El Paso's 'Segundo Barrio' is more than just historical

El Paso historian Fred Morales displays some of the barrio's history March 12 during the special celebration day.

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO--A “cultural and historic treasure” for El Paso, as one promoter of this city's El Secundo Barrio neighborhood described it in the local paper, is getting new attention these days. Whether or not that will lead to another crown jewel for the city, or whether or not even being a crown jewel is good or bad for citizens of this neighborhood, wasn't much of a burning issue one special day this month.

For a city stalked by a horrible winter, the spring-like weather March 12 was all it took. It was good enough reason for more than 50 vendors and various health agencies in the city to come together on a Saturday for a special Celebrate Segundo Barrio Day—just to showcase the old neighborhood at its finest, and do some helpful health screenings for some folks at the same time. And the crowds came out. The special activities were centered in and around Lydia Patterson Institute at 517 S. Florence.

“We're happy to be able to do this,” said El Paso's resident historian Fred Morales, standing at a display table inside the institute he'd put together of items more or less whose composite told most of thebarrio's storied past. “El Paso is a proud city.”

And it has some excellent history to show, too. A history that's opening up more and more since a group of developers under Paso del Norte Group stirred things up several years ago by proposing an upscale development plan to the City Council. The group's plan was criticized because it not only failed to provide locals an opportunity to comment on it but also because it would have meant demolishing many of its buildings.

Morales said a development plan finally was approved by the city, but work on it hasn't started yet. He felt adversely it would “affect only a small portion” of the barrio, however. Not to mention whatever improvements it would bring. But True Grit would be an adequate gringo description of the nature of this barrio and the feelings of the people willing to fight to defend it. Indeed, those roots and feelings go deep.

This is a section of the city after all—at one time named by the City Council as the 2^nd Ward—that borders the Rio Grande where waves of Latino immigrants over the years first entered the United States. The famed Mexican General Pancho Villa also used it as a base to help fight the Mexican Revolution.

But strangely, El Segundo supporters have never been able to obtain either a state or national historical designation for the neighborhood. In one of the most recent efforts, a National Latino Congress resolution adopted at a session Jan. 31, 2010, in El Paso (and later presented to the City Council for action), failed in an effort to have the barrio recognized as the 3^rd leg of key immigration processing points into this country. Apparently it was an administrative slip-up somewhere for further submissions that halted it.

Ellis Island, well-known in New York City for Europeans, and San Francisco Bay's Angel Island for Asians, both already are on the national registry for their historical significance. El Paso's El Segundo Barrio being recognized as the gateway for immigrants coming in from Mexico should be equally acknowledged, the supporters of the resolution felt, because of the contributions those immigrants have made to improve America. A copy of the resolution can be found on page 5 of a site here.

The neighborhood could actually be called a far southwest slice of the sprawling downtown district, bounded by Paisano Street on the north, Cotton on the east, El Paso on the west, and Border Highway on the south. About 8,000 people currently live in it, enough for any demographer's map. And yes, apparently there is much planned for the old barrio.

A comprehensive, 5-yr. revitalization plan dated Feb. 9, 2010, was put together by the city after a series of neighborhood meetings and posted on the internet. It includes a wide array of ambitious programs--from expensive infrastructure improvements, such as water and sidewalks and health care facilities; to extensive community education programs for the youth (such as drug abuse and unwanted teen pregnancies); proposals for business development to bring in jobs; and the renovation of some existing housing coupled with the addition of other housing units to provide places for job-seekers to live.

Morales, who runs an insurance business out of his office, has put together several books on El Paso, including “El Segundo Barrio”—a compilation of text, sketches and photos tracing it's storied past back 177 years. That makes it among the oldest noteworthy neighborhoods not only in El Paso but in the United States as well.

Put together in binders, the book traces land grants; touches on the development of Smeltertown andbarrio churches, various businesses and families (with many accompanying photos); and even includes a photo of the fabled 4-story Toltec building, which Francisco (Pancho) Villa rented for business purposes during the Mexican Revolution to obtain and send munitions to his soldiers in Chihuahua.

