Literary El Paso

David Dorado Romo

81 David Dorado Romo David Dorado Romo was raised in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. He earned a degree in Judaic Studies from Stanford University and has studied at the Centro d’Attivitá Musicale in Florence and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Historian, essayist, cultural activist, translator and musician, Romo published Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez: 1893-1923 in 2005 with Cinco Puntos Press. His essays have been published in The Texas Observer. From Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez: 1893-1923: Music Across the Lines “When El Paso wanted a Mexican serenata given in Cleveland Square or San Jacinto Plaza, the people of Juárez would be invited to attend. Mexican officials would send a military or municipal band over to El Paso parks and they would entertain the Americans all evening. This courtesy would be returned by El Paso and they would send either a military band from Fort Bliss or the El Paso City Band to the Plaza Principal.”­ —Ernest Schuster, Author of Pancho Villa’s Shadow The Mexican Revolution created major demographic shifts along the border. Large numbers of both rich and poor Mexicans refugees crossed over to El Paso and stayed for good. The influx of new residents created a boom in the city’s economy and cultural life. Spanishlanguage movie houses, theaters, vaudeville tents and Mexican social clubs added venues in town where local musicians could perform. The concerts held at the main Juárez plaza during the Porfiriato were simply moved across the line to Cleveland Square in El Paso. Cleveland Square, 82 right behind the El Paso Public Library, had a long tradition of hosting the city’s most important events. The McGinty Band had played there regularly; former President Roosevelt had given a speech there during his campaign to retake the White House as an independent; Mother Jones had given a wild and fiery speech there as well. But during the revolution, the city’s upper-class Mexican refugees used it as their new meeting place where they could carry out the social traditions they had left behind in the old country. Margarita Jáquez de Alcalá, a descendant of one of the pioneer families of Juárez, recalls attending the Cleveland Square concerts every Thursday and Saturday, very much in the tradition of prerevolutionary Juárez: There were only people we knew there. Only the better class of people—gente bien—were there. You didn’t see the lower classes there—gente fachosa—no one with a sloppy demeanor. The young ladies would walk along two files, and the men in the opposite direction and through the middle. Oh! They would shower us with flowers—gardenias , carnations. The young men would arrive . . . and if we liked them we would flirt with them . . . and you’d get home with bunches of flowers.79 Later when things quieted down a little more south of the border, both Mexican and American bands played in Juárez as well. But the revolution had changed the nature of the audience attending the Juárez concerts. The El Paso Herald described how the concerts at the plaza in front of the Guadalupe Mission had changed a year after the Battle of Juárez: On Sunday and Thursday nights, a remnant of the old municipal band toots Mexican waltzes and Italian operas from the iron bandstand , erected by the last federal “Jefe político” just before the Madero revolution. Different from the old is the present day scene in Plaza Constitución when the band plays on. The municipal band is short handed, there is a new director, a younger one, and the old uniforms of the bandsmen are the worse for wear. One man has a jacket and no uniform trousers, another the trousers and no jacket, and another fel- 83 low has the cap. But they toot and bang away just as gladly, and the townsfolk swarm about as flies. But, as with the hand, the throng is different. Most of the town belles are gone, and well dressed Mexican men are fewer. They throw confetti, but there are no “gardenias” being tossed about. Yet just as heartily do vendors cry and as eagerly does the public buy “dulces” and “orchatas.” The revival of the municipal music finds eager, happy listeners, if...