2 posts tagged “juarez”
in the parlance of el paso spanish/spanglish, this is our "toma" for today, aimed at washington, dc, fly-over states, and anyone else yammering for "building fences." funny how on first reading people misinterpret frost's poem, in any event, this npr article is on the money. now if only faux news and crappy news network would listen. i'm not holding my breath though, terror warnings drives media and advertising revenue today. that and the inability of aging man to shoot below the hip.
Border Residents Craft an Appeal for More (and different forms of) Security
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Now this one is a new one on me. In this New York Times Real Estate article that appears under the headline:
Two Border Cities, One Shared Lifestyle, Lisa Chamberlain reports how real estate agents and executives treat this region as one location that encompasses international and national political boundaries of Southern New Mexico, Far West Texas, and Northern Mexico. The new one is how they refer to the area.
[...] relatively affordable housing prices have protected the entire region — northern Mexico, western Texas, southern New Mexico, locally referred to as “New Texico” — from the downturn in the real estate market that has affected other parts of the United States, according to Charles de Wetter, the principal of Coldwell Banker de
Wetter Hovious in El Paso.
While Juárez is generally still a poor city, housing options have improved as the Mexican middle class has grown. Where there used to be only cheap or very high-end housing, now there are more American-style subdivisions and gated communities, brokers say, and the prices are comparable to similar homes in El Paso.
[...]
We've know that for years. Many people, born in the U.S. who are bilingual, dual citizenship, and have family in Juarez sometimes decide to live in Juarez if only to save money on housing. Later, they return to El Paso to send their kids to private or public schools. It is a fallacy to think that all Mexican license plated cars sitting in driveways here are owned by "illegals."He explained that the proximity of El Paso to Juárez creates an ideal environment for a dual-city culture, whereas “in San Diego there’s a separation of 10 to 15 miles” from the Mexican border, he said. “Since the beginning, this has been viewed as one place, as one city.”
