Literary El Paso

Introduction

xix Introduction Called El Paso Del Norte, the Pass of the North, and finally, El Paso, this region was the dark-eyed exotic stranger abducted into Texas by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. El Paso is part of the Chihuahuan desert and the adjacent Franklin Mountains are nearly the southernmost tip of the Rocky Mountain range. We are a far West Texas high-desert city with a distinctive bi-national identity. Our desert landscape seems foreign to most Texans accustomed to green valleys, flat plains and urban sprawl. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is plainly visible from Interstate 10; Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, New Mexico, flow seamlessly into our landscape. New Mexicans consider us Texans, Texans consider us New Mexicans, and historically , the U.S.-Mexico border has been a permeable membrane. El Paso has been home to the Manso Indians, the Apaches, the Tigua Indians of Ysleta del Sur, Spanish explorers, conquistadors, soldiers, friars, bandits,businessmen,tubercular patients seeking dry air,newspapermen,writers , and gunfighters. Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Dallas Stoudenmire, and Pat Garrett were here. Pancho Villa and his men and General “Black Jack” Pershing were familiar faces in the city. Damon Runyon came to cover a sporting event, but wrote instead about the Mexican Revolution. In subsequent decades, El Paso has retained an identity as an international city. Prohibition was easily circumvented since Ciudad Juárez was on the other side of the bridge with its siren call of nightclubs, bars, and bullfights. Writers and artists frequented The Kentucky Club. The clubs featured entertainers from the U.S. such as Nelson Eddy, Patti Andrews, and the Kingston Trio. Female bullfighters from the El Paso side of the border—Joy Blair, Pat Hayes, Joy Marie Price, and Pat McCormick—fought in Juárez. They met as xx members of the International Club at Texas Western College. Juárez was also known for quick marriages and divorces. Many movie stars obtained divorces in Juárez—Marilyn Monroe from Arthur Miller and Jayne Mansfield from Mickey Hargitay to name a few. Later, Elizabeth Taylor, as the young bride of Nicky Hilton, came to El Paso to visit her mother-in-law. In addition to a colorful and dynamic history, El Paso has a rich literary tradition as well. Spanish explorers wrote about their findings and kept journals in the late 1500s, so El Paso has one of the oldest literary traditions in the state. In 1915, Mariano Azuela, a physician fleeing Mexico, smuggled the half-finished manuscript of the first novel about the Mexican Revolution, Los de abajo (The Underdogs), under his shirt, crossed the border into El Paso, and finished his book in an apartment on Oregon Street. Historians, novelists, poets, journalists and short story writers began to shape the literary legacy of El Paso. A critical and significant time in the literary history of El Paso occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, during the rise of the Chicano Movement. The seeds of this movement began in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War when the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico border instantly created nearly one hundred thousand new U.S. citizens. In response to segregation and discrimination, organizations such as The Order of the Sons of America and the Knights of America were created in Texas to secure rights for these citizens. One of these organizations, The League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, established in 1929, elected Frank J. Galvan of El Paso as its eighth president in 1936-1937. Chicano activism during the 1960s and early 1970s attracted national attention and occurred at the same time as the Civil Rights Movement, which focused primarily on African Americans. During this time, previously silenced voices in the Hispanic community emerged on the political and artistic scene. Although attention to ethnic politics is usually centered on the West Coast, the first Raza Unida Party national convention was held in El Paso in 1972. Out of this period of activism, a new genre of literature was born. Poets Ricardo Sánchez, Abelardo Delgado, who joined César Chávez in the farmworkers movement, artist and writer José Antonio Burciaga, novelist Arturo xxi Islas, journalist Ruben Salazar, and historian Mario T. García are only a few of these influential writers who began their work in El Paso. Rejected by mainstream publishers, they sometimes founded their own publishing houses. Then, when national...