Latinx El Paso provides a historical and contemporary overview of the Mexican American/Hispanic population in one of the major urban centers of the U.S. Southwest Borderlands, El Paso, Texas, where, for centuries, the local way of life has been shaped by intense interaction between Latinos/as and European Americans in a binational environment. The emphasis of the book is on the experience of ordinary people, with significant attention devoted to economic, social, educational, and political disparities between the Mexican American majority population in the city and the non-Hispanic white, or Anglo, minority. While Latinx El Pasoans have made impressive strides in elevating their status over the last half-century, much remains to be done. The group continues to be substantially underrepresented in elite circles, top businesses, and sundry decision-making bodies. This book explains why.
Like the coroner determining the cause of a death from a thousand pin pricks, Oscar Martínez methodically examines the primary conditions and decisions that make today’s El Paso. From geography to demography, sociology to economics, political science to ethics, historian Martínez follows the threads that form El Paso’s past and present. He has spent a career honing the masterful skills that bring us this cogent analysis of El Paso, the border, and its people.
–Raymond Caballero, Former Mayor of El Paso
Paperback $20.00 240 pages. Available at Amazon.com.
Might be a good read, and likely would underscore some of the failures of elected representatives over the past couple of hundred years. Personally, I have long been mystified over the constant push to revive downtown, build shiny doodads like ball parks, tear down perfectly good City Halls, and build Trolleys to nowhere, rather than focus on the things that make El Paso unique in this world. There have been half-hearted efforts, but never anything that got full backing. Now, of course, it is probably too late because we have let them destroy so much of the old El Paso, and we look too much like everywhere else.
John, I agree with you except no one in any leadership role here can articulate what, “make El Paso unique in this world” might mean. Myself included. Old El Paso wasn’t great for everyone. I sort of believe that Juarez is more important than El Paso itself, e.g., an Old Mexico experience could bring them in off the I-10 for a day 🙂
Use your imagination for what that might mean.
OMG! ENOUGH ALREADY!
LatinX?!? How would you even pronounce it in Spanish?
The problem with EP and the majority of our Chicano community is that we are complacent.
That’s raza, we do the bare minimum required in life, hence the lack of “evolution.”
We don’t hold our community members accountable and we don’t push our family members to greater limits. It’s a destructive cycle. It’s a cultural issue. How can a city evolve if its population is the problem?