Judge Alicia Chacón, Board Member of the Sin Fronteras Farmworker Center
I FIRST GOT involved in politics when as a young woman during the 70s I saw that Ysleta Elementary school building had deteriorated tremendously and I ran for the school board. I was the first Mexican American woman to serve on the board. In 1975 I was the County Clerk. That year I was involved with the Jimmy Carter campaign and was offered a position in Washington that I turned down. Instead I accepted the position of Regional Director of the Small Business Administration. Between 1983 to 1987 I was a City Council representative. In the early 90s I served as County Judge for four years. Then I served as the director of the United Way for seven years until my retirement.
Most of my life I’ve been involved in the struggle to try to provide a voice for the underprivileged and bring them to the table. It’s not always easy.
On both sides there is resistance to this. There’s resistance from those in power who don’t want them at the table, who discredit their opinions. Then there’s resistance from those who haven’t been there, who feel that their time will be wasted. You have to convince people that it is important to meet with each other.
It takes a lot of work and effort to want to communicate, especially in El Paso where there is such a high illiteracy and low readership of newspaper. Sometimes it takes longer because it takes so long to get a consensus. I had an opportunity when I was judge to work with one of the federal agencies and carry out a whole plan for the Ysleta area, but we knew that we had to have buy in from the people. It took us 18 months to get a plan that everybody bought into. By then some of the monies became unavailable. You do miss some opportunities and I regret that we weren’t able to capture that opportunity.
But had I moved ahead with just the leadership of the community we would not have been successful anyway. It would have created dissension, bad feelings and years of litigation. You have to bring everyone to the table from the beginning.
THE MAIN DIFFERENCE between the Paso Del Norte downtown development plan and others in the past, that I see very blatantly, is that the main proponents of this plan are being represented by young people that we initially supported—Beto O’Rourke, Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega—and that we thought would be the new sensitive leadership in our community. This small group of younger leaders has taken upon itself to push this plan through. To me it’s unusual that elected officials would take the ownership of this plan without it having been presented thoroughly and discussed through all the city departments. They’ve adopted and taken ownership of a plan that an outside group has proposed, rather than something that worked its way up. I think that they’ve taken premature ownership. It begs the question, “why?” I don’t know why. Only they can answer that.
What I find the most offensive about this plan, that it was developed in secret without significant input. The most disappointing thing is that the news media allowed it to stay so secretive by failing to demand more information. Everywhere else where the work of redevelopment has been done, the work starts from bottom up. In El Paso, the plans always come from the top down and they are doomed for failure. The same pattern was followed with this plan. I feel frustrated that we haven’t learned and those in positions of leadership have not learned the need to start from the bottom. I think the consultants should have been instructed to work with barrio people. I would have told the consultants, “You talk to Carmen Felix, Carlos Marentes and Father García.” At least touch base with them on needs that they perceive and their ideas. Their input was important, critical and valuable. But now we’ve lost the opportunity. The plan in my opinion shows a lack of respect for community leadership and I find that offensive.
None of these community leaders were consulted. I have worked with Carlos Marentes since the 70s in helping the farmworkers and their plight. Everyone that has ever been a part of local government or a member of a nonprofit organization knows of the work that Carmen Felix has done to preserve the barrio. She has never abandoned the residents of the barrio, she has never left, she has been steadfast. Yet despite her knowledge and long history in this community she was in no way consulted or asked for her input for this plan. It’s a sad commentary on the part of the City that she was never asked for her input. Only now they want their input. But at this point City officials are just trying to validate what it has already accepted. They are trying desperately to give the plan validation.
I don’t care what measuring stick you’re using, Carmen Felix and Carlos Marentes have earned their credentials as leaders of the Segundo Barrio community. Nobody can take that away from them. I know the young City Council members have tried to discredit Carmen and Carlos as community leaders. If anything you can question the leadership credentials of the Johnny-come-laties. They haven’t been through any of the fights, they haven’t been through any of the struggles. They are the ones that are not tested. Instead they’ve turned out to be a disappointment. Yet they’re calling Carlos and Carmen supporters of the status quo although they’ve been trying for decades to bring about change. The problem is that they haven’t had the support from City Hall. Carmen Felix has been fighting City Hall for years to bring about better housing opportunities in the area. If she had had the support, rather than years of opposition from city administrations, her organization, the Southside Low Income Housing Corporation, could have had tenfold the number of rehabbed homes in the area than it does now.
