A D&S Special Report

Josiah Heyman

A Tale of Twin Cities: How Politics and the Pandemic Are Affecting Binational Life at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Upon entering El Paso from the El Norte border crossing, people pass under a welcome sign over El Paso Street, a popular shopping area. (Photo by Andrea Gabor)

By Melissa Bacian and Sophia Carnabuci

For Willivaldo Delgadillo, a writer and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, growing up as binational citizen in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region never felt like he was setting foot in another country.

“I always think of certain areas of El Paso not as El Paso but as ‘North Juarez.’ And of course, Juarez is really influenced by El Paso and the United States,” said Delgadillo, 59, who is a U.S. citizen and currently lives in Juarez. “If you cross the bridge, just because it’s another country, you have to show your passport and sometimes there are very long lines to cross, but if you just go, in either direction, it still feels like it’s part of the same city.”

The symbiotic relationship between El Paso and Juarez is one that runs through many Mexican-Americans like Delgadillo.

“(It’s) sort of hard to understand if you’re not from the border where people literally have a piece of the family in each country, and not that they’re communicating to each other through WhatsApp or sending packages on Christmas, or whatever, but literally visiting every weekend,” said Josiah Heyman, an anthropology professor at UTEP who studies border issues.

But the ties have been tested in recent years with the surge of Central American migrants and refugees who have passed through the two cities, the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and the mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart. In mid-March, The Trump administration shut down all nonessential crossings on the southern and northern borders, including shoppers, visitors, tourists and migrants, in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus, further scrambling the life of binationals in the El Pass-Juarez region.

A mural depicting the twin-city relationship between El Paso and Juarez in El Paso’s El Segundo neighborhood, just steps from the Paso del Norte bridge connecting the two cities. (Photo by Vera Haller)

With no confirmation on the re-opening of the U.S.-Mexico border, the twin cities are temporarily separated, leaving the future of a long-standing binational culture uncertain.

Together, the two cities form a vibrant urban center spanning the border of western Texas and Mexico. Juarez’s population is more than 1.3 million, making it the eighth largest in Mexico, according to the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Research and Evaluation at UTEP. El Paso has a population of almost 840,000 residents, according to the U.S Census Bureau.

El Paso is located far from other large metropolitan areas – about a nine-hour drive from Dallas and eight hours from San Antonio, making its connection to Juarez even more important.

Before the coronavirus, crossing the border was a part of daily life for many. In 2019, more than 300,000 individuals legally crossed the El Paso Station, one of the sectors linking El Paso and Juarez, according to the Bureau of Transportation.

Friar Stephen Pitts, the religious education director at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Paso, described the unique relationship Juarez and El Paso have with one another. “It’s incredible to live in a bilingual place. People here want their kids to speak Spanish. It’s part of their culture they want to carry on,” he said. “People come from across the city to do their first communion or confirmation here because it’s a part of their heritage.”

Juarez and El Paso have a long and storied history dating back to the 1500s when Spanish explorers came across the two mountain ranges rising out of the desert with a deep chasm in between. They named the site El Paso del Norte (the Pass of the North: Modern day Juarez, El Paso and Chihuahua.)

In 1682, five settlements were founded south of the river – El Paso del Norte, San Lorenzo, Senecu, Ysleta and Socorro. The area soon became a trade center for agriculture and eventually became the region we know as Juarez.

But the cross-border nature of the two cities has long posed challenges as well.

Many in the region have been affected by violence in Juarez dating back to the late 1980s and drug trafficking organized by a group called the Juarez Cartel, run by Vincente Carrillo Fuentes. In the early 2000s, rival gang warfare between the Sinola and the Juarez Cartel caused an increase in crime in the city of Juarez. Though drug trafficking has not disappeared, there has been a notable decrease. This in turn, has helped tamp down other crimes; in 2010, 3,500 homicides were reported, while in 2014, it had dropped down to roughly 430 homicides.

Then in 2019, the surge of Central American migrants overwhelmed the social-service sector of El Paso. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection held over 13,400 migrants in custody at the time, including nearly 3,500 in El Paso. “A crisis level is 6,000; 13,000 is unprecedented,” stated border patrol commissioner Kevin McAleenan during a 2019 news conference.

The 30-foot-tall “Grand Candela” memorial in the parking lot of the Cielo Vista Walmart store in El Paso commemorates the victims of the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting. When illuminated at night, “the light transcends borders and connects our hearts as one community,” reads a plaque at the base of the memorial. (Photo by Vera Haller)

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric also hit the El Paso-Juarez region particularly hard. When a man armed with an AK-47 walked into an El Paso Walmart and killed 22 people on Aug. 3, 2019, the attack was seen as a direct attack on the twin cities’ binational character.

The store, located in Cielo Vista, is the closest Walmart to the border and it is where many Juarez residents come to shop. Out of the 23 victims, eight of them were Mexican citizens, leading many to believe this was an attack on the Latino people.

