Life near the border

UTEP students

If you take a look at a county map of Texas, displaying the presidential vote in red or blue colors, you'll not be surprised to see that the state is largely red.  Exceptions, of course, for the blue islands of Dallas and Houston, and a few other counties.

Way out west, however, lies perhaps the bluest of the blue counties -- El Paso County, which voted almost three to one in favor of Hillary Clinton over Trump.   El Paso is surrounded on the north and west by New Mexico, and on the south by Mexico -- neither of which has much love for Trump or the Republicans.  Adjoining El Paso on the east is Hudspeth County, which makes a large red blob on the map -- but that county is all sagebrush, with fewer than 3,500 residents.  El Paso County, tiny in geography, has the sixth largest population of any county in Texas, with over 800,000 residents.

El Paso, city and county, are heavily Hispanic ethnically.  The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has a student body that is  about 80 percent Hispanic, and the population of El Paso County itself is similar.

I visited El Paso for the first time in March, not realizing that I'd be flying in again this past weekend for the wedding of a college friend's son.  The wedding itself was in Mesilla, a tiny town sharing a border with New Mexico's second largest city, Las Cruces, about forty miles north of El Paso. 

Mesilla may be a dot on the map now, but it predates its much larger neighbor, and was at one time the capital of a military district that included both present day Arizona and New Mexico.  Its inclusion in the United States was disputed with Mexico, until secured by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.  It was the site of two major Civil War battles, and its courthouse was the site of the murder trial of Billy the Kid. 

Mesilla is pretty sleepy today, but history hangs heavily over the town.  Doña Ana County, which includes Las Cruces and Mesilla, is 63 percent Hispanic.

I emphasize the ethnicity of these areas because I'm interested in the Mexican-American experience within America.  While Hispanics are widespread throughout the country, up here in the Northwest Corner the dominant white culture is influenced more by Asians, both native-born and immigrant.  We have a president who seems, for his own political purposes, to single out Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants for scathing attacks.

What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.

Trump on Fox News (2015).

I don't question that Mexican immigrants, newly arrived in the United States, often face difficult problems of language and culture, as has every other immigrant group since the nation's founding.  But I suggest that Mr. Trump, if he has any interest in immigration, aside from using it politically as a weapon, should wander about the streets of El Paso, and Mesilla, and Las Cruces.  He might be startled at how "American" these "criminal" Americans and aspirational Americans would appear.

Fiction is fiction, not scientific research.  But the young adult novels of Benjamin Sáenz (e.g., He Forgot to Say Goodbye, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), written by a Mexican-American professor and former priest, have helped focus my attention on the increasing success of the Mexican-American community.  Poverty remains a problem, of course, but many of their young people are quickly working their way into the middle class and into positions of business and political leadership.

A quick walk through UTEP's campus while the university is in session shows the direction that this community is taking -- the determination of many of its young people, already assimilated into American culture, to achieve upward mobility economically. 

My personal knowledge of life in the El Paso region is obviously miniscule, and largely hearsay and anecdotal.  But I like what I've seen.  I enjoy visiting the area and I'm impressed by its culture.

Mexican-Americans and other Hispanics will be valued members of our nation long after Donald Trump has moved on to other endeavors.