El Paso’s Los Banditos immigration fence upgrade more prominent due to its link to Mexico’s rich cultural history

National Guard members along with private contractors erect this 18-ft. steel mesh, immigration border security fence in 2007 near the San Isidro/Tijuana crossing in California. A similar fence is to be constructed at the historic 6/10 mi.-Los Bandidos stretch in El Paso where famed conquistador Dn Juan de Onate once forded the Rio Grande and claimed North America from that point north part of the Spanish empire. (photo from time.com We Will Build a Wall gallery)

By A. Daniel Bodine

EL PASO--This is another no-brainer as for as being a worthwhile project, politically, for it’s coming at a sensitive time in immigration policy. Keep those boogers out! tea partiers scream on every corner of the land to U.S. Immigration policy makers.

But there’s more than a tad bit of history, too, involved in where this section of border fence due for an upgrade is located--one that even connects an original, large slice of North American ownership.

Strangely, the silence on the topic is deafening. Should supporters be surprised if they hear a few resurrected words of a stolen Mexican history before this project is crowned? Maybe a request for at least one last toast?

A short stretch of the old border road fence along the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico--located west of downtown somewhere off the old Paisano Road; near the old Fort Bliss--is due for an upgrade, folks, U.S. Border Patrol officials said last Thursday, Sept. 22, at a public meeting at a downtown Holiday Inn Express.

The meeting was called to discuss the upgrade’s environmental impact, a small measure needed for funding requirements.

Congresses in both President Obama’s administration and in that of former President Bush have authorized billions of dollars in border security improvements. This is one of them.

The short, 3,326-ft. stretch--which now has a simple 7-ft. chain-link fence covering it--is the only such gap in El Paso’s complete immigration security fence line that isn’t 18-ft. steel mesh. How the best became the last (to be addressed) no doubt will be the topic of discussion for years to come. Call it defense-spending bureaucratic lotto, perhaps.


Most recently, this was a formerly darkened stretch along old Paisano where los banditos from Mexico for years would sneak across the shallow river at night; and, using “boulders, boards with protruding nails and even (once) an old sofa,” stop traffic and rob passing motorists, according to a 9-23-11 El Paso Times story.

In 1995 it happened 30 times. Before the 7-ft fence was put up police even used decoy stings and masked undercover operations to combat the problems.

More specifically, the stretch lies behind the old fort in the vicinity of the former La Hacienda restaurant.

But the real sore point, no doubt, to many Mexicans, is one about their heritage, and how with the quiet publicity essentially their past has been minimalized in this project.

We don’t even get a statue, or an historical plaque, in this project? Just covered up as a people, covered up? Jeesh!

Readers, this is where the famous Conquistador Don Juan de Onate (having been ordered by King Philip II to colonize the northern frontier of New Spain to spread Roman Catholicism and establish new missions) crossed the Rio Grande in late April, 1598, to begin his journey--and once on dry land officially claimed all the new territory northward beyond the river as new acquisitions for Spain.

Onate’s expedition then followed the river northward and eventually founded the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico; he became, in fact, the Santa Fe province’s first governor.

And the land was Spain’s. Which, with the Mexican Revolution later--were it not for a few “minor technicalities” [hee, hee]--would be Mexico’s now.

Whooeee! You wanna dogfight!!? Locally, indeed, it’s a touchy subject. Caught in the crosshairs of escalating drug violence in Juarez now and the dire need for continual economic development in the Upper Rio Grande Borderplex as a whole (which Juarez with its slue of maquilas represents a core part), officials in both Juarez and El Paso are holding their breath, biding their time no doubt, until this is up and over with.

Get it built without ruffling any feathers anywhere! is the tense, unspoken message.

And against this escalated background of tension, expect, too, more PR rhetoric from both chambers of commerce painting the area as an ideal business climate--just full of neighborly love.

Fence construction starts next Spring.

Buena suerte, amigos!

-- 30 --

Debating whether “men are finished” is a dying era's passing fancy

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

Pardon me for not being so excited, but I just have the feeling this ol' debate topic has been around for awhile, distinguished in many different versions of financial greenery always. That this one was billed as “Oxford-style live” doesn't win any extra points either.

So don't expect me to check today's headlines to see who won last night's skirmish at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on whether men are finished in the face of the new economy exploding across the world now—an economy that does, indeed, appear to favor women. For whatever the reasons.

