One evening last week I visited a soccer field in Juarez and watched twelve Tarahumara children, eight boys and four girls, playing soccer. A friend of mine who is a social worker had organized several teams, providing opportunities for these children to be children and escape, if only for a few hours each week, the hardships of their living conditions. Some children were orphaned, some had splotches of white on their faces from vitamin deficiencies, others missed the practice because they were inhaling drugs instead.
Sport, like music, is a universal experience, and I noticed that the children would smile whenever any contact was made with the ball. It was captivating to watch, and contagious. It meant something, if only for a short while. This is why my friend does what she does.
In a little over four years since I moved home to El Paso, I’ve met quixotic activists and smugglers and storytellers. I know a woman who for over twenty years has been writing a book on Solon and the untold origins of democracy. I know a priest whose calling took him to El Paso and then quickly to Juarez and showed me undeserved kindness. I know artists and con artists and athletes and prostitutes. I feel particular respect for several journalists and activists who have risked their liberty and even their lives to combat injustice.
The casual observer can be euphoric or disappointed or tenuously hopeful about El Paso’s leadership – its politicians, business leaders, and the visible elite – but ultimate success is contingent upon the efforts of each one of us. Great leaders inspire others, but it is the individuals they inspire who make dreams a reality.
Back to soccer -- in the past week I have tried very hard to describe my feelings to several people, but it’s been hard for even me to see what my point was. I now just wish that others had seen even five minutes of a game we all remember playing, to see the joy of a twelve-year-old girl, with a little orphan spinning around her traditional skirt like her shadow. Each small but distinct experience, cumulatively, has given me a great optimism for the future of our region.
Enjoy this issue!
Vanessa Johnson