THERE ARE OTHER questions surrounding this plan—questions having to do with Mr. O’Rourke’s conflict of interest, the abuse of eminent domain for private profit, the cost to the tax payers for the plan and many others that have not been fully answered. It appears that the the major figures of the Paso Del Norte Group are fixed on the large number of acres that they need. Are they willing to change the boundaries? I'm hopeful that at least the members of the City Council will ask the tough questions and not incorporate the plan until they know how much it is going to cost the tax payers and until they have all the other
questions answered. I hope there is room for middle ground here. There needs to be a middle ground.
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Gloria Gonzalez, homeowner in the zone targeted for a parking lot
(She did not wish to be photographed. The photographs are of the three homes constructed by her grandfather.)
MY GRANDFATHER PASCUAL REYES built this house around 1930. I’ve lived here since I was about 15. He built this house and the two houses next door out of the adobe. We lived across the street and I remember him carrying the adobe bricks in a wheel barrow. I remember him telling us that he was going to make the inside wall round, not square. My grandparents and my uncles lived in the homes he made for many years. My cousins lived next door until just a few years ago.
I’m 79 years old. I’m very comfortable here. I spend a lot of time on my porch. Nobody ever bothers me. The stores are nearby. I feel safe here.
I don’t want to move. Where would you put old rooster like me?
I know an elderly woman whose house was torn down when they made Aoy. She was 70 and the City told her they would give her $35,000 for her home. She used to tell me, I’m already old, what am I going to do with this money? I’m not sure what ever happened to her.
And now I’m very confused about what the City wants to do here. They’ve sent me a lot of letters. Every day they send me a new letter. They say there are going to be meetings. This one is signed by a Mr. Sanchez. Another is signed by a woman...I can’t read her name...Mendoza, I think it says [assistant to the City Manager]. Look, they even sent me a letter in Korean. Why do they send me a letter in Korean? I can’t read Korean. (She tears the letter.)
I am going to feel very sad if they move me. Where will I end up? I live alone. I’ve spent a lot of money to fix my doors and windows. A lot of money. I used to cut the grass every week, pull out the weeds, paint my walls. But now I’ve stopped doing that. What’s the point si me van a hechar a volar, it they’re going to kick me out? I just put a new water tank and then they gave me this notice.
The first time I heard about this [the Paso Del Norte plan] was when I went to the Plaza Theater. There were a lot of very well dressed Americanos there. I remember that. It all took me by surprise. There weren’t any residents at that meeting.
I don’t think they’re doing any of this for our benefit. They’re businessmen. I think it’s for their own gain. Puro dinero quieren sacar.
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Dr. Yolanda Leyva, history professor at UT El Paso and member of the Paso Del Sur Group
LAST SUNDAY A GROUP of us were at the Sagrado Corazón church collecting signatures for a petition against the Paso Del Norte plan. We collected more than 200 signatures and every single person we talked to was against the proposed demolitions in the Segundo Barrio.
Many of the people we talked to were very emotional. A lot were very shocked by the plan. One señora started to cry. A comment we kept hearing was “Oh, they’re doing this to us again.” Some people had read the El Paso Times article by David Crowder where everyone Mr. O’Rourke talked to was supposedly for the plan. Not a single person we talked to, however, said Mr. O’Rourke had talked to them. They disputed the article’s claim that their apartments were roach infested.