Morales provided one lecture at the institute on this particular Saturday on El Segundo's history, as well as conducted a walking tour of the neighborhood for visitors, showing them some of the more interesting sights. The historian has written a total of 26 books on El Paso and Juarez.

Later in the month, March 12, Morales conducted a free tour of the Jewish section of the old Concordia Cemetery for interested parties. Congregation B'Nai Zion built the first synagogue in the neighborhood in 1912; Temple Mount Sinai, the first temple, was built in 1899. He can be reached thru El Paso Walking Tours.

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Minimalism Chronicles: Seeing Japan off to hell role of religion?



 By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

Although the noise level is definitely lower this time, what proclamations there've been of divine retribution or deserved justice coming from educated leaders in the wake of Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami still beg the curious and reoccurring question: How does God get blamed for natural disasters? And is continuing to point a finger at him not one of religion's biggest problems?

Maybe I rubbed shoulders with too many “flower children” or too many “to question is the answer” liberal philosophers over the course of my lifetime, but the doctrine of eternal damnation in a burning hell--vis a vis a crack in the earth's surface, especially--just doesn't fit in with the scheme of religion's role. I see it as being a source of divine goodness you would do well to attune yourself to.

The doctrine of an eternally burning hell, on the other hand...Hey, there's not anything in there about shutting down for water breaks? Shouldn't something like a U.N. ACLU step in to block the condemnation of all those innocent people? Including those from the recent Japan tragedy? I hate to differ with the very respectful theologians who are espousing this stuff, but I hate belittling personal common sense, too. Life is a carnival show?

Indeed, it seems more than a tad bid contradictory or incongruous to say on one hand that God is Love, and then on the other turn around and proclaim he's sent, or is sending, billions of tortured souls screaming in agony on a one-way trip to the bottomless pits of hell--simply because they didn't know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Yes, many people privately still believe this admittedly. But it's hard to reason. And when it becomes a public issue, such as with Japan, public comments are appropriate.

This is a difficult, incomprehensive doctrine. As one “modern”-day minister referred to it the other week, what if a missionary in some foreign Buddhist country had a flat tire on the way to explain Christianity to a family? And Judgment Day came? That ignorant family doesn't get a bypass token? Go figure, Jethro. Instead of a Can-Do God we've reduced God to a can't-do god. He can't catch those people, can he? Huh? Ka-boom!

To me such proclamations as innocents burning in hell has too much self-righteous, personal aggrandizement to it. But maybe I've got too much of that “other” religious school in me. If so, I learned my lessons the hard way—one bumbling, stupid, costly mistake after another. For sure that's how you learn to view things out of the box, or from a different perspective. Nevertheless, condemnations of hell continue, albeit fewer. Attribute that to bad habits being hard to break maybe—especially those that are self-serving.

Conversely, the decline in old-fashioned believers is causing a schism among the evangelical community, believe it or not. One leading minister, for instance, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is always a good read on traditional evangelical religious thought—admirably at just about any topic you want to throw at him—if you want to keep up with the genre, that is. He blogs on the issue of a real burning hell occasionally at AlbertMohler.com.

In January, looking at causes for the decline in today's believers, Dr. Mohler wrote “Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens.” (Ah, the usual whupping post--the liberalism of our culture. What would right-wing conservatives do without it?) Credit Mohler with knowing something about this country's history, however.

“The classic liberals of the early twentieth century, often known as modernists, pointed to a vast intellectual change in the society and asserted that Christianity would have to change or die.” Mohler wrote. “As historian William R Hutchison explains, 'The hallmark of modernism is the insistence that theology must adopt a sympathetic attitude toward secular culture and must consciously strive to come to terms with it.'”