“Men Are Finished,” shouted a headline in a Sept. 9 edition of the online magazine, Slate, announcing the debate. “Women now earn the majority of college degrees. Men play video games. Women thrive in information-age jobs. Men go to prison. Women hold families together. Men watch football.”

As a people, no to this one-upmanship, should be our message. For we've been there and done that gig before, with pain often; and shame on the promoters for this.

With the nation staring at unemployment rates and housing woes portending another Great Depression, this is no time for either side of this perennial, old debate topic to be rubbing salt into sore wounds.

The debate was to've been between ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams and Hanna Rosin, award-winning journalist for Slate and the Atlantic Magazine, arguing for the motion, that yes, “Men are finished”; and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers and Men's Health Magazine editor-in-chief David Zinezenko, arguing against it.

Why the topic was recycled at this time is a wild guess. The debate was one of a series called Intelligence 2 (as in the index, Squared) sponsored by a New York City group, which earlier in Slate said beginning in 2006 they'd hoped “to provide a new forum for intelligent discussion” by promoting dialogues on contentious subjects. Supposedly they've put on 50 such debates now on various topics.

Thus an intelligent discussion last night, given the subject, I'm sure it was. But the sincerity in advance of it sure seemed hallow, however.

“Ladies, give yourself a night off from your second job as an astronaut or neurosurgeon,” the ticket-selling promo stated. “Men, take a break from your fantasy football league to see if you can save yourself.”

I can see corpocracy's minions laughing with their champagne glasses while sampling onion-dip finger foods at the affair, but friends, 'tis not the time for those kind of words, not to most of us.

Working people are working people, whether it's those left behind on jobs to do the extra work for those whose positions have been eliminated in these difficult times; or those in the growing ranks of the unemployed frustrated and beaten down because they've unsuccessfully sought employment for a year or more now.

“Men are finished” now, they're told? Go crawl off somewhere and die, you slimebag is the new message to propel us as a human race into this new age?

Opposite this, indeed, there's little on the horizon to indicate the economic picture will get brighter in the next year or so, especially with a lock-jawed Congress, apparently.

I've followed, sometimes humorously, a website called “Economic Collapse” for two years or so now. But as this economy worsens, readers of such doomsayers naturally start wondering: These guys are economic experts. Maybe things are this bad?

How are such messages going to help? Here's from the site's today's post:

“The number of good jobs continues to decline, more stores are closing, incomes continue to go down, credit card debt and student loan debt are soaring, the housing market resembles a corpse, the number of Americans living in poverty continues to rise and government debt is at unprecedented levels. We are losing blood fast, and almost all of our leaders are either too corrupt or too incompetent to be able to do anything about it.”

Is this really the time then to giggle that men are finished?

I remember a similar time in this men vs. women debate. When Vietnam looked as though it would be the loss it would turn out to be. Fresh out of the Navy, I was a student at the old North Texas State University in Denton in '72, I think; and a paper came out with a story about men in panty hose and high heels in a cocktail bar serving the new, dominant clientele—high-finance, professional businesswomen. And I remember how squeamish I felt about the story. The future, supposedly.

But decades later millions of men and women around the globe still find happiness and contentment in family relationships with each other. Billie Jean King in tennis and Ed “Too Tall” Jones for the Dallas Cowboys both have come and gone, and in their wake there's slowly been a growing acceptance of people “of difference” in society; and, too, most admirably, a swelling, vertical integration of women in virtually every profession from banking and finance to health.

What's with all this stuff today? Corporate bigwigs and such (who yes, naturally have good financial reasons to smile) creating “intelligent discussions” by arguing that because the economy is changing (perhaps to reflect the introduction of so many different new factors into it), “men are finished?”

And that's not dumb? Whose mea culpa is that? And whose responsibility is it to rise above it?

One thing's obvious to this ol' country boy. You don't kick people when they're down. Kick 'em when they're up yelling at you; kick 'em when they're taking something from you. But not when they're flat on their back. That'll follow 'ya to the bowels of hell itself.

Excluding the fact the issue itself is rather passe to start with. So, just entertainment?

This was a stupid debate.

– 30 --

PEACE, YA'LL: This Aztec calendar mounted in El Paso's Myrtle Stret park perhaps is sending out a message to visitors burdened with today's hectic lifestyles. Slow down; follow the sun. And take Life a little easier.



