July 25, 2007
Editor's note: A version of this ran as a letter to the editor in the Texas Observer
Because she is a historian, I would have expected Eileen Welsome to be more open and creative in researching her article “Eminent Disaster” (Texas Observer: May 4, 2007) about the El Paso’s downtown redevelopment project. Instead Ms. Welsome treated TO readers to some good old-fashioned point-&-shoot journalism. She came to El Paso with a pre-conceived narrative, she cherry-picked her sources, interviewees and ideas, and she wrote her piece. It was a quick study. Time was not wasted. Soon she was back in Austin, rubbing elbows with all the young people who have fled El Paso in search of good paying jobs and a happening city.
Yet, lost beneath the patina of Welsome’s treatment, is a thorny and important debate. The redevelopment project opened up a sore in our psyche. Especially among the intellectual, activist and progressive communities. This sudden schism, I think, is the real story which Welsome missed. People are calling each other names, vandals are breaking into offices or tearing down political signs, non-profits in Segundo Barrio are battling over turf, husbands and wives argue in their bedrooms and friends quit talking to each other. And they are all asking the same question: What’s going to happen to our city?
What we needed from Welsome was a different perspective, some of that “blink” stuff that Malcolm Gladwell made famous, a way to step to the side and look around our particular biases.
Blink?
On the Mexican side of the river are the more than 1,700,000 citizens of Juárez, a city which must operate with a budget 1/8th the size per capita of El Paso’s (650,000). Juárez, its own downtown crumbling away like a desert riverbank, is home to one of the largest drug cartels in the world, and the drug money and lack of a judicial infrastructure have wrought a lawlessness that makes murder, including the infamous murders of hundreds of women, a common event.
Blink.
El Paso is enduring its own “surge” of armed troops and military hardware. The combined forces of “Homeland Security” (Border Patrol, the DEA and Customs) have grown dramatically in the last 15 years, and now the Pentagon is sending 25,000 more troops to Fort Bliss. Stupid U.S. immigration and drug laws, combined with national hysteria and paranoia, will continue to exacerbate this military presence here for years to come, and no doubt this military surge will have a huge and detrimental impact on the political, intellectual and cultural communities in El Paso.
Blink.
In the midst of these forces is the heart of the city, El Paso’s historic downtown and its equally historic barrios. It’s a wonderful place. Yet, the area is suffering from decay, one by one buildings are being destroyed from neglect or greed, the poverty and unemployment in the barrios ranks with the worst in the country, minimum wage is the norm when jobs are available, landowners are fighting to keep the appraisal of their properties (and therefore their taxes) low, and the citizens are leaving for elsewhere.
Blink.
The downtown needs an influx of capital, and it needs a flexible plan that will allow it to evolve into a healthy player—culturally and economically—in the future of the city and region. Otherwise, downtown El Paso with its unique culture and history will wilt away. The proponents of the redevelopment project (I am one of those, wary and alert, but ready to proceed) believe the downtown plan does provide the money and flexibility to inject life into El Paso’s downtown. The anti-plan forces vehemently disagree.
That’s simple enough.
And it should be the starting point for a positive dialect. There’s plenty of elbow room to make good choices.
But the debate has accelerated way beyond the intellectual and imaginative realms and is now stuck in the confusion of anger and name-calling. That’s why I was so disappointed in Welsome’s article. Instead of bringing a fresh point of view, she was content to take the easy route and take sides. In doing so she ignored some facts, she twisted others but got some right, she did some name-calling of her own and then went home to Austin, but not without first throwing a little more gasoline on the fire.
But no blink.
“Ni modo,” my friend says.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Ni modo.”
Bobby Byrd
Bobby Byrd is a poet, writer and sometimes contributor to the Texas Observer. With his wife Lee he is co-publisher of Cinco Puntos Press with its office in downtown El Paso. They are the parents of El Paso City Councilor Susie Byrd.