“This coming to terms with secular culture is deeply rooted in the sense of intellectual liberation that began in the Enlightenment,” Dr. Mohler continued. “Protestant liberalism can be traced to European sources, but it arrived very early in America—far earlier than most of today's evangelicals are probably aware. Liberal theology held sway where Unitarianism dominated and in many parts beyond.

“Soon after the American Revolution...(t)heologians and preachers began to question the doctrines of orthodox Christianity, claiming that doctrines such as original sin, total depravity, divine sovereignty, and substitutionary atonement violated the moral senses. William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian, spoke for many in his generation when he described 'the shock given to my moral nature by the teachings of orthodox Christianity.'”

Dr. Mohler then traces the doctrine's revisions to such preachers as Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, whose “method is to point to salvation and the need 'to become positive thinkers'”; up to today's “emerging church” movements whereby “current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christians affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible's teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible.

“The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.” A good read he is, Dr. Mohler. Always. And a good pronouncer.

So go to him about two months later. Just before the Japan tragedy, he continued defending the inerrancy of scripture doctrine of the old school when he wrote “Doing Away with Hell? Part One,” and “Doing Away with Hell? Part Two.” Yes, hell is still real and folks do go there, he assured readers in the face of the growing disbelief in the subject..

In Part One, he wrote, “Our responsibility is to present the truth of the Christian faith with boldness, clarity, and courage...Hell is an assured reality, just as it is presented so clearly in the Bible. To run from this truth, to reduce the sting of sin and the threat of hell, is to pervert the Gospel and to feed on lies. Hell is not up for a vote or open for revision...”

In Part Two he wrote about the shift in the concept of salvation. “Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been re-conceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell.”

A few days later then the earthquake so large it actually moved the earth on its axis struck Japan. It set off a 23-ft. tsunami with the initial speed of a jumbo jet that raced inland for six miles. Rescue workers are still pulling bodies from the debris. To say nothing of the danger from damaged nuclear plants. Who else knows what the final outcome will be but God?

Dr. Mohler tiptoed through the fine Japanese tulip gardens in a graceful follow-up piece, but I'm guessing nevertheless ruffled some petals somewhere in calling for prayer not only for the present people of Japan but also for any future lives that can be saved—all because the nation isn't Christian. Knowing he had a position to take, again, he took it admirably; and left no doubt he was talking about eternal salvation from hell itself.

“...We must pray that this horrible disaster may be used to call the people of Japan to the Lord as their only hope and refuge. The nation is still shaped by its Shinto, Buddhist, and Animist roots...The true test for American Christians will be whether our commitment to the Gospel of Christ will lead to a renewed effort to reach...Japan with the message of Jesus Christ, the Solid Rock.,” he wrote.

Dr. Mohler is but one of a long line of religious figures who somehow can't resist the temptation to link God and damnation to natural disasters. Even Tokyo's mayor got in on this incident with a quip, although he quickly apologized for it. But CNN religion editor Dan Gilgoff, following it up, reiterated March 16 in “6 other calamities blamed on divine retribution,” that, indeed, “blaming human sinfulness for natural and man-made disasters is nothing new.”

He listed two other most recent tragedies, Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said Haiti's earthquake was due to the Haitians historical “pact with the devil,” for instance; while Texas evangelist John Hagee blamed New Orleans' disaster on “the level of sin (by the people in the city) that was offensive to God.”

Such rationalizing flies in the face of moral logic, I dare say. It is an affront to someone's credibility; and is one of the major reasons studies are showing major religions not only are in decline now but in some countries, if present trends continue, are actually facing extinction as well, you could add, too.

That latest prediction was made by a team of mathematicians in a paper released this past week in Dallas. In a CNN Belief Blog story, it was reported the researchers studied 100 years of census data, and released the findings at a meeting of the American Physical Society. One of the authors stated they started the study out of curiosity after doing a related study on the extinction of languages.

In other reporting on the meeting, Dan Margolis writing in peoplesworld.org in a story entitled “Scientists suggest reason for religion's decline,” stated the researchers found “the unaffiliated are the fastest growing religious minority in all 50 states of the U.S.”