By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO—Not often one has the opportunity these days to praise a local environment and the people who've made it that way, so you sure want to take advantage of it when you see it. And for the City of El Paso, this is one of those times indeed.

Last year most know the city was ranked the Safest City in America, despite what's happening across the river in Juarez, MX. A statistical anomaly perhaps? If you live here, you know it's not. But now, try on Newsweek/Daily Beast ranking it the Can-Do capital of the nation. Care to say, Well, shut my mouth! in Spanish?!

I caught on to the fact something, indeed, out of the ordinary was happening in El Paso over the years while living downstream in Presidio, and attending the annual municipal court schools held here needed for a city's re-certification of its court system. Just a certain upbeat spirit in the air, you know? These folks are getting city planning down to an exact science.

One of the things that piqued my interest particularly was stories I kept hearing about a desalinization plant. Now most folks know in Texas whiskey is for drankin' and water is for fighting over. Plain and simple. Eons ago this ol' land was covered in oceans; millions of acreage feet of salt water below the crust today is living testimony to it. But now this is desert, man! You can't drink that brackish stuff! Git real!

But here they're doing it. When we moved over here last year Noemi and I saw the rather large desalinization water plant located on federal property off of Montana Avenue, part of Fort Bliss land. Whoo!

Then this week, with Texas in the grips of perhaps its worst drought ever and the Statesman reporting neighbors in Austin actually tellin' on each other if someone violates the no-watering ban (Who'd ever thunk of that!), lo and behold the Texas Tribune runs a story about soon-to-be bone-dry Odessa folks getting with El Paso officials this past summer to copy its desalinization work. That's worthy of drinking a toast to, yes!

And to top that then today, yep, here comes the story in the El Paso Times about Newsweek putting the city on top of its ranking of “Can-Do Capitals” in the U.S., based on such factors as sustainability, livability, transportation and infrastructure, and business development.

Did those judges have to consider yaahoos behind the wheel darting and wheeling in and out of nightmarish traffic at 4 p.m. each day on I-10? Huh?

Never mind, we got a loop thru the mountains that fixin' to take care of that, Jethro! Hush your mouth!

And there's sure nothing in the cards that says El Paso someday could become the culturally sophisticated, philosophical idea capital of the universe that Dallas has always meant to me, of course.

But hey, you can't have your cake and eat it, too, right? El Paso is trendy hot now! Get over it! Chase that dog back across the street and toot some about this. Whoop, whoop!

We always enjoy hearing from readers. Leave some comments beneath the story or write Dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.

– 30 --

Dime's worth of gas won't take you home no more

  These two sentinels of a bygone era were seen in a quaint New England town. (Wikimedia photo)

                                                             By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

While on the way to drop off the daughter's laptop at the computer store for repair Tuesday I stopped at a neighborhood convenience store for gasoline. With the new pumps now you just activate them with a debit card, pump your gas, then wait on the receipt. In Life's fast lane, it's called minimum human contact. El Jif.fy-o! But to us as a people, gaining it has been costly. We've lost something dearly in social glue along the way, I'd dare venture.

Now this particular pump must've been fresh out of paper; it didn't spit out a receipt. So I had to go inside and actually make face-to-face contact with a cashier to get one. No. 12, I told her. Forty dollars worth is what I usually get when running low. It's somewhat of a habit. (Another story) Took the receipt and left without saying anything else to anyone. Not even an eye contact.

When I got back into the pickup and turned the key on, naturally I wanted to see how far I'd moved the needle. Pumping gasoline and playing football in Life use to be a lot alike--the point was not necessarily to hit pay dirt on the next play but to “move the chains”; advance the 1^st and 10 marker. Breath easier with a new set of downs. Stopping for gas meant first and 10 and Yippee-aye yaye. Yippee-i-ooo... And maybe in that regard it still does.

Bu soon as I saw the needle stop just short of three-fourths of a tank mark though I quickly did a little double-take, and grabbed the receipt I'd tossed on the dashboard to read the number of gallons on it. Like most of us retired baby boomers now, indeed I live with one leg stuck in the past and another one squishing in the present. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't get easier.

Holy shit! I muttered. Only 11 ½ gallons!

And that, of course, brought back childhood memories of growing up in Cleburne, TX, in the 1950s during “gas wars” and listening to Marshall Edwards at Edwards' Texaco on North Main Street tell some of his wonderful stories.

