JE#4

Even though I was born and raised in El Paso, I did not know most of the history uncovered by David Dorado Romo in his text, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893-1923.  The only thing I knew about the Mexican Revolution was that Pancho Villa was always in El Paso and Juarez.  My father's father's mother ran a brothel in Juarez during the Mexican Revolution where, allegedly, Pancho Villa was a frequent visitor.  The Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese immigrants to seek alternate ways into the United States other than the West Coast.  El Paso was one of those ports of entry.  The racial and ethnic diversity of El Paso is something that surprised me.  Although El Paso is still overwhelmingly Chicana/o, I was interested to see the picture on page 204 of the Douglass School, a segregated Black school.  I had heard about this school but never read anything about it until I read Romo's text.  As far as my experience goes, Blacks and Chicana/os always got along with little of the racial tension witnessed here in Los Angeles.  What I find infuriating is the picture on 217 and the so-called progress from adobe to brick architecture in downtown El Paso.  The quote on the preceding page says it all, "'The removal of the ancient adobe with all their bad associations means a new life for El Paso" (qtd. in Dorado Romo 216).  These two examples are definite examples of El Paso's cultural schizophrenia.