Which, of course, truly is sad. And possibly why so many of our spiritual tanks are on empty. What are we without spiritual uplifting, after all? Or, as the great believer George Ripley figured once, recorded in American Transcendentalism Web, the true purpose of religion..

was the development and cultivation of the human personality in all of its divine fullness, and...was opposed to any creed or formula that stifled the free expression of these higher faculties in the individual. The "kingdom of God on earth," for Ripley, would only be known in all of its splendor when the goals of society and church were reconciled through the recognition of the divine in all of humanity, each being an agent of his or her own salvation, not by adherence to dry theological creeds, but by the cultivation of a morality based on the knowledge of God perceived inwardly and intuitively.

But if plutocracy—e.g., government by too-big-to-fail, wealthy corporations--continues shrinking the middle class (along with, too, people's individual human rights) thru social minimalism, what else can you expect? But to have God minimalized also.

Is He truly behind some cosmic, eternally burning pits somewhere? With no exit sign on 'em?

Again, go figure, Jethro.

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Minimalism Chronicles: Why won't you look at me?!

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO—You'd thought from glimpsing her face behind the wheel of her automobile she was among this group in the news now that thinks doomsday is May 21, and was hellbent on wrapping up loose ends before going over yonder. If she was a lit fuse to a time bomb, the frozen, stoic ashes of social minimalism followed her down the highway.

No time to waste! her face clearly said, as she approached from the opposite direction, and zipped by me in passing. We were on North Zaragoza Road at a traffic light intersection, maybe a half-mile from the school where I go to pick up my daughter Kareli every afternoon. Two ships passing in the mid-afternoon—one without even acknowledging the others existence; oblivious to her surroundings.

Furrows on her forehead were clearly visible; both hands appeared to be clutching the steering wheel tight; and her eyes, those dark, worried(?), fawn eyes, fixed millions of miles off somewhere it appeared but, too, straight ahead down the highway of course—two dark-colored, small, saucer-like spaceships hurrying by without even noticing that someone else was there on that spot also.

An insulted voice inside me wanted to yell at her, Hey you! Down the highway! You occupy this great big planet with at least one other person, 'ya know!!?

Why couldn't she have done the courtesy of at least acknowledging with a simple, brief glance, that another human being on this same day and time, for a second at least, was on the same patch of earth that she was on, separated by just a few passing feet of pavement and the exteriors of two automobiles? Huh? Are we that irrelevant to each other now? Except within our close inner mingling circles?

Has corpocracy's radical capitalism's spinoff, social minimalism, reduced most people's focus in life to only those persons “who can do something” for them? And if you're not in that close-knit circle, go take a hike!? Buzz off! There simply is no time for you? That's the way cards are being played now? Really?

I don't even exist!!? Is that what she was telling me!?

Ever since publishing Minimalism: Does God Need More Assistants? (Xlibris Press) in early '08, a small book describing some of our social ills then (that, it turned out, portended America's economic collapse a few months later), I've found myself pausing in moments like this—the irrelevancies we foolishly pretend to be to each other—to question where we got it all wrong in our global political development model back there.

By we, I mean the United States, for decades acknowledged worldwide as the leader of the Free World and the designers of the future. As that May 21 doomsday group is now saying, did we really plant these greedy, apathetic seeds of ignoring each other—unknowingly while riveted on staking out our own identities? And have moved even more downstream now, to what some whackos say, to being locked in on a futuristic collision course to self-destruct in Armageddon? Huh?

That's not the way the schools taught it! In a political science graduate school class once the professor I remember laid out his own model for the progression of Western man. Sterling silver performance, it was. Starting with early, prehistoric men and women as hunters and foragers; to the transition from small wandering groups into migrating tribes; progressing on to finding stability as farmers, to communities and cities solidifying into city states and then provinces.

