hazy past  days of Anglo supremacy dating back to the coming of the railroads in the mid 1880s and inevitably ending in the 1970s.

We shall see.

Of course, like so many other El Paso wannabe maneuvers -now we know what pipe dreams mean-  of the last forty years, the city’s movers and shakers may have just created their most successful and robust venture in years: a ghost town of the first order, but one that rises for an occasional Baseball game and/or a performance by elite River Dance at the nearby renovated Plaza Theater.

What will be the final name of this Plaza? Let me make my contribution and designate it as the Plaza de Stooges.

Good luck El Paso. as usual you tried too hard and denied who and what you really are which is a shame because what El Paso is is a economically low income town full of people who don’t really mind it being that way, at all. Low income does not equate to stupid though. In fact, the other 680,000 people of El Paso who don’t like baseball or Celtic music aren’t as dumb as the Stooges think they are: In the end, the shiny stuff will be paid for by the city taxpayers and used for the 2000-3000 elitists that show up for Art Museum , baseball and/or Plaza Theater events. Property taxes are rising, the perfect ending to the same pipe dreams as Detroit, Stockton, San Bernardino, Harrisburg, and Boise County had. Unfortunately, the same pattern of urban removal that has savaged these other cities is now a looming El Paso probability.

The “Whiz Kids” weren’t as smart as they thought they were (are they ever?), and the smart ones have already gone outward for better opportunities or got themselves elected to cushy political perches where the ultra incompetent always land.

What can you do? The more things change the more they are what they are.