The general feeling was that this demolition will kill the church itself. The older people were flocking to us to sign the petition. I was impressed by how many people from all over El Paso come back to the Segundo Barrio every Sunday to go to church or visit their relatives. Many people we spoke to were totally tied to the Segundo Barrio. You could hear a love for this area in their voices. I always knew intellectually that Mexicanos who now live all over the US have a deep relationship to the Segundo but I was still a little surprised to see how many people from the Eastside, the Northeast and even Canutillo come back every week to this neighborhood.
Several generations of my own family lived in the Segundo Barrio. My great grandparents moved here in 1921. They had originally come to the border because they were very scared and disillusioned with the revolution. They lived in a presidio on Stanton Street. My great aunt who raised me, Esther Chavéz Leyva, went to Aoy Elementary, then to the old Bowie [today’s Guillen Middle School]. She went up to the 6th grade. That was a lot of education back then. As a young woman in the 20s she had short hair and used to dress up like a flapper. Her father, she once told me, tore up a red dress into shreds that she had sewn together from a few bandanas because he thought she was becoming too American. Another great aunt was married in the Sagrado Corazón church around 1926. Many of her children were baptized there. Then our family was repatriated to Mexico in 1931. That’s why I was born in Juárez in the 1950s.
WHEN I REALIZED what the Paso Del Norte plan was all about I really took it personally, not because of the proposed destruction of the buildings themselves, but because of the history that those buildings embody. There’s a two-pronged assault of both our past and our present.
There’s always been a process of trying to destroy Chicano and Mexicano history since the 1880s when the railroads were built and suddenly El Paso’s Anglo population grew. In cities like Los Angeles, Tucson and El Paso the adobe buildings were destroyed because they represented the city’s Mexican past.
When I teach Mexican American history, a large part of that history is about land displacement. For instance the argument of Manifest Destiny—that Anglo Americans should start taking over the land that was not properly used, that was not productive, that was not producing wealth for somebody—is the same argument they’re now using in the Segundo Barrio. They argue that the area has a low tax base, that’s it’s not producing taxes for the city and this is why it should be stripped from the local owners.
Historically the tax laws have also been used to displace people—the manipulation of laws to strip the land owned by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in this country. If we look back during the 1850s, the 1880s and the 1910s, the manipulation is very clear. When the land along the border is owned mostly by Mexican Americans in the 1880s, the tax rates are raised so high that landowners can’t pay the taxes on them. The Mexican American community loses its land. Then the Anglo Americans come in, pay the back taxes, and when the land is in their possession, the tax rates are reduced. Today what’s going on in this city is more sophisticated. The manipulation is more hidden. For instance, when you try to find out who is going to profit from the Paso Del Norte Group plan, the relationships to money, it’s a lot harder to document. But I’m sure fifty years from now, when historians dig through the archives, things will be more clear.
I RECENTLY WROTE a book, Calling the Ancestors: Chicano/a History, Pedagogy and Historical Trauma, that deals with the idea that people and communities experience events—like the loss of lands, forcible relocations, wars or genocide—that traumatize them and that they carry from generation to generation. One example of historical trauma that comes to mind is the forcible relocation of a Chicano community in Tucson during the urban renewal period in the sixties and seventies. During this period, the City of Tucson decided to destroy its oldest barrio to build a community center. They demolished historic buildings and displaced a whole barrio full of people—very much like the Segundo Barrio today—a living community. They left a little bit of the edges of the barrio in the outskirts. The small businessmen there went out of business because now they didn't have any customers. The City of Tucson did it in a very secretive way. They didn’t tell the people of the barrio what they were planning. They actually posted some announcements, but they were way above people’s heads where people wouldn’t notice them. As a result of the relocation, there were reports of elderly people dying. The ironic thing is that now, three decades later, real estate developers are building very expensive homes to look like the homes they demolished.
Despite these histories I actually do have great hope today. I don’t think people who organize for social change can be pessimistic. What I’ve seen is that when people do find out what the Paso Del Norte plan is about, they do want their voices heard, they want to take a position, they want to protect their community. It has stirred people out of their apathy. It has stirred them to take action.
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David Dorado Romo is a native El Pasoan and author of Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893-1923. Romo also is a founding member of the Paso del Sur Group..