Each development stage had its own behavior traits, of course, the way people acted in them. (Oh, how we uppity ones loved to spot society's provincials!) Finally the model advanced to the Nation State and to further neutralizing differences and coalescing a nation's energy thru the Welfare State; and further into the Post Welfare State; and on finally to what “we the U.S.” were in, or in the process of becoming—a Super State.

There was a clear ascension marked, a life journey for a people to make, and a focus to keep. Goodness would be swelling inside the end product, of course, sealed inside by the liberal ethos—the biblical benevolence impulse that's latent in every human being, resurrected when freed of outside worries and survival contrivances. Oh, the glorious time that'll be! Living in the Super State, it was to be. Heaven on Earth!

But did Poke Salad Annie serve up sumpthin' to us good 'ol folks that hadn't been boiled good yet? I now wonder at times. Something happened, for sure; we never got there to that place.

Say, after the Berlin Wall came down (during those years maybe), whatever swept over the world sure left us increasingly divisive. Fighting each other. Our diverse immigrant-made country was supposed to be a Melting Pot, not a fractious Crock Pot, mates!

If that period marked the beginning of our noticeable decline (or rather, if you want to argue, not our falling from grace but simply one of other countries catching up to us), then look at the figures now.

We're # 1, of course, in our total debt to other countries. That's a given. CNN's global public square website moved the story March 4 from a Swiss institution showing the U.S. has slipped in many other areas as well—i.e., to being the 4^th most competitive country in the world; only the 5^th best place to run a company (thanks to union wages and unending regulations); 23^rd in infrastructure; 41^st in infant mortality; and 49^th in life expectancy. And yet we have the world's largest economy! Moving toward becoming a Super State, it is?!! Hardly.

Among the latest theories is that we've moved now toward breaking apart into separate, power centers—regional super states, if you will—where cultural similarities are more important in driving trade than the design of the national flag mounted outside of buildings; and thus have become the common overriding values that define its regional citizens as well. Think of such trade centers as Hong Kong and Southern China; or the 17 “autonomous communities” of Spain. And you might even tag such hot international trade spots as San Diego-Tijuana/El Paso-Juarez for such future designations also.

This ground-moving change is emerging in the wake of—and perhaps as a result of--what some political scientists are calling the actual demise of the so-called Nation State era now, where the U.S. was the big name for so long, but is beginning to appear more and more in other countries' rear-view mirrors now.

Kenichi Ohmae, for instance, respected author of The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies a few years back, states boldly that what the future holds most "is not really which party or policy agenda dominates...Nor is it the number of new, independent units into which that old center, which has held through the upheavals of industrialization and the agonies of two world wars, is likely to decompose (into)...Nor is it the cultural fault lines along which it is likely to fragment.

"...What we are witnessing is the cumulative effect of fundamental changes in the currents of economic activity around the globe. So powerful have these currents become that they have carved out entirely new channels for themselves--channels that owe nothing to the lines of demarcation on traditional political maps. Put simply, in terms of real flows of economic activity, nation states have already lost their role as meaningful units of participation in the global economy of today's borderless world."

And, yes, you betcha, I have a problem with such autonomous channel arrangements. Where do social values fit in? Is free thought, expression, allowed in such arrangements? Or is communication scripted? Is this the doorstep to the age of the automatons? That classy looking young woman who passed this ol' slow country boy on the highway the other day, without even a glimpse sideways, ...Was she already IN one of those states? Then what's the criteria for my having been left out? Was the decision democratic?

Robots don't cry, do they? In one of these introspection spells like this, I often think of my late uncle, A. J. Casey. He was a big, tough career Marine. When at a ball park during the national anthem—or gosh, even when sometimes passing a school during a flag-raising—Uncle A. J. would pop to attention to honor the U.S. flag. He fought for that! His heart was wrapped in it. And then he'd cry.

The classy woman in the sporty car, however, would never've noticed. Not even the flag. Tick-tock...

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