For a month after the shooting, Friar Mario L. Serrano, who runs the Catholic Church’s ministry program at UTEP, went to the Walmart and walked through the store, lending help to anyone who needed it. “I often wondered what it was for Martin Luther King Jr. to minister in such a toxic environment,” said Serrano. “Or I don’t think I have to wonder anymore. Because that’s the reality, right? So many of them were just fearful right of saying like, Father Friar this is crazy, how can we address this?”

Now, the coronavirus has further disrupted life in the area. For many individuals, crossing the border is simply a means of getting to school, work or access to adequate health care. Store owners rely on profits from Juarez residents who come to El Paso to shop. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, resulting in the partial closure of the U.S-Mexico border, hundreds of binationals are left with no choice but to put an indefinite pause on their lives.

“More people come to the food pantry now with the pandemic,” said Pitts, noting that the church has moved food distribution to the outdoors. “The elderly that used to volunteer were all sent home and its parish employees doing it now. Some of the landlords are still trying to evict people, which is insane.”

The events of recent years have done much to change life at the border.

“When I was growing up, I remember we would go to Juarez and come back; it was very easy because there was a time when you wouldn’t even show a birth certificate,” recalls Joash Alanis, a student at UTEP, where more than 960 students out of the 25,000 have a permanent Juarez address, according to the university’s website.

Father Friar blessing incoming UTEP students who are part of the Catholic Church’s ministry program. (Handout photo from Father Friar)

Throughout the years, stricter measures have been set in place, making crossing between the intertwined cities a long and agonizing wait, especially for students who often have to wake up before sunrise to get to class on time.

A rally is held outside the Buddhist temple on the UTEP campus. The university’s architecture is styled after the Himalayan country of Bhutan. (Handout photo from Professor Heyman)

“I tutor at a middle school, and at that middle school there’s usually a lot of them that come from the other side of town,” said Alanis, noting that many of them will be falling asleep in the middle of class. “I’ll talk to the kids and be like, what’s going on? They’ll be like ‘I’m just so tired. I woke up at three in the morning.’”

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, UTEP has transitioned to distance learning. Professor Heyman described the existing efforts the university already had in place, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, to ensure its students would not fall behind. “Professors are aware of the fact that students have to work for a living, and that they’re commuting.”

Nonetheless, if the partial closure of the border wall becomes a complete closure, he is unsure of what the future might hold for binational individuals. “If they do something like that at the border, it’s going to have a whole bunch of wrenching effects on our students at the university, it’s going to have wrenching effects on binational families. It’s going to have an effect on the economy.”

Amanda Salazar and Anacaona Rodriguez Martinez contributed reporting to this story.

The Forgotten Colonias: Covid-19 Poses Added Burdens for Unincorporated Immigrant Communities at the Border

Colonias in the El Paso area often lack basic services such as sewer systems, water, electricity and internet access. (Photo courtesy of Bethsaida Mondrago)

By Ayse Kelce

Two days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbot issued a stay-at-home order to curb the spread of Covid-19, a water main broke in an informal settlement, known as a colonia, near Clint and the U.S.-Mexico border, leaving residents without water for more than 14 hours.

“It was really frustrating because, remember, one thing we tell people is wash your hands,” said state Representative Mary Edna González, whose District 75 covers the Clint area, east of El Paso. “If you don’t have any water, and then all the stores are out of bottled water…It was just chaos.”

González, speaking during a Zoom interview on May 24, about 10 days after the incident, added that the lockdown had exacerbated the difficult living conditions, caused by a lack of basic resources, that residents of colonias had long faced.

Colonias are unincorporated neighborhoods around the U.S.-Mexican border that experience issues with accessing internet connections and potable water and often lack sewer systems, garbage pickup, paved roads as well as safe and sanitary housing. With the spread of the coronavirus, these largely immigrant communities are facing additional, unique challenges when it comes to accessing education, receiving Covid-19 relief from the federal government and getting accurate census counts.

States along the border, such as Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, have high numbers of immigrant populations and colonia settlements. Texas has the biggest population of colonias with around 500,000 people living in 2,294 colonias, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Marcelino Navarette, 61, who lives in one of these incorporated neighborhoods around West El Paso, said access to water is an issue in his neighborhood as well.

“We haven’t had water here for the 22 years that I’ve been here. It is a little unfair for the representatives of El Paso or the county not to help us with regards to the water service,” he said in Spanish, after struggling to find a spot in his house where the phone connection would not be lost.

He explained that in his neighborhood, residents buy water from companies that deliver it in trucks, charging around $100 for about 1,200 gallons. “There’s mainly only two trucks that deliver water,” he said, adding that during the summer months, the wait time increases to get water. With the coronavirus, waits are already long.

Accessing water is not the only struggle for colonia residents. “We do have light in our homes, but around the streets, everything is just dark,” he said.

Unpaved roads are the only way to get to the colonias near Hueco Tanks, east of El Paso. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Navarette)

Colonias started forming in the 1950s for low-income individuals–most of them immigrants– seeking affordable housing in rural areas.

“The colonias are typically a response to wanting that same suburban house, but without the ability to get into the debt system that finances houses for the mass of consumers,” said Prof. Josiah Heyman of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Heyman, an anthropologist who is the director of UTEP’s Center for Interamerican and Border Studies, explained that colonias are often home to working class people like construction or service workers who manage to get together some money to purchase a piece of land and build a mobile house.

