La Globalización Mata

I crossed into Cuidad Juárez for the first time two weeks ago.

The concrete and barbed wire on our side contrasts with the no-one-gives-a-shit-that-there-is-a-border on that side.

Graffiti in Spanish (that I could read): "Bush la terrorista eres tu", "U.S. border patrol: ¡Asesinos!", "La globalización mata". Those were my favorites :)

More bustling and vibrant than any other city I’ve been to in a long, long time. Smells. People asking for money I couldn’t give. Places accepting dollars, listing what you can take into the U.S.

The border caters to its crossers on both sides.

El Segundo Barrio, one of El Paso’s oldest border communities for Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, in danger of being demolished--and it has been demolished over the years but built itself back up--by urban planners.

Their plan?

Another endless American mall, of Starbucks, fast food chains.

Prefab pretty houses. Cold concrete apartments rising up from wet black asphalt.

Not a chance.

Smells of food, smells of shit. Silence of the cathedral, where the bustle of city life loses sound. People. Everywhere. Beauty and filth all at once. Echoes of the downtown bars of Ankara, Turkey. Of the shops of Asunción, Paraguay, lined up with no doors, wares hawked.

Che Guevara necklace.

American football team sarapes.

And out of it all, what struck me the most?

What stands out in the border experience to me?

The Mexican emo girl exiting the border crossing to to El Paso from Juárez, decked out in tight, form-fitting plaid pants, a skimpy black top, studded belt, showing skin, showing curves, brown skin, mascara-ed eyes...