Gosh I miss those ol' original convenience stores sometimes. Go in to a neighborhood store for a howdee-you-do, to catch up on the gossip, and to buy staples for the pantry. Gas was optional. And all of it only cost a signature on a ticket. Dad would be in in a week or so later to settle the difference.

In the mid-50s at one time I remember gasoline was 14.9 cents at Marshall's Texaco store in Cleburne. Clearly, clearly, not the stress we live under today.

One of the stories he told my parents once was something that happened not at his store but at a fellow dealer's service station over on East Henderson. I want to say the one that use to be on the corner of Brazos there that always stayed open 'til 11or so. That's where the high school boys would often get their gas after coming out from the Esquire Theater, and before going parking.

This particular older man guided his car in “on fumes,” of course, Marshall relayed, and asked for a dime's worth of gasoline. The attendant had never sold 10 cents of gasoline to anyone before. But he quickly hit the pump trigger a couple-three times to get 10 cents, replaced the gas cap and went to the driver's window to get the money.

“Dime's worth of gas ain't going to get you very far, you know that mister!” he said, paraphrasing of course.

The old man in the car smiled up at him with the prettiest row of white teeth and said, “No, but it'll get me home, son. That's all I want.”

As always we enjoy comments from readers. Log in at right or contact Dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.

– 30 --

Hee, hee. Happy Labor Day, America!!!

--from my good friends at OtherWords.org:

Jack Black 'Honey' a honey of a deal!

Me? What makes you think I could be an alcoholic?

A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO—Hee, hee. I couldn't help but laugh Thursday when the Times here carried a business story about how everybody's favorite whiskey, Jack Daniels, is clanking the cash registers with sales of its new honey-flavored brew. My brain simply exploded. Oh, honey, po-leeze let me have some Jack Black Sweet!

“Jack Black”-and-water (or cola) is to alcoholics what the finest snorting cocaine on the market is to Oscar de la Hoya—a terrible bout to be reckoned with! “Pobre sito!” And now they're putting honey in it!?

The famed boxer's “Coming Out” this week especially about all his drug problems over the years (all the Spanish TV stations) had my wife with her crying towel. You don't understand the 12-step program, I told her. He's getting it out; doing what he's gotta do. To stay alive!

That alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease beyond medical technocrats' finest spins is still incomprehensible to many. De la Hoya was straight up though; he'd been to the other side of the mountain and scraped with the demons. He knew the tenacity of it.

Next week, Tuesday, will mark 19 years of sobriety for this ol' yaahoo here. Like all of us other AAers there was a time when I easily would've laughed at you--Told you it's impossible!—to think someone could go that long without getting drunk. But thanks to the program and those who work it, however, I can now go down the road a ways and come back. Safely. And proudly.

A friend in Presidio invaluable to me my first few years or so was someone I'll call Domingo. Invaluable to me my first year particularly. When I often was having to play a straight-faced role as judge to some wild-faced, angry drunkard on one hand; knowing in ways I was just another drunk like him on the other.

I was maybe 8-9 months into sobriety at one point once I remember, struggling, and facing my first out-of-town trip for the weekend. After a Thursday evening meeting Domingo spoke to me aside. And reminded me just what the program was all about. In doing so he possibly saved my life. Or at the very least, saved me from many more years of agonizing drinking.

“You're going to want to drink when you get to El Paso,” he said. “It's probably going to hit you Big Time. Whenever it does, wherever you are, just remember this: Tell yourself, OK, I'll drink.

“It's that simple. Give yourself permission to drink...But make it later. Has to be later. FIRST, tell yourself, We've got to make an A.A. contact first. That's all there is to say: After we make an A.A. contact!

“Then, after you say that, get to a phone. Call somebody! Me, someone else here, an AA chapter there in El Paso (there are many of them), just make that call!”

It's a four-hour drive from Presidio to El Paso, and another four hours back. As people get older, those drives wear you out. I had a doctor's appointment sometime midday Friday at the Veterans' Hospital. Dreading the long drive back, I checked into a motel room. Had decided I'd stay and relax thru Saturday, and go back to Presidio Sunday sometimes early after noon, say. That was checkout time.

Had plenty of reading material with me, besides the daily newspapers; a good TV in the room; nice restaurant next door. What more could you ask for to unwind a bit, huh? Would be quiet. Away from the phone ringing and the deputies asking me to come to the office.