Navarrete’s son Dan, 34, was raised in the colonias from the age of 9. He agrees that his community needs easier access to water and internet connection the most, especially since the coronavirus lockdown forced residents to stay home.

“One of my cousins was going to school and they’re sending him all the classes online but he’s having a hard time getting access to the internet,” said the younger Navarrete. The cousin, who goes to high school in El Paso, returned to Juarez, Mexico, just across the border, after the schools closed because his parents were in Mexico and the sketchy internet connection in the colonias was not allowing him to catch up with schoolwork.

“I think it’s better for him over there because over here he won’t have access to the internet because the schools are closed, and the libraries are closed,” the younger Navarrete said. “There’s no way for him to access his homework,” the younger Navarrete said.

Dan Navarette currently lives in East El Paso in a mobile home with his wife and two kids and works in the oil fields in New Mexico.  He considers himself to be one of the lucky ones who still gets paid a minimum amount without having to go to work; due to the economic downturn caused by Covid-19, his company laid off many workers. “It’s a program that the company has,” he said, adding that most people in his community work in construction or warehouses. “They’ll lay you off for a month, but they’ll still pay you for it. Not your whole salary but something you can live off of.”

Along with infrastructure and internet issues, colonia residents also are mostly on their own when it comes to health care during this pandemic.

“In Texas specifically, we have done a really bad job of providing rural health,” González said. She explained that while Covid-19 testing is key to slowing the spread of the virus, many colonia residents were having difficulty getting to test sites.

She said that for some people, the closest site was 40 minutes away.

“So it’s 80 minutes away, back and forth. That’s just driving; most families don’t have cars or have one vehicle per family,” she explained. “Showing symptoms, there’s no way that they can even get 80 miles, especially if there are kids and there’s all this complexity. We have not done enough to do mobile sites.”

Marcelino Navarette said that even before the coronavirus pandemic, he had similar difficulties getting medical care. “Since the closest hospital or any access to medical services are so far away, sometimes it takes a whole day, even when you have an appointment because we have to drive,” he said. He explained that there were no clinics close to where he lives, and getting to and from the nearest hospital–a 15 mile drive–is very time consuming.

Texas’ efforts to inform Texans about the coronavirus pandemic also failed to reach the colonias, according to González. “I don’t think we’ve had enough bilingual communication,” she said. “The governor has been doing a lot of press conferences and they are sending out a lot of resources. But it’s all in English. More than 40 percent of the border colonias have limited English proficiency, according to the data shared by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The coronavirus lockdown has worsened the economic hardships faced by residents of colonias, whose median household incomes are less than $30,000. According to Dallas Federal Bank, 73.1 percent of colonia residents are U.S. citizens, meaning that the rest, nearly 30 percent, were undocumented or not naturalized, making them ineligible for federal coronavirus stimulus funds. Additionally, married couples who file taxes jointly are also unable to access stimulus funding if one of them is an undocumented immigrant. This decision largely affects communities like colonias whose residents depend heavily on public assistance and where many families have various members with different immigration statuses.

Local politicians and non-profit organizations have stepped up to offer additional assistance for residents of the colonias, but they say not enough help is reaching people in need. The Border Network for Human Rights has been working with González to provide resources through private donations. González described their work as a “Band-aid situation.”

“Although we are appreciative of the trillions in stimulus funding provided by the federal government to date, few of the programs created provide relief for immigrant families,” González and five other state representatives wrote in a letter to their congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar. “Their inclusion in stimulus funding is necessary to ensure that they too have the resources to stay home to slow the spread of Covid-19 without losing their livelihoods.”

“Immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, are part of the backbone of El Paso and communities across Texas and the nation,” the letter continued, thanking Escobar for her work in the Congress so far.

The coronavirus lockdown also could impede efforts to secure government funding for future improvements because it is making it more difficult for residents to participate in the 2020 U.S. Census. Getting accurate census counts also gets harder in the colonias as one third of the residents do not have citizenship.

“Some people that I know who don’t have any legal papers to be here…are very afraid of someone coming up to them and asking questions in their house,” Dan Navarette said. He added that he still has not received his census form in mail, but his parents who live farther from the city limits have.

The elder Navarette said that he had filled out the census, but he is not hopeful that having an accurate count will actually bring public services to his neighborhood since he has not seen any changes in many years.

Indeed, Navarette is an exception. The average census response rate in Texas is just 48 percent,” according to González. Her census efforts have moved online because of Covid-19 and the need for social distancing, mainly to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Those efforts, however, are least likely to reach the colonias.

When asked about voting in the upcoming 2020 election, Dan Navarette laughed. “Right now for me, elections or voting are not in my mind. Right now, it’s about being safe and go buy whatever you need for groceries and come back home,” he said.

The younger Navarrete said that some colonias were 50 miles away from voting stations in schools, which discouraged a lot of people from voting in the past. His father added that local politicians informed them about where to go and vote, but it still was not enough.

“I don’t feel that it really makes a difference. Because for these 22 years that I have been out here, really nothing has changed,” he said.