JE #4

I observed two distinctly shocking phenomenas occurring before my eyes as I flipped through the pages and images of "A Racial Geography of El Paso," and "The Bath Riots." In the earlier chapter I saw integration, syncretism, racial mixing, inter-ethnic solidarity, the cultural mestizaje of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Yet, as mixing and mutual cooperation and existence became more prevalent, it seemed as if the threat of an "alien invasion" became more possible, and thus we see the change in the following chapter which introduces the racist and xenophobic discourses constructed against the Mexican greaser. By allowing my observation to analyze the images that would inform the narrative conveyed by David Romo, I was able to observe that as more cooperative, interdependent, and flexible borders the sister-cities expressed, the increasing need to "keep out illegals" became a reality. Sadly, as history taught us, this was all true, and continues to be the fatalistic reality of the borderlands in a post-9/11era.

Yet, the image that really struck my attention was that of an African American cowboy at El Paso rodeo, ca. 1916. The Texan cowboy culture is one form of how Mexican vaquero culture, fashion, and lifestyle in the frontier prevailed and integrated with Euro-American colonization. I was fascinated by this picture because it really demonstrates how cultural contributions and mestizaje can sustain themselves even in times of war and conquest. Hence, in present times we don't doubt the quintessential "American" quality of the cowboy character as one of the U.S.'s prime regional identities. And like Afro-Mexicans have expressed inter-ethnic solidarity and cultural mixing with the disempowered and oppressed, the indigenous; in the U.S., inter-ethnic solidarities gave also existed amongst the colonized who through mutual cooperation, lifestyle learning economic support, and cultural mixing.