Aw...But there was one thing more I needed. After coming back from the V.A., I noticed it. I'd forgotten to bring enough cigars in my shirt pocket for the extra two days. Holy cow! How could I have forgotten something that important, huh?

I wasn't about to get comfortable in the room before I solved the smoke problem, so I went out for a few minutes. This was along five or 5:15 in the afternoon. About a block from the motel there on Montana Avenue was a convenience store. I'd noticed it earlier. It would have cigars. I walked to it.

When I entered, the counter was immediately on my left, maybe running half of the west wall. Some soda fountains and such picked up after that and took up the space back on to the corner, the northwest corner, where the floor-to-ceiling glass freezers on the back began.

With vertical, glass doors on them, the freezers (full of mostly drinks) then swept all the way eastward across the back wall to the northeast corner; and then back up the east wall to the front. I'd noticed it all with a quick glance while entering. All of that was just periphery stuff, on my right. I hardly even paid any attention to it.

I saw the cigars behind the counter. Had a box of my old standby's, El Producto, and I bought a handful. As I was taking my change, putting my wallet back into my pocket, I'd ever-so-slightly turned my body in a clockwise motion, toward the right; and the person behind thus eased up to the counter beside me on the left, to be waited on next.

But as I continued moving slightly in this partial, clockwise pattern, I suddenly froze. My first step out of it had placed me directly in the line of fire of a gillion cases of the most sparkling, inviting beer only God himself could ever have created; and placed them there especially for me, He did. Sweet it was, of him. And yep; that was my moment. Big Time.

Never could I recall later how long I actually stood staring at that wall of beer in the glass cases, but I doubt it was more than 2-3 seconds. I must have lunged after that. Toward the beer garden.

My next consciousness, or awareness, was this thumping movement on my right shoulder. It'd been feint for the longest time, it seemed, in whatever deep hole of thought I'd stepped off into; and gradually had grown harder; and I was becoming more aware of it.

Until it wasn't a thumping movement at all but a tap, an increasingly sharp tapping movement. Someone behind me was tapping me hard on the shoulder!

All of my energy—ALL of my energy, my focus—was being spent attempting to pull one of those damn glass doors with the big icebox handles on them from the wall, off its hinges!

That was the scene as I slowly slipped back into awareness: My standing there confronting that wretched door, with my hands gripped hard and fast on each side, actually attempting to pull the hinges out. I wanted (no, needed) that door removed from my path that bad! It was blocking me from the beer!

And the guy behind me was angry. Whack, whack, whack on my right shoulder. Whatever brand of beer that was behind that door he was wanting it, too! Get out of the way, you idiot! he must have thought.

As soon as I stepped back, of course, he opened the door and reached for his beer. But not before glaring sideways hard at me—a “What's with you?” angry look.

There was a crowd of people who'd gathered in a semicircle around us, too, wondering if they were witnessing some stupid jerk attempting a daylight heist. And staring, of course.

I wasn't embarrassed or anything; alcoholics usually aren't. I was only aware this bad scene was happening. And that I wanted that beer behind the door.

Then in my lapsed thinking, sure enough, Domingo's words came at me: You can get it later. First, make a contact. And I thought instantly of a telephone.Why I didn't go back to the motel room I don't know. Other than I felt it was an emergency, I guess.

But the store had a phone and a phone book in front of it; I quickly found an A.A. number to call; and was given directions to where I could find a north-central El Paso group—about a mile away; meeting in 15 minutes, it turned out. Thank you, Domingo.

I soon found the meeting and walked in; introduced myself (Hi, I'm Dan; I'm an alcoholic.), and commenced to tell the story of the glass freezer door with the stubborn hinges. And that I was away from home for a couple of days and sure was thankful all you guys and girls showed up here today.

When I finished there was a polite applause. And I sat down, feeling a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. And then I listened to some real problems.

It's a scenario not unlike that one that's been played out every day in many thousand different places around the globe every since the Great Scorekeeper started tallying, “where two or three (of you) gather in my name...”

Why drugs aren't legalized to curb a swelling inferno of violence and lawlessness I don't understand. Just another way American exceptionalism must run its course, maybe.

But I do understand how corpocracy and radical capitalism minimalizes folks; and how Jack Black is permitted and even cheered to make it even sweeter. Haah!

Now we're cooking, baby! Now we're cooking!

– 30 --

We're always glad to hear from readers. Log in with a first name and an email address (just to be legit) to make comments, or write Dan at dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.